I've used individual.net when my ISP's news server was in the toilet, so I have mixed feelings about their demise, but with abuse responses like this, I have to say good riddance as well. If they won't keep their server from being a conduit for Usenet abuse, then they might as well shut it down. Or perhaps it was reports like mine and abusive users like this one that helped them to decide to shut it down.
I would not have sent this report at all, knowing how slack Usenet is, except for the poster's bullet reference (even though the poster and the object of the post are on different continents). I CC'ed it to the poster's email ISP, with no response. However, the poster piped down a WHOLE LOT after sending this report, so it appears someone somewhere, whether from my report or from something else, gave him a stern warning...
There was some sort of slashdot "Lameness filter" that kicked in when I first tried to post this, so I had to remove some ASCII-character formatting around the quoted section of the FAQ, but this is essentially the email as I got it (except for my snips in brackets).
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 (18:20 -0500), Ben Bradley wrote:
>> I found the following inapropriate post on the newsgroup >> { snip }. It is definitely abusive (one of a long string of >> such posts from this poster), and the "have a bullet put through his >> head" comment appears threatening.
Q: Someone posted articles that do not adhere to your rules. What do
I do?
A: That depends on the type of offense:
- Violation of a newsgroup's charter
Please inform the author about the usual conventions via e-mail
first - especially if there are particular features in addition or
contrary to the usual rules in de.*. If this does not work, simply
add that author to the kill file / the filter of your news reader.
- Problems with the content of postings
Please clarify your differences with the author directly or use the
kill file / filter of your news reader. In serious cases you can
consider legal procedures, of course.
- Substantial abuse (SPAM, rogue cancel)
Please turn to abuse@individual.net in such cases, attaching at least
one complete article header if possible.
( http://news.individual.net/faq.html#5.5 )
If you consider legal action against the user (for whatever reason):
Please note that we are not allowed to pass or hand out any personal data without official order (e.g. court order).
I find that much, perhaps even the majority, of the spam and other abuse is posted through google.com's Usenet posting service with a freemail (usually yahoo.com) account, so my guess is they're ignoring abuse reports. Usenet abuse reports in general certainly aren't handled in the timely way they were many years ago, thus the spam and other abuse is persistent and growing.
I assume self-balancing to mean that the cycle will remain upright all on its own. The cycle in question does not do that. It requires the human rider to use his/her body to provide balance to the whole thing.
I actually read TFA, and my understanding is the motor/processor/accelerometer system DOES do front-to-back balancing just like the Segway, but you still have to do side-to-side balancing on your own.
/. inserts spaces into long strings of text. There is a space in both of the links as posted. They will not work unless you take them out. Your link worked because you used it before posting, without the space.
Click on this link instead of doing the copy-and-paste thing:
There's stuff below the Submit button (hell, there's even a Preview button to its right), some of it is Really Useful: "Allowed HTML", "URLs" and "Important Stuff".
- your insurer looks up your loyalty card records, and says "I see you've been buying fatty foods, pizza, chips, chocolate. "
Hey, I don't eat any of that, it's all for my mistress and her children...
- same insurer checks your credit card records: "I see no Gym payments here, you don't work out, do you?"
So the insurance company doesn't have access to my checking info*, they don't know that I've paid for three-month and six-month gym memberships with a check. I also pay for running shoes with a check.
Years ago, applying for health or life insurance often meant getting a doctor's examination, which would be more reliable and less error-prone than purchasing data, but such data is nowadays costs a LOT less to collect, and so has a greater cost-benefit ratio to the insurance company.
* Yet - I can imagine that, presuming scanned checks (I can view my cancelled checks online where I used to get the actual paper checks back with the monthly statement) can be cheaply OCR'ed into simple Pay-to, amount, and date (and while we're at it, memo) fields, that banks would find many buyers for this info, as well as uses for it themselves. Ot is this already being done? I find it hard to imagine my handwriting being successfully OCR'ed, as I can barely read it myself.
