Are there many loom machine museums still around? Or telegraph equipment museums? Or phone museums? I mean, is there a place to see what phones really looked like in 1967?
I mean, maybe there are these museums, but there aren't many of them.
The truth is that whenever you're dealing with technology, people can get very blind to the past. The only importance given to technology is in what's the newest. So I think, especially in technologies that changed rapidly, there really isn't that strong of an effort to preserve the past.
I mean, heck, I don't even think there are many exhibits out there on blacksmithing, something which would probably be of interest to more people than 70s mainframes.
We use full-spectrum bulbs in our office and they're wonderful. Inside it could look like it's the brightest time of day; I look outside and it's pitch black (okay, 9 pm dark, but you get the idea).
Re:It's Gone Beyond Science Fiction into Mainstrea
on
Open Source Life?
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· Score: 1
Seeing as he didn't use the Roundup, I fail to see what advantage he would have found in using the GMO seed, so I wonder why he actually would have chosen to use it instead of his own seed.
Did they actually present proof that he willfully and knowingly kept the seed *because* it was GMO Monsanto seed? The decision, as I read it, just says he kept his own seed and replanted it the next year, which is, duh, a common practice among farmers.
I'd need to see actually proof that he was willfully and knowingly using Monsanto's seed for some nefarious purpose. Otherwise, he's just replanting his own seed. It's not his fault it got contaminated; this is the problem that is eloquently put by his speech reproduced elsewhere on his thread.
Another way to view the the Schmeiser decision as unfairly pro-Monsanto: if I perform a behavior that is legal, that has been legal for years, and someone else interferes with my behavior in such a way that it somehow becomes no longer legal, shouldn't *they* be held accountable? And since they're the ones hurt by their own contamination, they shouldn't press charges against me.
If I drive to work every day at 45 miles per hour, and some jerk throws their kid in front of my car just as I'm passing by, I'm not guilty of manslaughter. On the other hand, if he throws the kid in front of the car, say, a hundred yards ahead and I slam on the accelerator then, uh, yeah, I should be held somewhat responsible. But again, sounds like the farmer wasn't willfully infringing on Monsanto's patent.
Actually, that's a lousy analogy. But part of the problem is that there is no real good comparison between old patents and new patents, and to use the same patent law to cover both kinds of patents seems a little silly to me. Corporations will be owning your offspring next.
A few months back, there was a slashdot post about an evolved circuit board designed to perform some algorithm or possible in the best possible and most efficient way.
One problem, though. The circuit board only worked *exactly* where the board was, because it actually made part of one of the wires behave like an antenna and it relied on the specific electromagnetic field in that location to run the circuit. As a result, moving the circuit board made it no longer function.
I wonder whether the same result might occur if we turn to evolutionary design regularly. These were computer simulations, if I read the summary correctly (RTFA? I think not!), so these unforseen variables won't be present, but there still may be other factors that aren't being considered when designing these items evolutionarily (is that even a word?).
Not really. You'd need to put some sort of intermediate software in the fax machine that stored a database of bad phone numbers.
This database, of course, would be obsolete after around 15 minutes.
Usually, most faxes are more crucial than e-mails (otherwise, they'd just e-mail you the information), so a system that filtered out any false positives would be bad.
The optimal approach is to cease using a fax machine. Otherwise, there is really no technical way to filter out unwanted faxes, just as there really is no effective way to filter out spam (assuming you don't want to use a whitelist).
I suppose you could also put in intermediate OCR software that did a Bayesian filter against words in the fax before printing it out, but most faxes don't have any processing power, so you'd have to essentially get a computer.
There are already laws that govern the legal and illegal uses of telephones; there's no reason to make faxes any different.
How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders?
Hard. Consider the difficulty that most normal spam filters are now having. If you're not using whitelisting (which sucks), then you will receive spam. There's simply no content or bayesian filter that can possibly recognize all forms of spam.
Now imagine you don't have any keywords at all, just a source phone number, which probably can be spoofed.
The only identifying information for a fax is the sending phone number. And, unlike e-mails, it's hard to recognize a phone number as being a certain sender.
