Last week I got 20,000 spams (I'm the web admin for School.Net) and about 100 of those have California numbers or domains. I would *love* to go after those people.
What happens when someone like me, or a website postmaster, is the one to sue? Or even better, a major ISP systems administrator?
Can an ISP use this to sue?
Imagine an enormous ISP honeypot,
all routed to one person, and then that person sues the same spammer again and again, each time making a $500 dent.
Would this make any difference?
Cheers, Joel
The ISP is (in a sense) receiving the spam.
since the ISP is indeed receiving the spam?
"I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms."
Here is the relevant file from the FBI database: ARCHIBALD BUTTLE charged with Freelance Subversion, Deconstructive Behavior, Reckless Creation of Suspicion Among the Greater Public, Stealing Work from Qualified Personnel, Practicing Heating Engineering without a License, Failing to Complete Necessary Work Orders, Wasting Ministry Time and Paper
The Sun software executive admitted that he's "a bit of a cynic when it comes to metered billing
Cynic? Maybe he's never managed a data center...
What the article doesn't describe is that Orion is a *huge* improvement for some managers of data centers. Knowing your monthly rental prices ahead of time makes budgeting much easier, which is a very big deal in some companies.
It also emphasizes Sun's broad idea of services as a utility. Ideally a CIO/CTO can pay a monthly fee and get everything: rental software, scalable hardware, technical support for anything that comes up, and consulting services on retainer.
Disclaimer: I worked for Sun and strongly advocated this kind of metered billing. I worked for a big data center before Sun, and saw firsthand that for my CTO budgets I needed monthly predictability more than I needed low prices.
A rhesus macaque monkey at a Brown University laboratory can move a cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about it - playing a pinball game in which every time a red target dot pops up, the monkey moves a cursor to meet the target quickly and accurately. The monkey plays the game mentally, controlling where it wants the cursor to go by thinking.
How will the patents fit with the antitrust? Check this "The Legality of a Unilateral Refusal to License Under the Antitrust laws" here
...
When a patented or copyrighted product is one of many products competing in a market, antitrust issues typically do not arise from unilateral conduct. However, when a patented or copyrighted product is so successful that it evolves into its own economic market, succeeds in garnering a large market share, or is essential to compete in a market, the antitrust laws and the intellectual property laws collide. The antitrust laws' primary purpose of preserving competition is frustrated when the holder of a patent or copyright exercises the exclusionary market power that comes with those rights.
The United States Supreme Court has yet to deal with these knotty issues, although the Court apparently is seriously considering doing so....
You haven't seen it? Is it possible you haven't looked for it?
I am a former Sun employee and I wrote these kinds of memos.
Specifically, I wrote that Java was unsuitable for Sun's own web development projects, and that this represented a serious problem in terms of missed opportunities to improve our software and for our public relations and marketing.
The memo may be a fake, but it's right on target. I especially agree with the problem of internal tech support for critical bug fixes.
I worked on several projects that were a nightmare due to subtle bugs in Java's HTML and XML classes. In each case, the bugs were easy to fix: a few lines of code, changing private methods to protected methods, etc.
The response from Sun support? "Will not fix."
So I had to rewrite the classes-- basically rederiving the entire Java HTML+XML parsing tree-- which stuck the customer using my custom code. Talk about a bad upgrade path!
There were many, many examples of this. As a result, I deployed many projects using Perl on Linux instead of Java on Solaris, and I wrote internal memos like the one in this article.
All that said, the Java engineers were some of the smartest, nicest people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. I have a lot of confidence in them, and each Java release gets substantially better and faster. The problem IMHO is not the engineers, but the corporate culture that misses opportunities to learn from employee projects.
The Sun engineers and internal developers can really do some amazing things, if McNealy and Zander could start prioritizing Java inside Sun, and start funding rapid-turnaround tech support for employee programmers.
"What if we could put information in places? What if we could associate relevant information with a place and perceive the information as if it were really there?"
First-- if an employer is serious about finding a good match for their company, your slashdot posts can give an indication of your communication skills, your interests, and what other technical people think about your information.
Second-- there's a lot more information about you available on the net that you may not want employers to evaluate. These days, your credit report may be the least of your privacy concerns. It can be interesting to Google your coworkers to see what turns up.
And if you're my employer reading this, thanks for the job! You're the best!:-)
BEFORE YOU REPLY, please read a bit.
He has some ideas that are VERY similar
to ideas that get posted here on slashdot.
One excerpt here...
While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications . . . how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence.
