After finding that a couple of my neighbors felt comfortable calling me up any old time and getting an hour or two of free help, I've just learned to feign cluelessness when asked for technical advice.
Neighbor wants to know if he needs a firewall? I say "oh yes, they're very good. You should buy a cisco PIX".
Advice on a printer? "I don't really trust those inkjet printers. See if you can find a good Centronics dot-matrix printer. Of course, you'll want to write your own driver software, and..."
By then, their eyes usually glaze over and I can safely wander away.
I suppose I could be wrong, but I really get the impression that it's gotten to be enough of an annoyance that a large enough segment of the public would prefer an authenticated, "postage-like", email system.
That's not to say that regular email will go away overnight (or that it will go away at all - there is something to be said for the "simple" in SMTP)
Both the WSJ and PC magazine have had articles implying that many end users (especially companies) are looking for good ways to move away from traditional email.
Don't get me wrong, I'm "old-school", and I read my email with Pine on a unix box. But nowadays, I don't have time to tinker like I used to. I want a useful communications system that is predictable, reliable, and secure. Traditional email meets perhaps one of those criteria.
It looks like they charged him with 9000 that were very carefully tracked and verified. If they went after him for the other gazillion, he'd just need to find one that was iffy, and contest that.
They do the same in many criminal cases - cherry-pick the offenses and only bring to court the ones with the best evidence, witnesses, etc....
I have become a bit of a skeptic on the "all-in-one" solution. I have a separate cable box, dvd player, amp, and display - it makes the pain (in the wallet, that is) a little more tolerable when adding something new (progressive-scan dvd) or (*whimper*) getting rid of something old, like the Laserdisc player I finally disconnected.
Yes indeed it is. And those of us who pay for cable service (and hence pay HBO et al to *produce* good shows) are simply delighted every time some two-bit crook gets caught doing it.
(fwiw, when I called Tivo one time to have them switch billing methods, I simply asked if I could opt-out, and the guy took care of it without any questions and without even a hint of annoyance. They always have a bit of a wait to get to the customer service people, but once you get to them they can do anything you want without having to walk them through it )
how *does* one get this "free email"? I had to buy a computer, a firewall, a monitor, and pay the phone company a chunk 'o cash to give me a connection.
I'm sure all the ub3r h4x0rs will run some freeware solution that only takes 20 hours to setup and requires about the same amount of maintenance as a typical IBM mainframe, but for the unwashed masses, a computer is a generic tool, and they want it to work well with a minimum of work; porn spams in your kid's email means the computer is fundamentally broken to many people.
time is more valuable than money. For someone who is not comfortable integrating multiple applications and resolving the conflicts they always create, it's a big expense.
Someone asking me for a buck, I don't mind jut saying no to them. Someone demanding that I give them the only thing I can't get more of - time - is a criminal.
I dunno, I like the idea. It needs some tweaking for certain, but as it stands now, email is almost useless.
Email isn't free. It costs a minimum of a few hundred bucks to get a computer, plus the cost of even a minimal dial-up account. Anti-spam software costs money. And aside from hobbyists or unemployed folks, spending 40 hours trying to duct-tape some filtering solution on every computer just isn't reasonable.
Spammers have significantly reduced the value of my computer, by taking what was once a useful resource and turning it into a major annoyance. Is it a complete solution? Probably not. Seems like an interesting place to start, though.
Paper time cards are a massive pain in the ass. they're very error-prone, which is bad for the employee (it's hard to know if you got paid for time you actually worked), and it's bad for employers (leaving aside the "punch your buddy out" issue, they're a nightmare to tally, they're often illegible due to mechanical problems, and it is very time-consuming).
It's a bit surreal to see a community of supposedly intelligent people advocating 1930's mechanical solutions over simpler, cheaper, faster, and more accurate systems.
My company has several email addresses that are fairly public (used in DNS and IP registries for example). These addresses also have to be monitored, since they can be recipients of customer requests, problem reports or other information from other carriers.
Looking at the log for today, I see... 1,076 messages - of which 24 were not spam.