The Sierra club is very concerned about the environment. They are so concerned that they send literally millions of letters out to literally hundreds of households, telling the people there that they should be concerned about the environment.
They print all of their materials using soy based inks! If they're doing that, then soy-based inks must be good. They must be much better than the other inks that companies like, say, Microsoft uses on all of its letters. I bet Microsoft uses radioactive ink to print its letters. The kind that kills.
So, if soy-based ink is better, then let's go one step up: let's make that computers that print out the soy-based ink letters out of soy, too.
We all know that soy can be used to make plastic, and most of a computer is plastic. Everything else in a computer is basically metal -- and metal, as we all know, is perfectly safe in small objects (but not as safe when it is big -- at least, not if it could fall from the ceiling and hit you). The only other part of the computer is silicon, which is sand. And sand is perfectly safe, too, because it is 100% natural and has been around for millions of years.
So, if we just replace the plastic with soy, then we should be just fine.
Also, maybe we could put dust filters in computers, to capture the evil dust. Or maybe we could just put the Surgeon General's warning on the top of computers:
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING If you are pregnant or smoking, do not breath the toxic fumes coming out of this computer! Also, if you are not smoking or pregnant, they are still bad.
Did he? Did he really? I don't believe anybody has yet proven that such actions cause the band to lose sales.
I don't think sales are the only problem. If we look at some of the anger directed at spammers, it's not all just because it's crowding the inbox, or that it's using up network resources. Why don't we mind physical junk mail as much? It fills up our mailboxes, and if we didn't get it theoretically the USPS would be able to focus all of its attention on sending "important" mail.
Spam pisses people off because the people who committed that act didn't spend any resources to send it out -- it was (mostly) effortless and mindless.
The same can be said for making a piece of music available online. If you're going through the trouble and expense of putting music on a tape and sending it to specific people, a lot of care is being displayed about the music. It's also a limited distribution system. Posting it online takes no effort and costs much less. It's also less specific in its target.
I thought what really pissed Metallica was that one of their pre-release studio recordings somehow made it on Napster, and people were able to hear a song that hadn't been released to the public yet, and that hadn't even been fully mastered/mixed.
The way I see it, if you limit Internet use then people will treat it like a preminum, which is what traditional computer usage was, a preminum to be used wisely.
Computer usage used to be a premium because it was too expensive for the common individual to afford. It has now become relatively inexpensive and widespread, so much so that it is within the reach of the middle class (such as it may exist) of China.
The same used to be true for reading and writing, and general learning and education.
During the days of serfdom, owning land was a privilege, reserved only for the nobility and their lieges. Everyone else toiled their entire lives on land that they did not own, and gave a large portion of the food they grew to the nobles. Income taxes pale in comparison.
Owning a book used to be a privilege, before the printing press. Each book would have either been prohibitively expensive, or would have required far too much skill to reproduce. Now, you can get the same information bound in a conveniently sized volume for less than a day's salary (even mine:-7 ).
When you think of things as being privileges, you tend to deify them and feel that there are certain people who don't deserve to have them.
But, everyone deserves to be able to read and write. Everyone deserves to be able to own a book. And, everyone deserves to be able to use the Internet.
Not all uses of these things should or can be permitted. The US has free speech, but you can't yell "Fire!" in a movie theater and you can't say "Fuck" on Public Television. You can have a book, but you can't use it to hit people over the head with it. You can read and write, but you can't write death threats.
I know I already responded to your post but this paragraph caught my eye again and I wanted to respond to it in particular.
Seriously, the research that "kids" need to do should be in learning how to use a library. Go ask your local k12 student to find something in the library without a computer. Try not laughing as their eyes glaze over. Ask them to explain the Dewy Decimal system. Clueless little buggers have to be re-educated when they get to college on so many things it's no wonder the average 4 year degree takes five or even six years to complete now.
I had the good fortune to talk to someone whose degree was in library science. Their final assignment in college was to find a picture of a specified resource (It was a sculpture by an artist, but the name of both the sculpture and artist escapes me). The dozen or so students worked together, pored through the library resources, searched indexes and were finally able to uncover information about the artist and the sculpture, but were in the end unable to find any photo of the sculpture. This was in the 1970s or thereabouts.
