"I'm a Mozilla advocate, but even I admit the mail client is a piece of trash."
No actually, it's good enough that I'm considering reccomending it in place of The Bat. It may not have PGP, but it's free software.
How many free email apps can you name which support muliple account? Cross Outlook off that list if you've read any security headlines in the last year. Now you're left with just Mozilla, a couple of bits of shareware crap, and the incredibly convoluted pegasus.
Right. So still no alternatives to Mozilla mail, then?
"...but Mozilla is a "1.0" release, and from a security perspective, it's usually better to go with a more mature application."
Yeah, best wait until an application's in it's 98'th version and is still buggy as hell. We can't have a programs that calls itself version 1, it can't possibly have taken any time to develop...
"I don't think this law will apply to individuals"
I can't wait to see the Attourney-General's mailbox when every slashdot-reader in the country writes to give 10-days notice of their intention to disrupt vast areas of the internet in their search for people using perl-scripts without permission.
"Mail's arrived. Clear the loading bay!"
Re:Don't you get it? Their job is to get bad PR
on
RIAA Smacked by DoS
·
· Score: 1
Whenever people first encounter free-X (x being anything), their immediate view is to see what it takes away from them. Plenty of newbie programmers harbor dreams of making millions from their pithy little programs, and wouldn't dream of letting anyone copy them.
In a few years, when the programs are lost and forgotten, with nobody using them, it becomes easier to see why free-X wouldn't have lost them any money. In fact, when people realise they can no longer find their lovely software any more, they might start to see some of the benefits of sharing.
Musicians seem to divide easily into classes. Those who know they're crap tend to like restricting use. Top-10 artists selected for their bodies, anyone insecure, or anone who knows they're a fad, they will always become paranoid about people listening without overlords' control. Metallica only became paranoid after their careers dwindled to insignificance - back when they were popular, they encouraged tape-swapping, knowing that it would boost their popualrity.
Similarly, manufactured artists are all for crippled CDs and new laws, but I assume this is because they're pawns under the control of a company: I can't imagine these are personal opinions.
On the other hand, people who are confident in their own work can be confident in trusting their fans, as I'm sure anyone who's posted to MP3.com knows. Even if the 'disillusioned by RIAA_rape' crowd are a small crowd now, we do seem to see more people choosing this view.
Take any music consumer, get them to read a week's headlines on slashdot, theregister... about the music industry, and ask them whether they'd prefer to preview an Aura album with the option of donating money, or whether they'd prefer to pay $20 at virgin for a copy-disabled CD.
It's easier for unknown producers to see the benefits of free-x, as they get the additional benefit of publicity. Baen library (print books), MP3.com, and many others are great places for artists to become known.
Some of them keep their nerves, others lose it when they become famous. Some bands become rich and popular, then the paranoia sets in about mistrusting their fans, and they take off free music. Up to the individual I guess, but many fans will see that as a brush-off, as evidence that the band no longer feel they need their fans.
I've just spent lots of money on CDs, where I downloaded the whole lot first, like it, and bought the CDs later. That was after 2 years of not buying anything, as I was (and still am) loath to give money to people trying to screw me of fair-use rights. The band I wanted lost out, because their publisher was in RIAA. I liked their music, but no way was I buying it. The free-music bands won, because they're ovbiously confident about their music.
Should music compete on its merits or on publicity? I'd like to encourage the former.
"Immaturity like this only HARMS what we are trying to do."
WTF? The music industry just started illegally interfering with computer networks to the detriment of others (hacking, to misuse that word), and people complain that a DDOS on their website is immature?
As immature perhaps, as spending millions in congress to disrupt others' computers, before sarcastically quipping "at least they've stopped stealing for 10 minutes" when someone does the same back to them?
Bring it on. The more this group's website gets attacked, the happier I'll feel laughing at them. They want to legalise hacking? Let's show people what it will mean in practise.
Need I remind anyone here that individuals are copyright-holders too?
"Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?" asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified
A good question indeed, for the people who've campaigned long and hard for permission to do this very same thing.
Re:Big boost for space tech if it is on course...
on
A Rock Moves In Space
·
· Score: 1
We have finally decided on the location for the meeting for the committee that will determine the budget proposal for the committee to plan the catering for the blue-ribbon commission for the removal of the asteroid threat.
October 2018 status report: "On the advice of scientists and engineers worldwide, the ICANN has decided to hold it's annual misrepresentative meeting on a remote south-pacific island where the world's technical community assures them they will be safe from the asteroid"
In unrelated news, lobbying by Windows users everywhere failed to convince Microsoft to move their world headquarters to another nearby island, citing suspicion at the calculations used.