The whole purpose of Microsoft is to make money (see the charter of any corporation). Software just happens to be the 'vehicle' they use to make the money and take it to the bank. A significant amount of Microsoft's money goes to Bill Gates. He can do anything he wants (within the law, of course) with his money.
The whole purpose of "The Linux Community" is to make software. It's not to make money, raise money, redistribute money or to do anything with money.
By the time I press submit there will probably be 1000+ comments on this 'article.' Congrats to the author for successfully trolling slashdot.
It might be somewhat inconvenient though... if you want to use your phone line, but someone else ties it up for awhile. I wonder if they have a solution to that problem
Obviously, you use the system to access another line, that happens to be (presuming you're making a local call) in your local dialing area. Unless, of course, all these 'P2P' lines are busy (possible because many people outside the area use it to make calls into your area), then users, er, waiters get the next one available in order they requested a line.
and thought there are various levels of non-anonymity of Internet access, this adds another layer of insulation between the harrasser and victim. Regular long distance phone is cheap enough (and may well be free soon enough anyway) that I don't see much legitimate use of this thing, as opposed to other uses I can imagine and WOULD NOT WANT my land line used for, that may prompt police to ask "why are you making these phone calls?"
OKay, I thought of such grass-roots blogger manipulations as Google's miserable failure (try it) search going to President Bush that went around to everyone, yet people trust search engine results?
But then, Whatever-God-There-Is help me, I RTFA.
Most people can't tell that the results in the box labeled "sponsored results" are paid-for ADVERTISEMENTS???
Quoting TFA:
Google Inc. marks such ads as "sponsored links," Yahoo Inc. terms them "sponsor results" and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN uses "sponsored sites." Such ads are placed to the right and on top of the regular search results, in some cases highlighted in a different color.
But only 38 percent of Web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half 47 percent say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18 percent of all Web searchers knowing when a link is paid.
Who was it, P.T. Barnum who said something like "Never underestimate the stupidity of the public" (I know, he's also attributed with "There's a sucker born every minute")?
This is enough to make me lose a lot of hope in the future. I never thought people were THIS stupid. Pardon my while I invest in sponsored search engine links. When the world ends I might as well have money.
This doesn't even go into result manipulations making sites appearing more popular with sandbox submissions and such. But that's way too subtle a point for this article.
Microsoft was one of the earliest third-party developers for the Mac, which was introduced in January 1984, so it's possible that Microsoft had a prototype machine in 1983. OTOH, Apple would have raised holy hell had any pics been published before the Mac was released, and since I was following most-all things Apple back then, I would have heard about it, so I don't think it (publishing an Apple Macintosh pic in 1983) happened.
Okay, sorry, I just figured out it's probably just a typo.
While I'm posting, I might as well lament the apparent demise of model railroading (no pun intended) as a hobby, whether HO, N-Gauge, or those big Lionel things with the three-rail track. Only 25 years ago K-Mart had a bunch of cheap HO-gauge stuff - track, cars, engines, parts, and whole train sets - on the racks for sale. Now apparently only the specialty hobby stores have model trains.
What I don't really understand is why this is news? Maybe FM transmitters are cool for your average geek, but any self-respecting HAM should know how to build one, be it from a kit or own design.
It's been lamented that most who get ham licenses nowadays don't have the ability to make their own equipment, but that not why I'm posting...
And so far I assumed every HAM also knew not to do it because it is illegal (i.e.: not covered by the amateur license). What is new about this?
It's never been covered as part of an amateur license (but amateurs CAN lose their licenses for any transmitting violation whether in an amateur band or not), but AFAIK there has always been an exception for 100 milliwatt or less broadcast-band transmitters, for 'in-house' applications such as this.
As a child in the '60's I had a Heathkit "21-in-1" or whatever experimenter's set, with spring clips for every component lead and Fahnestock (SP?) clips for antenna, ground and earphone. I recall the part of the manual where you hook up the coil, caps and transistor as an oscillator/AM broadcast transmitter. Quoting the part I remember, "IT IS ILLEGAL TO CONNECT THIS CIRCUIT TO AN ANTENNA LONGER THAN TEN FEET IN LENGTH!"