A few weeks ago, he went to google, punched in the name of the artist and of the sculpture. The first three results had photos of the work.
For better or worse, the Internet has completely transformed the way that we find information. To deny people that tool is to ultimately make them impotent.
A DVD contains a limited subset of information; the Internet has a much larger set of information. So a DVD may or may not have the information you really want; the Internet almost certainly will.
I would be the first to agree that computers are overhyped and overtaught.
Allowing the government of China to control the behavior of their citizens is not going to keep the burgers and corn syrup away.
While I would agree that there are an increase of cases involving children and computers, consider for a moment the introduction of the automobile in widespread use during the 50s and 60s. No doubt a large population of children/young adults were all of a sudden being arrested for crimes related to driving cars: too fast, recklessly, etc. Many of them were illiterate with earlier modes of transportation -- they would be unable to ride a horse, for example. Nonetheless, I would say that the introduction of the car was overall a beneficial thing, and that allowing young adults to drive is also a good thing.
It sounds to me that your main issue is that individuals in the United States are increasingly likely to be jailed for performing actions online that don't harm anyone else and which are considered illicit only because they are happening through a computer. While this is a tragedy, it is ultimately unrelated to China's decision to close down the cybercafes and to the effect that this decision will have. China is not performing this function to save its citizens from being arrested by the state, anymore than the United States is allowing cybercafes to remain open so that it can have a steady supply of inmates for its prisons.
Our freedoms are not what China needs. Our freedoms aren't freedoms, they're "privledges", and we pay dearly for them.
Our freedoms *are* freedoms, not privileges. We have the right in the US to protest, and if we feel our freedoms are being limited it is our responsibility to voice our opposition to that limitation. As Utah Philips once said:
The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
The problem in the United States is not that our freedoms are limited; the problem has become that people have put too much emphasis on their "pursuit of happiness" and not enough on their liberty.
Online activity is monitored and every ISP in the country is ready and willing to lift their skirts for every court order rubbed lovingly against their cheek.
There are plenty of good reasons for using the Internet. There are plenty of bad reasons for using it.
The cafe's aren't being closed because of how the Internet is used -- at least, not along the traditional "bad use/good use" lines. They're being closed to keep kids from being able to access the Internet period, plain and simple.
Most kids aren't hackers. Most kids just want to have the freedom to communicate with other people around the world, and do research. That would be good Internet use.
I don't see how having problems with traffic and parking is an Irish stereotype. I have the same problem in the town where I live, and we're populated with elite intellectual types.
Sounds to me like the parent poster knows something about Dublin, so he either lives there or stayed there long enough to learn about its traffic patterns.
Also, I'd say hanging around in a pub/bar is average behavior for most guys around the world. Just because there's a huge Irish drinking stereotype doesn't mean that most people around the world aren't lushes too.
I'm an American, so I'm not sure what busking is.
Get a sense of humor.
Re:The flagship...
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 2, Funny
What about playing Neverwinter Nights? That counts, right?
Our company provides e-mail and webhosting, but not internet service. A lot of our clients use ISPs that block port 25, and the solution is we route the mail through port 26. I frankly don't see the port blocking as being a real solution, since there's nothing to prevent someone from using a port other than 25.
In an ideal world, our clients wouldn't have to call us and have us guide them through changing the default SMTP port, because their port 25 wouldn't be blocked. They have a legitimate use of port 25, since they're sending out messages through our mail server.
The solution is to re-educate our activists to work with industry nto against it, because practically the demand will remain weather the stuff comes from Brazil or Idaho, minus well ensure it's harvested as cleanly as possible.
The problem has always been that you can't easily change how people as a whole behave, but you can put in laws to limit corporations. Really, the solution is to reduce consumption. I mean, Americans eat too much, right? And we eat a lot of meat -- a lot more meat than we need, and often we eat it without really "enjoying" it -- it's just a cheap easy meal. But it costs a lot of resources. We also don't need all the products we buy, and the clothes that we wear. The amount of oil, water, and other resources that each American uses (directly and indirectly) each year is staggering. I remember reading somewhere that if everyone on the planet used resources at the level that the US does, we would need three Earths to supply them. If this is the case, then obviously the ideal solution is not to move the supplier of our overconsumption overseas, but rather to lower our consumption.