"You can do NOTHING on Yahoo's auction site unless you give Yahoo a credit card to "verify your identity"."
Why do you think no non-americans use Yahoo auctions. I've tried several times to use Yahoo auctions, and every single time, it has not been possible for me to register (despite owning a credit-card!)
Right. Nice one, Yahoo. Can't imagine why they're about to go bust. Meanwhile ebay gets my business, and I've bought and sold several things there without a credit card.
For one company to make such a grave mistake is pity enough, but for others to look at their example and say "hey, we too could use this new technology which restricts us to 5% of customers"... that's just sad.
(+) The rating needs to be distributed (i.e. each machine has a list of people it trusts/distrusts, and how much)
(+) The rating needs to be dependant on the social status of the person who rated it. For example, if someone gave you a good file, you would download and trust most of the people on their list. If you give someone a good file, they download and use your "trusted users" list.
(+) If someone gives you bad file, then they, and anyone they've reccommended, need to be downgraded in your list. This updated list needs to be distributed to everyone relying on your trust list, perhaps through polling the people on your list for updates daily.
This is pretty similar to the PGP idea, but with pseudononymous identities, and a much lower requirement for security. The 'distributed database of trusted people' spreads by one person each time a good file is downloaded and rated.
The major problem is stopping someone with a 'good' rating reccommending someone untrustworthy, i.e. a user either created or bought by a malicious entity. The simplest way to solve that is, if someone reccommends a user who shares bad files, the person who made the reccommendation is considered [untrusted | less trusted], and this 'credit-rating' be forwarded to others.
"If people expect Phil to come over to the GnuPG camp then you have to be ready to develop as much time to the Windows product as *nix."
Why bother with platform-specifics at all? Use GTK+ for the frontend, it'll run fine on windows _and_ linux, especially with the rise of the linux desktop so everyone has/uses gnome now...
( I don't think anyone on this site has been using OutLook Express for a long time! )
Seriously though, HTML emails. Worth deleting? I've had filters in place for a long time to drop anything with HTML tags into a "probably_junk" folder, and the only false-positives have been from hotmail users.
Unfortunately, some people still use hotmail, however, my "Delete HTML emails" filter correctly removes around 300 spam emails for every 1 real email.
-- many times, you can have some fun with unsubscribe links: They fall into one of three categories:
(1) a page which takes an email address, checks if it's on their database, and if so, tells you it's been removed.
(2) a page which takes an email address, and displays "Your email: <WHATEVERS_IN_THE_QUERY> has been removed from our database" - you can check this by entering something which isn't an email address into the query.
(3) Same as (2), but it writes down the email you want unsubscribed, and makes it available to the spammer.
Option 3 is the most fun, because you can feed it your own set of email addresses. They probably filter all the microsoft ones, but I'm sure hollings@senate.gov is starting to see how internet marketing works...
Similarly, I'm sure they filter uce@ftc.gov out of their lists, but if you know the sales@company.com email addresses of people who advertise through bulk email, this can be a good time to mention them.
After all, you're only removing these peoples' names, right?
"Companies have all sorts of liability that they have to worry about"
...and as soon as they start to filter the internet, they make themselves liable for antything which remains unfiltered. That's the problem with nominating yourself for a policing role -- if something gets past, it's you who was supposed to stop it.
(that's the same reason that free-webspace providers avoid checking for unsuitable content on their hosted sites -- if they started doing so, they could be sued for anything which they missed, so they sit back and wait for others to report the sites.)
Well, microsoft's a bit obvious, but you could start with scientology (that's interesting -- they've spammed the small-ads to muscle-out xenu's advert) which tend to be easier to get past a SmartFilter filter, if you see what I mean. (religious hatred and all that)
Besides, what irony it would be to see the fake-religious-right unable to get to their own websites. Maybe we'll see a let-up in pro-censorship campaigning once scientology.org is listed under Cults/Extreme/Hate-speech...
"GPL undermines intellectual property by its "viral" nature"
I'd like to complain that the Microsoft EULA undermines intellectual property by its viral nature -- if I use microsoft code in my program, my whole program is tained with being illegal, even if I only use 100 lines of microsoft code in a million-line application. We need to warn the corporations now to stop using microsoft products.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm a Mozilla advocate, but even I admit the mail client is a piece of trash."
No actually, it's good enough that I'm considering reccomending it in place of The Bat. It may not have PGP, but it's free software.
How many free email apps can you name which support muliple account? Cross Outlook off that list if you've read any security headlines in the last year. Now you're left with just Mozilla, a couple of bits of shareware crap, and the incredibly convoluted pegasus.
Right. So still no alternatives to Mozilla mail, then?
"...but Mozilla is a "1.0" release, and from a security perspective, it's usually better to go with a more mature application."