As TFA says, the current FCC rule is for radiation rather than power (from an FCC link, the 100mW limit is power INTO the final RF amp(/oscillator), not the power to the antenna - ISTR many regs are like that because measuring DC power is historically much easier than measuring RF power), and reading TFA he practically admits that it breaks the 'radiated power from the antenna' spec. A rather stupid thing for an amateur licensee to do, especially when admitting it on a website, but I feel so safe and secure knowing the FCC is out to save us from boobs like this...
In defense, ferrites are used in lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of non-crappy electronics.
Also, (way too few) ferrites are used in crappy electronics.
Crappy electronics are cheap, and ferrites cost money (not a lot, but since they don't affect a device's operation, they are among the first items dropped), so they'll be dropped as the FCC becomes less and less concerned about exposed RF noise sources and more concerned about exposed breasts and F-bombs.
If the power company solution used a frequency range that was entirely contained within the multi-GHz band, for example, there would be no interference in the critical "high frequency" 3-30Mhz spectrum that has special properties of world-wide propagation due to the ionosphere.
So let's not rush to judgement on all network technologies that could be deployed on power lines...those that use microwave or UHF frequencies might not have the same interference problems.
I admit it's likely not to have the same problems. It's likely to have DIFFERENT problems. Different bands propagate different distances and in different ways (as you say about the HF band), but if the band in question is being used by another service (such as UHF TV, digital broadcast TV or cellular phone, and almost all bands ARE being used thesedays), it very likely WILL interfere with someone at some time.
The RF bands are too valuable to be polluted with the excessive RF leakage from signals sent over longwire antennas, er, uh, power lines.
When will they be able to transfer 1.21 gigabits/ second?
You mean along power lines and without substantial radiation of the frequencies used? When they run high-quality well-shielded coaxial cable along the power lines.
They just add a 'repeater' across each transformer, just as they do along the line. TFA said a repeater would have to be added along the power line every kilometer (!). I used to work with X-10 power-line stuff (IIRC 120kHz carrier, LOW data rate of about 30 bps), and the signals were capacitively coupled across transformers.
first Macintosh and upgrading it to a Fat Mac (512k) was ~$500.
That must have been Dr. Dobb's Journal, IIRC Jan. 1985. I bought a 128k Mac around when the 512k came out and 128k was about $1500. It was several months before I did my own upgrade, but afterward I did about ten others. By the time I was doing it the RAM was under $100.
... with Andy and most or all of the people on the design team, as well as all the other articles on and reactions to the Mac (What?!? Only one disk drive??? This things' gonna flop!).
There was of course hype of the Mac and put-downs of the IBM PC line, I recall a line about the Mac having three crystals (for main processor, clock, and is there a third? Maybe I can spent $2 at the thrift store to buy one and find out), and the PC color card by itself having three crystals. There's lots more, partly about the social aspects of being on the team and being "paid like baseball players", and partly technical, programming the 68000 and 'keeping the registers full'.
The '84 Byte would be a great thing to (re)read along with Hertzfeld's book, to put this in historical perspective.
"It was Twenty Years Ago Today..." (Oh, it was LAST year - my, how time flies)
Slashdot Mirror
You expect us to believe that 250 people still use Usenet?
I've seen more than 250 people arguing about Norm Abrams just on rec.woodworking.
Usenet will be there.
n y.reruns/browse_frm/thread/be9f438fbcca75b9/
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.humor.fun
I've used individual.net when my ISP's news server was in the toilet, so I have mixed feelings about their demise, but with abuse responses like this, I have to say good riddance as well. If they won't keep their server from being a conduit for Usenet abuse, then they might as well shut it down. Or perhaps it was reports like mine and abusive users like this one that helped them to decide to shut it down.
I would not have sent this report at all, knowing how slack Usenet is, except for the poster's bullet reference (even though the poster and the object of the post are on different continents). I CC'ed it to the poster's email ISP, with no response. However, the poster piped down a WHOLE LOT after sending this report, so it appears someone somewhere, whether from my report or from something else, gave him a stern warning...
