A friend of mine who used to as a prosecutor (in a different country) told they aimed for an 80% conviction rate (ie. conviction in 80% of the cases that went to court).
If they got less than 80 it would be a sign that they were generally taking cases to court with insufficient evidence. More than 80 meant they were being too cautious.
That was their reasoning anyway. 100% was explicitly not their aim.
I know it isn't the answer you're looking for, but i would suggest to move the mail server to Linode or similar.
I have have been through a similar story, trying to avoid being blocked as spam. If you fix this problem, new ones will appear again and again.
It just isn't worth the fight IMO.
Moving to the cloud won't solve all your problems, but it will be easier.
I see this as a result of the fact that telcos in most places are also the biggest/only retailers of handsets. Since the two markets (handsets and connectivity) have merged, the competition in both markets has suffered.
The telcos, who connect phones to the network, promote their services using easily marketable handsets instead of competing on their own merits.
This is a horrible subversion of competition, and it destroys both markets. If handsets were sold by independant vendors, there would be a lot more room for "niche" customers, who like smaller phones, physical keyboards, long battery life or large screens for vision impaired. And if connectivity was sold in its own market, there would be room for subscriptions that don't bleed you dry when abroad, give you good coverage everywhere at a higher price or give you low price, but low coverage etc.
Instead we get just a few "one size fits all" models and subscriptions that favor the only the largest demographics.
Obligatory car analogy:
If you want to buy a car, you have to get it from the oil company. Statoil have a good offer on Ford this month, but you can get a Fiat for "free" if you subscribe to BP's monthly refill service. And, of course, the car will not run if you fill it at a competing gas company.
So, there is a war. One side has robots, the other one doesn't. The guys with robots can claim high accuracy, hardly any losses on their side. Not human losses anyway. The other guys can claim... just about nothing. Sure, they may destroy some robots, but that doesn't really matter. Only human losses matter.
So how do they fight back against an army of robots?
I can only see one way to do it; move the fight away from the battlefield and into the civilian world. Not exactly a desirable outcome for either side.
A friend of mine is currently in the hospital with a simple infection, that would normally be easily treated with antibiotics. But this one has been resistant to everything they've tried. Worst case, they will have to take off his leg.
I agree; using antibiotics where they aren't needed is despicable.
It has worked in at least one other company.
Oticon (high tech hearing aid developer) was pioneering this form of company structure in the early 1990's.
Actually, i believe it did in one of the early vesions of IE.
Not out of the box, mind you. As far as i recall, IE at the time would run any scripts that could be executed in an interpreter that complied with MS' scripting interface (forgot the name). And there was such an interpreter for perl.
The gamers understand it's unrealistic to expect civilians not to get killed, and the best that you can really do in any war is to not go out of your way to kill them like the Nazi's did.
Last i checked, US was not at war with Pakistan, which is where (according to the summary) there are civilian casualties.
Why not go all the way and have a thermal wires in addition to electric wires in the house? Need cooling for an electric appliance? Just plug it into the cold socket. Heat for a cup of coffee? Use the hot socket.
All the heat+cold could be collected in a Stirling engine, or even go all the way back to the power plant for "recycling".
Get a digital camera, that can be triggered externally, with low (and known) latency.
Use a flash. It will 1) eliminate the need for shutter speed and 2) illuminate the scene so the camera can use a small aperture, and not need auto focus.
Use barcodes as identifying symbols - there is plenty of barcode scanning software. Turn it "sideways" if needed for further robustness against motion blur
Print the barcode on a reflective material. Then it could easily be the brightest spot in the photo - easy to identify.
Many things are wrong in France (this law being one of them), but...
This is France - not the US. Revenue is a not really something the government is working towards. Real governments (that actually function as such - and not as corporations) do exist, you know.
Look at Japan! Sure, they have probably the most strict gun control laws of any place -- even police rarely carry guns. But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.
The statistics seem to disagree with that statement:
My experience has been that there are different tiers. Generally speaking, going to any school within the top 50 or 100 for a field will result in a good education.