Yahoo's idea is simple, and is probably a lot more acceptable to the general public than many of the alternatives (government-signed keys, etc.) which we WILL have in a matter of months if we can't get the spam thing under control.
I grouched at Yahoo pretty badly when they started including content-obscuring flash ads in their pages. This move almost earns them back all of that karma, IMO.
FM radio is also generally compressed to death. Perfect for the occasional song that gets squeezed in between tampon and used car ads.
I've had XM since a couple months after it came out. It is NOT cd quality, they seem to use variable bit rate - sounds to my layman's ear like about 48kb for talk/news, and between 128 and 160kb for music.
With the sound level inside my car on a freeway, it's just fine.. but this would be kinda neat for listening at home.
Truthfully it would be a huge boon and might make flying tolerable. I'm a reasonably frequent traveler with 20 years of business travel. If I could check in to the airport by touching a fingerprint panel, and avoiding all the lines, what's not to like?
As a free bonus, it would make the purchase of airline tickets with stolen cards a lot less attractive.
In the real world, there is no such thing as perfect security.
In the real world, when you break into someone's house, we don't scream that the door is defective; we stick you in FMITA jail with other felons.
Despite the dire warnings of an Ashcroft hiding in every closet and peeking through my pr0n collection, I feel a lot more unsafe on an interstate than I do sitting at my computer.
I'd much rather see this system installed in my next car than an extra cupholder.
A lot of us already pay an extra fee for unlisted numbers, caller ID, and so on.
I know I'm kind of an exception, but I feel strongly about privacy and the absolute right to be left alone in my home, and I'll gladly subsidize the guy who wants the freebie just to avoid being interrupted.
it's interesting to note that telemarketing has turned the sound of a telephone ringing from a sense of pleasant anticipation, to veiled annoyance.
I hate to say it, but shutting down MTA's not "known" to be secure, well-managed systems is pretty much a no-brainer in cutting down spam.
I know, it hurts a lot of people who really do know how to run sendmail... but then again, we make it pretty difficult for hobbyists to get their own automobiles certified for use on public roads. Same idea, more or less.
It's always good to see innovation, but.. I would keep my wallet in my pocket. If I have to think about the licensing, it's too complicated. Divx, anyone?
I like itunes for one reason: It doesn't make me feel like I'm being spammed to death. (just don't tell any of my geek friends that I'm using an ipod. They'll revoke my black belt in grep-fu)
It's not windows, and it's not linux, either. It's human error.
I'm using one of Ximeta's ethernet-connected 160gb drives. It also has a usb2 connection, you can only use one or the other at a time. And only one client can have R/W access at a time - the others get RO access.
Mostly, I back up each machine's personal data and config to it periodically. I'm just talking about a home lan here, this is not an office-scaled solution.
I'm still looking for a better solution. sooner or later, some smart guy will make a shoebox-sized server, with redundant drives, and basic file sharing/locking support (nfs/smb). The drives themselves are so cheap (on the order of $1 per GB now) that the hardware and management required to make RAID5 aren't economical for most personal users. I think it needs to retail for under $300 to be a real winner, and I know that's a tough barrier.
Since the start of OBDII, most cars have had this capability. It is mostly used for improving performance, mileage, and controlling emissions (by doing things like adjusting fuel mixture based on speed).
I'm all in favor of it. Obtaining data from these things and having it admitted to a court is a non-trivial process; your boss won't be downloading your car's data to find out if you were 10 minutes late coming back from lunch.
(The data is not really that detailed, either. It will record things like throttle position, whether the brake pedal was operated, temperatute and air density... but the ones I've worked with have very limited storage - as in a minute or two)
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After finding that a couple of my neighbors felt comfortable calling me up any old time and getting an hour or two of free help, I've just learned to feign cluelessness when asked for technical advice.
Neighbor wants to know if he needs a firewall? I say "oh yes, they're very good. You should buy a cisco PIX".