Yeah, best wait until an application's in it's 98'th version and is still buggy as hell. We can't have a programs that calls itself version 1, it can't possibly have taken any time to develop...
Read the top of the EFF page: it's an extremely well-written argument.
"I don't think this law will apply to individuals"
I can't wait to see the Attourney-General's mailbox when every slashdot-reader in the country writes to give 10-days notice of their intention to disrupt vast areas of the internet in their search for people using perl-scripts without permission.
"Mail's arrived. Clear the loading bay!"
Members list
You've read the autobiography, right?
Whenever people first encounter free-X (x being anything), their immediate view is to see what it takes away from them. Plenty of newbie programmers harbor dreams of making millions from their pithy little programs, and wouldn't dream of letting anyone copy them.
In a few years, when the programs are lost and forgotten, with nobody using them, it becomes easier to see why free-X wouldn't have lost them any money. In fact, when people realise they can no longer find their lovely software any more, they might start to see some of the benefits of sharing.
Musicians seem to divide easily into classes. Those who know they're crap tend to like restricting use. Top-10 artists selected for their bodies, anyone insecure, or anone who knows they're a fad, they will always become paranoid about people listening without overlords' control. Metallica only became paranoid after their careers dwindled to insignificance - back when they were popular, they encouraged tape-swapping, knowing that it would boost their popualrity.
Similarly, manufactured artists are all for crippled CDs and new laws, but I assume this is because they're pawns under the control of a company: I can't imagine these are personal opinions.
On the other hand, people who are confident in their own work can be confident in trusting their fans, as I'm sure anyone who's posted to MP3.com knows. Even if the 'disillusioned by RIAA_rape' crowd are a small crowd now, we do seem to see more people choosing this view.
Take any music consumer, get them to read a week's headlines on slashdot, theregister... about the music industry, and ask them whether they'd prefer to preview an Aura album with the option of donating money, or whether they'd prefer to pay $20 at virgin for a copy-disabled CD.
It's easier for unknown producers to see the benefits of free-x, as they get the additional benefit of publicity. Baen library (print books), MP3.com, and many others are great places for artists to become known.
Some of them keep their nerves, others lose it when they become famous. Some bands become rich and popular, then the paranoia sets in about mistrusting their fans, and they take off free music. Up to the individual I guess, but many fans will see that as a brush-off, as evidence that the band no longer feel they need their fans.
I've just spent lots of money on CDs, where I downloaded the whole lot first, like it, and bought the CDs later. That was after 2 years of not buying anything, as I was (and still am) loath to give money to people trying to screw me of fair-use rights. The band I wanted lost out, because their publisher was in RIAA. I liked their music, but no way was I buying it. The free-music bands won, because they're ovbiously confident about their music.
Should music compete on its merits or on publicity? I'd like to encourage the former.
"Immaturity like this only HARMS what we are trying to do."
WTF? The music industry just started illegally interfering with computer networks to the detriment of others (hacking, to misuse that word), and people complain that a DDOS on their website is immature?
As immature perhaps, as spending millions in congress to disrupt others' computers, before sarcastically quipping "at least they've stopped stealing for 10 minutes" when someone does the same back to them?
Bring it on. The more this group's website gets attacked, the happier I'll feel laughing at them. They want to legalise hacking? Let's show people what it will mean in practise.
Need I remind anyone here that individuals are copyright-holders too?
"Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?" asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified
A good question indeed, for the people who've campaigned long and hard for permission to do this very same thing.
We have finally decided on the location for the meeting for the committee that will determine the budget proposal for the committee to plan the catering for the blue-ribbon commission for the removal of the asteroid threat.
October 2018 status report: "On the advice of scientists and engineers worldwide, the ICANN has decided to hold it's annual misrepresentative meeting on a remote south-pacific island where the world's technical community assures them they will be safe from the asteroid"
In unrelated news, lobbying by Windows users everywhere failed to convince Microsoft to move their world headquarters to another nearby island, citing suspicion at the calculations used.
"Whoever wrote this should get some SERIOUS jail time"
No, the director of the company who wrote the software should.
If I kick a wall and the building falls down, whose fault is it? mine or the architect's?
"Spoken like someone who writes manifestos and sends explosive packages through the mail."
And the problem is...?
"You can do NOTHING on Yahoo's auction site unless you give Yahoo a credit card to "verify your identity"."
Why do you think no non-americans use Yahoo auctions. I've tried several times to use Yahoo auctions, and every single time, it has not been possible for me to register (despite owning a credit-card!)
Right. Nice one, Yahoo. Can't imagine why they're about to go bust. Meanwhile ebay gets my business, and I've bought and sold several things there without a credit card.