You sound like you have a lot of experience in this matter. How many universities did you attend? How many of these were in the top 50-100? Did you attend the same courses on them all, or did you diversify?
Just trying to figure out the grounds for your claims...
It is a very common misconception that patents are meant to give inventors incentive to produce more inventions, by giving the inventor a limited exclusive right to exploit his work. This is what copyright is meant to do.
Patents, on the other hand, are meant as an encouragement to publish inventions rather than keeping them secret. In return for publishing, the inventor enjoys limited exclusive rights, which he could otherwise only achieve through secrecy. The whole point is that good inventions can be inspirational for other inventors, even if they can't use them directly (yet).
Given how common this misconception is, and the way the patent system works, we are probably closer to a copyright-like system than the original intent. Sadly.
Similar to the way hazardous and valuable materials are handled, companies and individuals should be licenced to be allowed to handle personal data.
No CEO in his right mind would let a junior employee take care of transporting/storing explosives/toxins/diamonds. Why should he let him handle "dangerous" data?
Yes, data handling would become more expensive, but a lot safer, if fewer and more specialized companies are the only ones who get access to the data.
There are already plenty of companies that offer this kind of service for credit card transactions. The only reason they exist is that it is expensive to get a license for it. If the entry barrier is high enough for other areas, more services will appear.
In case of a recorded piece of music, there are (at least) 2 copyrights involved - the composition and the recording. Additionally, the lyrics and other parts of the work might be copyrighted separately.
By transcribing a recorded piece of music, you are only copying the composition - not the recording, therefore only violating one of the copyrights.
One thing, i wonder, is how arrangements are treated in respect to copyright. If i take a piece of music - for example a Bob Dylan song originally written for guitar and vocals - and rearrange it for a 100-man orhestra, will i be enitled to copyright fees from that arragement?
Unlike copyright, patents don't exist in order to protect inventors. They exist to encourage inventors to publish their inventions rather than keep them as trade secrets.
A book (which is what the first copyright systems covered) is not very useful for the author unless it is published.
Inventions on the other hand can (in many cases) be useful even if kept secret. This is why patents were invented - and why publishing is part of the patenting process.
I travel by plane fairly frequently and have a pretty good idea how long it takes to get through the airports i use the most. So can arrive at a good time - not so late that i'll miss the plane, but not overly early, wasting a lot of my time.
With randomized security, i have to assume worst-case every time i go to the airport. I have no idea how many and which kinds of security checks i will be put through.
The security theatre makes air travel painful enough as it is. Please don't introduce any further (possible) delays.
"...the rest of us out here have to depend on tearing the phone apart and pricing the components - which at current best guess is at something like $250-$300."
"What makes the iPhone is a nifty multi-touch display and a lot of software development."
You are not the only one to give that $250-ish estimate for the parts, but apparently that figure does not include software, which you yourself point out, is the most important feature of the iPhone.
I'm not saying that Apple/AT&T aren't evil, just that it isn't fair to use the cost of the parts for comparison. In fact, i'm very much opposed to the usual tie-ins between phone manufacturers and telcos. That should have been outlawed long ago. Just imagine what would happen if a similar deal was made between car manufacturers and oil companies. Voluntary deals would be fine, but the customer should always have the option to pay full price for a phone, with no obligations to the operator.
When we buy music, the bulk of the price goes towards the music, the artists' work - and not distribution (for some artists/labels, a substantial amount is spent on marketing too). This is true for any kind of media (be it radio, CD, download, vinyl), but especially so for downloaded music. The online distribution costs are so low, that a more fair pricing would be:
$0.20 for 128 Kbps
$0.201 for 256 Kbps
$0.202 for 320 Kbps ...you get the point
Then we'd be paying a fair price for the distribution. It doesn't cost more to encode a song to 320Kbps than to 128Kbps. And it only costs marginally more to distribute and stock it.
Having the price based primarily on the encoding quality sends the signal that we pay for the service (the shop) - and not the product (the music). Some people may agree with that view, but i certainly don't.