I found a terrific book on general ideas of network connectivity graph theory-- very creative, written for smart readers who are comfortable with some math. He's got interesting ideas that can be relevant to many fields: biology, P2P apps, distributed trust systems, DNS, and more. Highly recommended.
Duncan Watts uses this intriguing phenomenon--colloquially called "six degrees of separation"--as a prelude to a more general exploration: under what conditions can a small world arise in any kind of network?
The networks of this story are everywhere: the brain is a network of neurons; organisations are people networks; the global economy is a network of national economies, which are networks of markets, which are in turn networks of interacting producers and consumers.
Food webs, ecosystems, and the Internet can all be represented as networks, as can strategies for solving a problem, topics in a conversation, and even words in a language. Many of these networks, the author claims, will turn out to be small worlds.
Actually the heuristics come from much larger and more complex robots, built for the U.S. military as minesweepers (link to review). That's why the Roomba cleans in widening circles, rather than making a internal map of the room or tracing the walls.
One of the inventors is from the MIT AI Lab. Check out Rodney Brooks for his ideas on heuristic AI and projects like humanoid robots Cog and Kismet.
His ideas, as I understand them, are to build increasingly complex robots using subsumption architecture, i.e. simple behaviors like movement come first, then more complex behaviors are added in layers. His approach to AI is radically different approach than traditional symbolic processing AI.
His research raises all kinds of interesting questions about evolution, emergent behavior, and how to pass the Turing test.
Slashdot Mirror
What happens when someone like me, or a website postmaster, is the one to sue? Or even better, a major ISP systems administrator?
Can an ISP use this to sue?
Imagine an enormous ISP honeypot, all routed to one person, and then that person sues the same spammer again and again, each time making a $500 dent.
Would this make any difference?
Cheers, Joel The ISP is (in a sense) receiving the spam. since the ISP is indeed receiving the spam?
Here is the relevant file from the FBI database: ARCHIBALD BUTTLE charged with Freelance Subversion, Deconstructive Behavior, Reckless Creation of Suspicion Among the Greater Public, Stealing Work from Qualified Personnel, Practicing Heating Engineering without a License, Failing to Complete Necessary Work Orders, Wasting Ministry Time and Paper
The complete Python file is here: Tuttle
Cheers, Joel
Cheers, Joel
How are your ideas on writing and publishing changing,
as our many technologies are advancing so quickly?
This is open-ended because I'm interested
in your broad vision, your creative response.
And thank you for so many wonderful stories...
Cheers, Joel
Dear Steven,
Good point. Your previous Slashdot postings are also good, except for that one about Linux.
Sincerely, Bill G.
Cynic? Maybe he's never managed a data center...
What the article doesn't describe is that Orion is a *huge* improvement for some managers of data centers. Knowing your monthly rental prices ahead of time makes budgeting much easier, which is a very big deal in some companies.
It also emphasizes Sun's broad idea of services as a utility. Ideally a CIO/CTO can pay a monthly fee and get everything: rental software, scalable hardware, technical support for anything that comes up, and consulting services on retainer.
Disclaimer: I worked for Sun and strongly advocated this kind of metered billing. I worked for a big data center before Sun, and saw firsthand that for my CTO budgets I needed monthly predictability more than I needed low prices.
Cheers, Joel
How about the Top 10 List of Police Database Abuses?
Cheers, Joel
pray, create art, interact and have strange goals?
Sounds like Burning Man!
Cheers,
Joel from Desert Camp LiteBrite
My former undergrad prof, Dr. John Donoghue at Brown University, is at the cutting edge of research into neural implantable interfaces.
Monkeys Demonstrate Thought-Controlled Computing
Monkeybrain Joysticks Excerpts:
A rhesus macaque monkey at a Brown University laboratory can move a cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about it - playing a pinball game in which every time a red target dot pops up, the monkey moves a cursor to meet the target quickly and accurately. The monkey plays the game mentally, controlling where it wants the cursor to go by thinking.
The primary research Nature article is Connecting cortex to machines: recent advances in brain interfaces
Cheers,
Joel
... When a patented or copyrighted product is one of many products competing in a market, antitrust issues typically do not arise from unilateral conduct. However, when a patented or copyrighted product is so successful that it evolves into its own economic market, succeeds in garnering a large market share, or is essential to compete in a market, the antitrust laws and the intellectual property laws collide. The antitrust laws' primary purpose of preserving competition is frustrated when the holder of a patent or copyright exercises the exclusionary market power that comes with those rights.
The United States Supreme Court has yet to deal with these knotty issues, although the Court apparently is seriously considering doing so....