Advice on a printer? "I don't really trust those inkjet printers. See if you can find a good Centronics dot-matrix printer. Of course, you'll want to write your own driver software, and..."
By then, their eyes usually glaze over and I can safely wander away.
The benefits of being relatively poor and obscure is, nobody really gives a damn where I go.
errr... No.
You really might want to find out what even a low-budget criminal defense attorney charges before you decide this is a great way to save money.
... for a $1 fee, you can inflict a painful electrical shock to anyone else on the network!
I suppose I could be wrong, but I really get the impression that it's gotten to be enough of an annoyance that a large enough segment of the public would prefer an authenticated, "postage-like", email system.
That's not to say that regular email will go away overnight (or that it will go away at all - there is something to be said for the "simple" in SMTP)
Both the WSJ and PC magazine have had articles implying that many end users (especially companies) are looking for good ways to move away from traditional email.
Don't get me wrong, I'm "old-school", and I read my email with Pine on a unix box. But nowadays, I don't have time to tinker like I used to. I want a useful communications system that is predictable, reliable, and secure. Traditional email meets perhaps one of those criteria.
It looks like they charged him with 9000 that were very carefully tracked and verified. If they went after him for the other gazillion, he'd just need to find one that was iffy, and contest that.
They do the same in many criminal cases - cherry-pick the offenses and only bring to court the ones with the best evidence, witnesses, etc....
One word: Xbox. :-)
I have become a bit of a skeptic on the "all-in-one" solution. I have a separate cable box, dvd player, amp, and display - it makes the pain (in the wallet, that is) a little more tolerable when adding something new (progressive-scan dvd) or (*whimper*) getting rid of something old, like the Laserdisc player I finally disconnected.
Yes indeed it is. And those of us who pay for cable service (and hence pay HBO et al to *produce* good shows) are simply delighted every time some two-bit crook gets caught doing it.
(fwiw, when I called Tivo one time to have them switch billing methods, I simply asked if I could opt-out, and the guy took care of it without any questions and without even a hint of annoyance. They always have a bit of a wait to get to the customer service people, but once you get to them they can do anything you want without having to walk them through it )
how *does* one get this "free email"? I had to buy a computer, a firewall, a monitor, and pay the phone company a chunk 'o cash to give me a connection.
I'm sure all the ub3r h4x0rs will run some freeware solution that only takes 20 hours to setup and requires about the same amount of maintenance as a typical IBM mainframe, but for the unwashed masses, a computer is a generic tool, and they want it to work well with a minimum of work; porn spams in your kid's email means the computer is fundamentally broken to many people.
time is more valuable than money. For someone who is not comfortable integrating multiple applications and resolving the conflicts they always create, it's a big expense.
Someone asking me for a buck, I don't mind jut saying no to them. Someone demanding that I give them the only thing I can't get more of - time - is a criminal.
Well, you do have a point - people might be inclined to think twice before posting, if they know it might cost them the price of a starbucks coffee.
:-)
But there must be a down side to this somewhere.
I dunno, I like the idea. It needs some tweaking for certain, but as it stands now, email is almost useless.
Email isn't free. It costs a minimum of a few hundred bucks to get a computer, plus the cost of even a minimal dial-up account. Anti-spam software costs money. And aside from hobbyists or unemployed folks, spending 40 hours trying to duct-tape some filtering solution on every computer just isn't reasonable.
Spammers have significantly reduced the value of my computer, by taking what was once a useful resource and turning it into a major annoyance. Is it a complete solution? Probably not. Seems like an interesting place to start, though.
wouldn't this require us to... *shudder*... actually go out in sunlight???
Fiends. Next thing you know they'll be selling tanning beds for vampires.
Paper time cards are a massive pain in the ass. they're very error-prone, which is bad for the employee (it's hard to know if you got paid for time you actually worked), and it's bad for employers (leaving aside the "punch your buddy out" issue, they're a nightmare to tally, they're often illegible due to mechanical problems, and it is very time-consuming).
It's a bit surreal to see a community of supposedly intelligent people advocating 1930's mechanical solutions over simpler, cheaper, faster, and more accurate systems.