On a sidenote:
One of my favourite physical music stores does charge for service. They have pretty much everything interesting in stock, the staff there is very knowledgable, they chat with you about the music, tell you about new releases (that you might like), play some for you, while you have a cup of coffee. The other shop down the road is 10-20% cheaper, but i happily pay that extra for the service they offer.
Slashdot Mirror
If they got less than 80 it would be a sign that they were generally taking cases to court with insufficient evidence. More than 80 meant they were being too cautious.
That was their reasoning anyway. 100% was explicitly not their aim.
Yes, there was at least one study with irritable bowel syndrome. Links: the paper or a random summary
I know it isn't the answer you're looking for, but i would suggest to move the mail server to Linode or similar.
I have have been through a similar story, trying to avoid being blocked as spam. If you fix this problem, new ones will appear again and again. It just isn't worth the fight IMO.
Moving to the cloud won't solve all your problems, but it will be easier.
I see this as a result of the fact that telcos in most places are also the biggest/only retailers of handsets. Since the two markets (handsets and connectivity) have merged, the competition in both markets has suffered.
The telcos, who connect phones to the network, promote their services using easily marketable handsets instead of competing on their own merits.
This is a horrible subversion of competition, and it destroys both markets. If handsets were sold by independant vendors, there would be a lot more room for "niche" customers, who like smaller phones, physical keyboards, long battery life or large screens for vision impaired. And if connectivity was sold in its own market, there would be room for subscriptions that don't bleed you dry when abroad, give you good coverage everywhere at a higher price or give you low price, but low coverage etc.
Instead we get just a few "one size fits all" models and subscriptions that favor the only the largest demographics.
Obligatory car analogy: If you want to buy a car, you have to get it from the oil company. Statoil have a good offer on Ford this month, but you can get a Fiat for "free" if you subscribe to BP's monthly refill service. And, of course, the car will not run if you fill it at a competing gas company.
So how do they fight back against an army of robots?
I can only see one way to do it; move the fight away from the battlefield and into the civilian world. Not exactly a desirable outcome for either side.
I agree; using antibiotics where they aren't needed is despicable.
HTML5, which eventually surpassed it to become the virtual industry standard for Web-based rich content
I would disagree. Flash is still very much the de facto standard, like it or not.
Some more detailed info: http://www.managementlab.org/files/u2/pdf/case%20studies/OticonCaseStudy_.pdf
Perl never ran on any browser.
Actually, i believe it did in one of the early vesions of IE.
Not out of the box, mind you. As far as i recall, IE at the time would run any scripts that could be executed in an interpreter that complied with MS' scripting interface (forgot the name). And there was such an interpreter for perl.
The gamers understand it's unrealistic to expect civilians not to get killed, and the best that you can really do in any war is to not go out of your way to kill them like the Nazi's did.
Last i checked, US was not at war with Pakistan, which is where (according to the summary) there are civilian casualties.
Why not go all the way and have a thermal wires in addition to electric wires in the house? Need cooling for an electric appliance? Just plug it into the cold socket. Heat for a cup of coffee? Use the hot socket.
All the heat+cold could be collected in a Stirling engine, or even go all the way back to the power plant for "recycling".
Get a digital camera, that can be triggered externally, with low (and known) latency.
Use a flash. It will 1) eliminate the need for shutter speed and 2) illuminate the scene so the camera can use a small aperture, and not need auto focus.
Use barcodes as identifying symbols - there is plenty of barcode scanning software. Turn it "sideways" if needed for further robustness against motion blur
Print the barcode on a reflective material. Then it could easily be the brightest spot in the photo - easy to identify.
Many things are wrong in France (this law being one of them), but...
This is France - not the US. Revenue is a not really something the government is working towards. Real governments (that actually function as such - and not as corporations) do exist, you know.
Look at Japan! Sure, they have probably the most strict gun control laws of any place -- even police rarely carry guns. But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.