Cheers, Joel
That's harder than it seems. Windows and Norton both present a EULA dialog box before they install. Decline the EULA, and nothing works.
And if you don't register it, there are problems with LiveUpdate, getting new virus definitions, calling tech support, and upgrading.
It's also illegal, which can be a critical issue for businesses and contractors. See the BSA posting
Cheers, Joel
I am a former Sun employee and I wrote these kinds of memos.
Specifically, I wrote that Java was unsuitable for Sun's own web development projects, and that this represented a serious problem in terms of missed opportunities to improve our software and for our public relations and marketing.
The memo may be a fake, but it's right on target. I especially agree with the problem of internal tech support for critical bug fixes.
I worked on several projects that were a nightmare due to subtle bugs in Java's HTML and XML classes. In each case, the bugs were easy to fix: a few lines of code, changing private methods to protected methods, etc.
The response from Sun support? "Will not fix."
So I had to rewrite the classes-- basically rederiving the entire Java HTML+XML parsing tree-- which stuck the customer using my custom code. Talk about a bad upgrade path!
There were many, many examples of this. As a result, I deployed many projects using Perl on Linux instead of Java on Solaris, and I wrote internal memos like the one in this article.
All that said, the Java engineers were some of the smartest, nicest people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. I have a lot of confidence in them, and each Java release gets substantially better and faster. The problem IMHO is not the engineers, but the corporate culture that misses opportunities to learn from employee projects.
The Sun engineers and internal developers can really do some amazing things, if McNealy and Zander could start prioritizing Java inside Sun, and start funding rapid-turnaround tech support for employee programmers.
Cheers,
Joel
Maybe submitting a crypt() of your email? Or...?
"What if we could put information in places? What if we could associate relevant information with a place and perceive the information as if it were really there?"
Cheers,
Joel
First-- if an employer is serious about finding a good match for their company, your slashdot posts can give an indication of your communication skills, your interests, and what other technical people think about your information.
Second-- there's a lot more information about you available on the net that you may not want employers to evaluate. These days, your credit report may be the least of your privacy concerns. It can be interesting to Google your coworkers to see what turns up.
And if you're my employer reading this, thanks for the job! You're the best! :-)
Cheers,
Joel
A smart IT manager would skip the credit check and look at your Slashdot posts instead...
Who else is succeeding like her?
She's current, independent, and wildly popular with her fans.
She has succeeded without the RIAA and without ClearChannel.
Who else? We'll need these to counter the RIAA.
Sidenote: I downloaded her songs from gnutella,
got hooked, and bought her three latest albums.
Then took my friends to her concert. God bless P2P!
here or here or here
Hey, your law works for software licenses too! :-)
Dyson & Bill Joy both relate to the Unabomber Manifesto,
which has some stunning sections on technology:
Industrial-Technological Society Cannot Be Reformed
Restriction Of Freedom Is unavoidable In Industrial Society
The 'Bad' Parts Of Technology Cannot Be Seperated From The 'Good' Parts
Technology Is A More Powerful Social Force Than The Aspiration Freedom
The complete manifesto is here
BEFORE YOU REPLY, please read a bit.
He has some ideas that are VERY similar
to ideas that get posted here on slashdot.
One excerpt here...
While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications . . . how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence.
Amazon link
From the Amazon reviews:
Duncan Watts uses this intriguing phenomenon--colloquially called "six degrees of separation"--as a prelude to a more general exploration: under what conditions can a small world arise in any kind of network?
The networks of this story are everywhere: the brain is a network of neurons; organisations are people networks; the global economy is a network of national economies, which are networks of markets, which are in turn networks of interacting producers and consumers.
Food webs, ecosystems, and the Internet can all be represented as networks, as can strategies for solving a problem, topics in a conversation, and even words in a language. Many of these networks, the author claims, will turn out to be small worlds.
Is this ethical?
Is this legal?
Will the RIAA still try to screw me?
Actually the heuristics come from much larger and more complex robots, built for the U.S. military as minesweepers (link to review). That's why the Roomba cleans in widening circles, rather than making a internal map of the room or tracing the walls.
His ideas, as I understand them, are to build increasingly complex robots using subsumption architecture, i.e. simple behaviors like movement come first, then more complex behaviors are added in layers. His approach to AI is radically different approach than traditional symbolic processing AI.
His research raises all kinds of interesting questions about evolution, emergent behavior, and how to pass the Turing test.
http://computertimes.asiaone.com.sg/v2/images/spo
Google cache of the matching article here