There was some sort of slashdot "Lameness filter" that kicked in when I first tried to post this, so I had to remove some ASCII-character formatting around the quoted section of the FAQ, but this is essentially the email as I got it (except for my snips in brackets).
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 (18:20 -0500), Ben Bradley wrote:
>> I found the following inapropriate post on the newsgroup
>> { snip }. It is definitely abusive (one of a long string of
>> such posts from this poster), and the "have a bullet put through his
>> head" comment appears threatening.
> From:{ snip }
> Newsgroups: { snip }
> Subject: { snip } is a fucking { snip }
> Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 { snip }
> Message-ID:
> X-Trace: individual.net GR1...
Please refer to our FAQ:
5.5.
Q: Someone posted articles that do not adhere to your rules. What do
I do?
A: That depends on the type of offense:
- Violation of a newsgroup's charter
Please inform the author about the usual conventions via e-mail
first - especially if there are particular features in addition or
contrary to the usual rules in de.*. If this does not work, simply
add that author to the kill file / the filter of your news reader.
- Problems with the content of postings
Please clarify your differences with the author directly or use the
kill file / filter of your news reader. In serious cases you can
consider legal procedures, of course.
- Substantial abuse (SPAM, rogue cancel)
Please turn to abuse@individual.net in such cases, attaching at least
one complete article header if possible.
( http://news.individual.net/faq.html#5.5 )
If you consider legal action against the user (for whatever reason):
Please note that we are not allowed to pass or hand out any personal
data without official order (e.g. court order).
Thank you for your understanding.
Regards,
Bettina Fink (Newsmaster Team)
-- Frequently asked questions (FAQ): http://news.individual.net/faq.html
I find that much, perhaps even the majority, of the spam and other abuse is posted through google.com's Usenet posting service with a freemail (usually yahoo.com) account, so my guess is they're ignoring abuse reports.
Usenet abuse reports in general certainly aren't handled in the timely way they were many years ago, thus the spam and other abuse is persistent and growing.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573 920614
When critically studied, paranormal phenomena magically disappear...
And I'll bet Knuth doesn't slip nearly as bad as Longhorn.
Whichever's out first, I bet Knuth is a lot more stable.
I assume self-balancing to mean that the cycle will remain upright all on its own. The cycle in question does not do that. It requires the human rider to use his/her body to provide balance to the whole thing.
I actually read TFA, and my understanding is the motor/processor/accelerometer system DOES do front-to-back balancing just like the Segway, but you still have to do side-to-side balancing on your own.
Okay, so it should have said semi-self-balancing.
/. inserts spaces into long strings of text. There is a space in both of the links as posted. They will not work unless you take them out. Your link worked because you used it before posting, without the space.
e a75faf13d33d4e2/index.html
Click on this link instead of doing the copy-and-paste thing:
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/8b06e35ecdf9d65d
There's stuff below the Submit button (hell, there's even a Preview button to its right), some of it is Really Useful: "Allowed HTML", "URLs" and "Important Stuff".
- your insurer looks up your loyalty card records, and says "I see you've been buying fatty foods, pizza, chips, chocolate. "
Hey, I don't eat any of that, it's all for my mistress and her children...
- same insurer checks your credit card records: "I see no Gym payments here, you don't work out, do you?"
So the insurance company doesn't have access to my checking info*, they don't know that I've paid for three-month and six-month gym memberships with a check. I also pay for running shoes with a check.
Years ago, applying for health or life insurance often meant getting a doctor's examination, which would be more reliable and less error-prone than purchasing data, but such data is nowadays costs a LOT less to collect, and so has a greater cost-benefit ratio to the insurance company.
* Yet - I can imagine that, presuming scanned checks (I can view my cancelled checks online where I used to get the actual paper checks back with the monthly statement) can be cheaply OCR'ed into simple Pay-to, amount, and date (and while we're at it, memo) fields, that banks would find many buyers for this info, as well as uses for it themselves. Ot is this already being done? I find it hard to imagine my handwriting being successfully OCR'ed, as I can barely read it myself.