For one company to make such a grave mistake is pity enough, but for others to look at their example and say "hey, we too could use this new technology which restricts us to 5% of customers"... that's just sad.
As a webdesigner, my pages work perfectly on Galeon an Mozilla. If someone wants compliance with MSIE browsers, they can pay extra for it.
Q: "Why don't you just use IE normally, like everyone else"
A: "(a) it sucks, and (b) it doesn't run on my computer"
hmmmm
(+) The rating needs to be distributed (i.e. each machine has a list of people it trusts/distrusts, and how much)
(+) The rating needs to be dependant on the social status of the person who rated it. For example, if someone gave you a good file, you would download and trust most of the people on their list. If you give someone a good file, they download and use your "trusted users" list.
(+) If someone gives you bad file, then they, and anyone they've reccommended, need to be downgraded in your list. This updated list needs to be distributed to everyone relying on your trust list, perhaps through polling the people on your list for updates daily.
This is pretty similar to the PGP idea, but with pseudononymous identities, and a much lower requirement for security. The 'distributed database of trusted people' spreads by one person each time a good file is downloaded and rated.
The major problem is stopping someone with a 'good' rating reccommending someone untrustworthy, i.e. a user either created or bought by a malicious entity. The simplest way to solve that is, if someone reccommends a user who shares bad files, the person who made the reccommendation is considered [untrusted | less trusted], and this 'credit-rating' be forwarded to others.
Once you paint over the microsoft logo, and label the bottom-row of keys "Ctrl", "Penguin", Meta" ..., it can be quite nice to use.
"If people expect Phil to come over to the GnuPG camp then you have to be ready to develop as much time to the Windows product as *nix."
Why bother with platform-specifics at all? Use GTK+ for the frontend, it'll run fine on windows _and_ linux, especially with the rise of the linux desktop so everyone has/uses gnome now...
Ok: real question, somewhat offtopic:
PGP-Disk alternative for linux, without having to recompile the kernel? Any ideas?
( I don't think anyone on this site has been using OutLook Express for a long time! )
Seriously though, HTML emails. Worth deleting? I've had filters in place for a long time to drop anything with HTML tags into a "probably_junk" folder, and the only false-positives have been from hotmail users.
Unfortunately, some people still use hotmail, however, my "Delete HTML emails" filter correctly removes around 300 spam emails for every 1 real email.
(re: unsubscribe links)
-- many times, you can have some fun with unsubscribe links: They fall into one of three categories:
(1) a page which takes an email address, checks if it's on their database, and if so, tells you it's been removed.
(2) a page which takes an email address, and displays "Your email: <WHATEVERS_IN_THE_QUERY> has been removed from our database" - you can check this by entering something which isn't an email address into the query.
(3) Same as (2), but it writes down the email you want unsubscribed, and makes it available to the spammer.
Option 3 is the most fun, because you can feed it your own set of email addresses. They probably filter all the microsoft ones, but I'm sure hollings@senate.gov is starting to see how internet marketing works...
Similarly, I'm sure they filter uce@ftc.gov out of their lists, but if you know the sales@company.com email addresses of people who advertise through bulk email, this can be a good time to mention them.
After all, you're only removing these peoples' names, right?
BOFH! Just leave a proxy-server running on your home-machine with a SSL-certificate, and run your own version of SafeWeb...
"Companies have all sorts of liability that they have to worry about"
...and as soon as they start to filter the internet, they make themselves liable for antything which remains unfiltered. That's the problem with nominating yourself for a policing role -- if something gets past, it's you who was supposed to stop it.
(that's the same reason that free-webspace providers avoid checking for unsuitable content on their hosted sites -- if they started doing so, they could be sued for anything which they missed, so they sit back and wait for others to report the sites.)
Well, microsoft's a bit obvious, but you could start with scientology (that's interesting -- they've spammed the small-ads to muscle-out xenu's advert) which tend to be easier to get past a SmartFilter filter, if you see what I mean. (religious hatred and all that)
Besides, what irony it would be to see the fake-religious-right unable to get to their own websites. Maybe we'll see a let-up in pro-censorship campaigning once scientology.org is listed under Cults/Extreme/Hate-speech...
If they can block the AIDS-awareness sites under the porn category, they can sure as hell block DEA.gov under the drugs restriction.
They don't dare? Maybe we should create a "$$, too powerful for a cowardly censorship company to take on" category...
"GPL undermines intellectual property by its "viral" nature"
I'd like to complain that the Microsoft EULA undermines intellectual property by its viral nature -- if I use microsoft code in my program, my whole program is tained with being illegal, even if I only use 100 lines of microsoft code in a million-line application. We need to warn the corporations now to stop using microsoft products.