My company has several email addresses that are fairly public (used in DNS and IP registries for example). These addresses also have to be monitored, since they can be recipients of customer requests, problem reports or other information from other carriers.
Looking at the log for today, I see... 1,076 messages - of which 24 were not spam.
Yahoo's idea is simple, and is probably a lot more acceptable to the general public than many of the alternatives (government-signed keys, etc.) which we WILL have in a matter of months if we can't get the spam thing under control.
I grouched at Yahoo pretty badly when they started including content-obscuring flash ads in their pages. This move almost earns them back all of that karma, IMO.
FM radio is also generally compressed to death. Perfect for the occasional song that gets squeezed in between tampon and used car ads.
I've had XM since a couple months after it came out. It is NOT cd quality, they seem to use variable bit rate - sounds to my layman's ear like about 48kb for talk/news, and between 128 and 160kb for music.
With the sound level inside my car on a freeway, it's just fine.. but this would be kinda neat for listening at home.
Truthfully it would be a huge boon and might make flying tolerable. I'm a reasonably frequent traveler with 20 years of business travel. If I could check in to the airport by touching a fingerprint panel, and avoiding all the lines, what's not to like?
As a free bonus, it would make the purchase of airline tickets with stolen cards a lot less attractive.
Someone call Mr. Ralsky a whaaaaaaaaambulance.
In the real world, when you break into someone's house, we don't scream that the door is defective; we stick you in FMITA jail with other felons.
Despite the dire warnings of an Ashcroft hiding in every closet and peeking through my pr0n collection, I feel a lot more unsafe on an interstate than I do sitting at my computer.
I'd much rather see this system installed in my next car than an extra cupholder.
Hey, this is religion you're talking about. The end always justifies the means.
A lot of us already pay an extra fee for unlisted numbers, caller ID, and so on.
I know I'm kind of an exception, but I feel strongly about privacy and the absolute right to be left alone in my home, and I'll gladly subsidize the guy who wants the freebie just to avoid being interrupted.
it's interesting to note that telemarketing has turned the sound of a telephone ringing from a sense of pleasant anticipation, to veiled annoyance.
I hate to say it, but shutting down MTA's not "known" to be secure, well-managed systems is pretty much a no-brainer in cutting down spam.
I know, it hurts a lot of people who really do know how to run sendmail... but then again, we make it pretty difficult for hobbyists to get their own automobiles certified for use on public roads. Same idea, more or less.
It's always good to see innovation, but.. I would keep my wallet in my pocket. If I have to think about the licensing, it's too complicated. Divx, anyone?
I like itunes for one reason: It doesn't make me feel like I'm being spammed to death. (just don't tell any of my geek friends that I'm using an ipod. They'll revoke my black belt in grep-fu)
It's not windows, and it's not linux, either. It's human error.
I'm using one of Ximeta's ethernet-connected 160gb drives. It also has a usb2 connection, you can only use one or the other at a time. And only one client can have R/W access at a time - the others get RO access.
Mostly, I back up each machine's personal data and config to it periodically. I'm just talking about a home lan here, this is not an office-scaled solution.
I'm still looking for a better solution. sooner or later, some smart guy will make a shoebox-sized server, with redundant drives, and basic file sharing/locking support (nfs/smb). The drives themselves are so cheap (on the order of $1 per GB now) that the hardware and management required to make RAID5 aren't economical for most personal users. I think it needs to retail for under $300 to be a real winner, and I know that's a tough barrier.
Since the start of OBDII, most cars have had this capability. It is mostly used for improving performance, mileage, and controlling emissions (by doing things like adjusting fuel mixture based on speed).
I'm all in favor of it. Obtaining data from these things and having it admitted to a court is a non-trivial process; your boss won't be downloading your car's data to find out if you were 10 minutes late coming back from lunch.
(The data is not really that detailed, either. It will record things like throttle position, whether the brake pedal was operated, temperatute and air density... but the ones I've worked with have very limited storage - as in a minute or two)