The statistics seem to disagree with that statement:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita (Japan is 3rd from the bottom)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_murder_rate (4th from the bottom)
Xbox was at a similar amount. I don't think this figure has changed much for the later consoles.
You sound like you have a lot of experience in this matter. How many universities did you attend? How many of these were in the top 50-100? Did you attend the same courses on them all, or did you diversify?
Just trying to figure out the grounds for your claims...
It is a very common misconception that patents are meant to give inventors incentive to produce more inventions, by giving the inventor a limited exclusive right to exploit his work. This is what copyright is meant to do.
Patents, on the other hand, are meant as an encouragement to publish inventions rather than keeping them secret. In return for publishing, the inventor enjoys limited exclusive rights, which he could otherwise only achieve through secrecy. The whole point is that good inventions can be inspirational for other inventors, even if they can't use them directly (yet).
Given how common this misconception is, and the way the patent system works, we are probably closer to a copyright-like system than the original intent. Sadly.
No CEO in his right mind would let a junior employee take care of transporting/storing explosives/toxins/diamonds. Why should he let him handle "dangerous" data?
Yes, data handling would become more expensive, but a lot safer, if fewer and more specialized companies are the only ones who get access to the data.
There are already plenty of companies that offer this kind of service for credit card transactions. The only reason they exist is that it is expensive to get a license for it. If the entry barrier is high enough for other areas, more services will appear.
By transcribing a recorded piece of music, you are only copying the composition - not the recording, therefore only violating one of the copyrights.
One thing, i wonder, is how arrangements are treated in respect to copyright. If i take a piece of music - for example a Bob Dylan song originally written for guitar and vocals - and rearrange it for a 100-man orhestra, will i be enitled to copyright fees from that arragement?
My former employer advertised in 1998 for programmers with "extensive experience with Y2K problems". How is that for unreasonable requests?
Unlike copyright, patents don't exist in order to protect inventors. They exist to encourage inventors to publish their inventions rather than keep them as trade secrets.
A book (which is what the first copyright systems covered) is not very useful for the author unless it is published.
Inventions on the other hand can (in many cases) be useful even if kept secret. This is why patents were invented - and why publishing is part of the patenting process.
(3 > 2 and 5) or 4;
Much prettier, and easier to read.
Parent post made me think...
I travel by plane fairly frequently and have a pretty good idea how long it takes to get through the airports i use the most. So can arrive at a good time - not so late that i'll miss the plane, but not overly early, wasting a lot of my time.
With randomized security, i have to assume worst-case every time i go to the airport. I have no idea how many and which kinds of security checks i will be put through.
The security theatre makes air travel painful enough as it is. Please don't introduce any further (possible) delays.
"What makes the iPhone is a nifty multi-touch display and a lot of software development."
You are not the only one to give that $250-ish estimate for the parts, but apparently that figure does not include software, which you yourself point out, is the most important feature of the iPhone.
I'm not saying that Apple/AT&T aren't evil, just that it isn't fair to use the cost of the parts for comparison. In fact, i'm very much opposed to the usual tie-ins between phone manufacturers and telcos. That should have been outlawed long ago. Just imagine what would happen if a similar deal was made between car manufacturers and oil companies. Voluntary deals would be fine, but the customer should always have the option to pay full price for a phone, with no obligations to the operator.
$0.20 for 128 Kbps
...you get the point
$0.201 for 256 Kbps
$0.202 for 320 Kbps
Then we'd be paying a fair price for the distribution. It doesn't cost more to encode a song to 320Kbps than to 128Kbps. And it only costs marginally more to distribute and stock it.
Having the price based primarily on the encoding quality sends the signal that we pay for the service (the shop) - and not the product (the music). Some people may agree with that view, but i certainly don't.
On a sidenote:
One of my favourite physical music stores does charge for service. They have pretty much everything interesting in stock, the staff there is very knowledgable, they chat with you about the music, tell you about new releases (that you might like), play some for you, while you have a cup of coffee. The other shop down the road is 10-20% cheaper, but i happily pay that extra for the service they offer.