The whole purpose of Microsoft is to make money (see the charter of any corporation). Software just happens to be the 'vehicle' they use to make the money and take it to the bank.
A significant amount of Microsoft's money goes to Bill Gates. He can do anything he wants (within the law, of course) with his money.
The whole purpose of "The Linux Community" is to make software. It's not to make money, raise money, redistribute money or to do anything with money.
By the time I press submit there will probably be 1000+ comments on this 'article.' Congrats to the author for successfully trolling slashdot.
"Now remember son, 53 keys..."
Easy to remember, 52 cards in a deck plus a Joker.
It might be somewhat inconvenient though... if you want to use your phone line, but someone else ties it up for awhile. I wonder if they have a solution to that problem
Obviously, you use the system to access another line, that happens to be (presuming you're making a local call) in your local dialing area. Unless, of course, all these 'P2P' lines are busy (possible because many people outside the area use it to make calls into your area), then users, er, waiters get the next one available in order they requested a line.
and thought there are various levels of non-anonymity of Internet access, this adds another layer of insulation between the harrasser and victim. Regular long distance phone is cheap enough (and may well be free soon enough anyway) that I don't see much legitimate use of this thing, as opposed to other uses I can imagine and WOULD NOT WANT my land line used for, that may prompt police to ask "why are you making these phone calls?"
I interpreted that as someone who doesn't know to put commas around a phrase or clause. I think it should read:
not even half, 47 percent, say they can always tell which are paid.
Thus fewer than half say they can always tell the difference, and the actual figure was 47 percent.
curmudgeon kate (224171) wrote:
I think it would be much more interesting to know how people did in practice, rather than what they reported over the phone.
That's scary, the actual numbers could be even lower.
OKay, I thought of such grass-roots blogger manipulations as Google's miserable failure (try it) search going to President Bush that went around to everyone, yet people trust search engine results?
But then, Whatever-God-There-Is help me, I RTFA.
Most people can't tell that the results in the box labeled "sponsored results" are paid-for ADVERTISEMENTS???
Quoting TFA:
Google Inc. marks such ads as "sponsored links," Yahoo Inc. terms them "sponsor results" and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN uses "sponsored sites." Such ads are placed to the right and on top of the regular search results, in some cases highlighted in a different color.
But only 38 percent of Web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half 47 percent say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18 percent of all Web searchers knowing when a link is paid.
Who was it, P.T. Barnum who said something like "Never underestimate the stupidity of the public" (I know, he's also attributed with "There's a sucker born every minute")?
This is enough to make me lose a lot of hope in the future. I never thought people were THIS stupid. Pardon my while I invest in sponsored search engine links. When the world ends I might as well have money.
This doesn't even go into result manipulations making sites appearing more popular with sandbox submissions and such. But that's way too subtle a point for this article.
How is there a Mac in a 1983 photo spread?
I can't see the pics, but...
Microsoft was one of the earliest third-party developers for the Mac, which was introduced in January 1984, so it's possible that Microsoft had a prototype machine in 1983.
OTOH, Apple would have raised holy hell had any pics been published before the Mac was released, and since I was following most-all things Apple back then, I would have heard about it, so I don't think it (publishing an Apple Macintosh pic in 1983) happened.
When i click on the link in the article this is the message i get!
/. :)
Sorry, no nude pictures of Bill Gates here... We still love you,
[I get that too]
Not that I'm like, dying to see picture of Bill Gates in Teen Beat or anything...
OTOH, I could use a new pic for the dartboard.
Okay, sorry, I just figured out it's probably just a typo.
While I'm posting, I might as well lament the apparent demise of model railroading (no pun intended) as a hobby, whether HO, N-Gauge, or those big Lionel things with the three-rail track. Only 25 years ago K-Mart had a bunch of cheap HO-gauge stuff - track, cars, engines, parts, and whole train sets - on the racks for sale. Now apparently only the specialty hobby stores have model trains.
What I don't really understand is why this is news? Maybe FM transmitters are cool for your average geek, but any self-respecting HAM should know how to build one, be it from a kit or own design.
It's been lamented that most who get ham licenses nowadays don't have the ability to make their own equipment, but that not why I'm posting...
And so far I assumed every HAM also knew not to do it because it is illegal (i.e.: not covered by the amateur license).
What is new about this?
It's never been covered as part of an amateur license (but amateurs CAN lose their licenses for any transmitting violation whether in an amateur band or not), but AFAIK there has always been an exception for 100 milliwatt or less broadcast-band transmitters, for 'in-house' applications such as this.
As a child in the '60's I had a Heathkit "21-in-1" or whatever experimenter's set, with spring clips for every component lead and Fahnestock (SP?) clips for antenna, ground and earphone. I recall the part of the manual where you hook up the coil, caps and transistor as an oscillator/AM broadcast transmitter. Quoting the part I remember, "IT IS ILLEGAL TO CONNECT THIS CIRCUIT TO AN ANTENNA LONGER THAN TEN FEET IN LENGTH!"
As TFA says, the current FCC rule is for radiation rather than power (from an FCC link, the 100mW limit is power INTO the final RF amp(/oscillator), not the power to the antenna - ISTR many regs are like that because measuring DC power is historically much easier than measuring RF power), and reading TFA he practically admits that it breaks the 'radiated power from the antenna' spec. A rather stupid thing for an amateur licensee to do, especially when admitting it on a website, but I feel so safe and secure knowing the FCC is out to save us from boobs like this...
In defense, ferrites are used in lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of non-crappy electronics.
Also, (way too few) ferrites are used in crappy electronics.
Crappy electronics are cheap, and ferrites cost money (not a lot, but since they don't affect a device's operation, they are among the first items dropped), so they'll be dropped as the FCC becomes less and less concerned about exposed RF noise sources and more concerned about exposed breasts and F-bombs.
If the power company solution used a frequency range that was entirely contained within the multi-GHz band, for example, there would be no interference in the critical "high frequency" 3-30Mhz spectrum that has special properties of world-wide propagation due to the ionosphere.
So let's not rush to judgement on all network technologies that could be deployed on power lines...those that use microwave or UHF frequencies might not have the same interference problems.
I admit it's likely not to have the same problems. It's likely to have DIFFERENT problems. Different bands propagate different distances and in different ways (as you say about the HF band), but if the band in question is being used by another service (such as UHF TV, digital broadcast TV or cellular phone, and almost all bands ARE being used thesedays), it very likely WILL interfere with someone at some time.
The RF bands are too valuable to be polluted with the excessive RF leakage from signals sent over longwire antennas, er, uh, power lines.
When will they be able to transfer 1.21 gigabits/ second?
You mean along power lines and without substantial radiation of the frequencies used? When they run high-quality well-shielded coaxial cable along the power lines.
Don't hold your breath.
They just add a 'repeater' across each transformer, just as they do along the line. TFA said a repeater would have to be added along the power line every kilometer (!).
I used to work with X-10 power-line stuff (IIRC 120kHz carrier, LOW data rate of about 30 bps), and the signals were capacitively coupled across transformers.
first Macintosh and upgrading it to a Fat Mac (512k) was ~$500.
That must have been Dr. Dobb's Journal, IIRC Jan. 1985. I bought a 128k Mac around when the 512k came out and 128k was about $1500. It was several months before I did my own upgrade, but afterward I did about ten others. By the time I was doing it the RAM was under $100.
... with Andy and most or all of the people on the design team, as well as all the other articles on and reactions to the Mac (What?!? Only one disk drive??? This things' gonna flop!).
There was of course hype of the Mac and put-downs of the IBM PC line, I recall a line about the Mac having three crystals (for main processor, clock, and is there a third? Maybe I can spent $2 at the thrift store to buy one and find out), and the PC color card by itself having three crystals. There's lots more, partly about the social aspects of being on the team and being "paid like baseball players", and partly technical, programming the 68000 and 'keeping the registers full'.
The '84 Byte would be a great thing to (re)read along with Hertzfeld's book, to put this in historical perspective.
"It was Twenty Years Ago Today..." (Oh, it was LAST year - my, how time flies)