But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I think this actually explains the Bush-Cheney environmental platform: Armageddon is just around the corner anyway, so the best thing to do is just take out as much of the resources as possible before everything goes to hell.
Actually, that's part of the problem. Legally, corporations *are* treated just like a person in many respects, meaning that they are given the same rights and priveleges that a human being has. In Unequal Protection, Thom Hartmann argues that this legal standing in fact has no real legal basis, and that it has had a negative effect overall:
Slashdot Mirror
Are there many loom machine museums still around? Or telegraph equipment museums? Or phone museums? I mean, is there a place to see what phones really looked like in 1967?
I mean, maybe there are these museums, but there aren't many of them.
The truth is that whenever you're dealing with technology, people can get very blind to the past. The only importance given to technology is in what's the newest. So I think, especially in technologies that changed rapidly, there really isn't that strong of an effort to preserve the past.
I mean, heck, I don't even think there are many exhibits out there on blacksmithing, something which would probably be of interest to more people than 70s mainframes.
It is an unfortunate photo (it's a pretty gross photo actually, surprised it was the only one they could get their hands on).
For those of you who are afraid to follow the link, in the photo the kid has very well defined leg muscles for a 6 day old baby.
I myself make, uh, plenty of myostatin. In fact, that's my superpower -- making tons of myostatin to keep my body almost superhumanly unmuscled.
We use full-spectrum bulbs in our office and they're wonderful. Inside it could look like it's the brightest time of day; I look outside and it's pitch black (okay, 9 pm dark, but you get the idea).
Seeing as he didn't use the Roundup, I fail to see what advantage he would have found in using the GMO seed, so I wonder why he actually would have chosen to use it instead of his own seed.
Did they actually present proof that he willfully and knowingly kept the seed *because* it was GMO Monsanto seed? The decision, as I read it, just says he kept his own seed and replanted it the next year, which is, duh, a common practice among farmers.
I'd need to see actually proof that he was willfully and knowingly using Monsanto's seed for some nefarious purpose. Otherwise, he's just replanting his own seed. It's not his fault it got contaminated; this is the problem that is eloquently put by his speech reproduced elsewhere on his thread.
Another way to view the the Schmeiser decision as unfairly pro-Monsanto: if I perform a behavior that is legal, that has been legal for years, and someone else interferes with my behavior in such a way that it somehow becomes no longer legal, shouldn't *they* be held accountable? And since they're the ones hurt by their own contamination, they shouldn't press charges against me.
If I drive to work every day at 45 miles per hour, and some jerk throws their kid in front of my car just as I'm passing by, I'm not guilty of manslaughter. On the other hand, if he throws the kid in front of the car, say, a hundred yards ahead and I slam on the accelerator then, uh, yeah, I should be held somewhat responsible. But again, sounds like the farmer wasn't willfully infringing on Monsanto's patent.
Actually, that's a lousy analogy. But part of the problem is that there is no real good comparison between old patents and new patents, and to use the same patent law to cover both kinds of patents seems a little silly to me. Corporations will be owning your offspring next.
A few months back, there was a slashdot post about an evolved circuit board designed to perform some algorithm or possible in the best possible and most efficient way.
One problem, though. The circuit board only worked *exactly* where the board was, because it actually made part of one of the wires behave like an antenna and it relied on the specific electromagnetic field in that location to run the circuit. As a result, moving the circuit board made it no longer function.
I wonder whether the same result might occur if we turn to evolutionary design regularly. These were computer simulations, if I read the summary correctly (RTFA? I think not!), so these unforseen variables won't be present, but there still may be other factors that aren't being considered when designing these items evolutionarily (is that even a word?).
Does anyone know of a plugin like this for the Mac? Or is that just impossible?
Could 30, 40, 50% or more junk faxes be caught?
Not really. You'd need to put some sort of intermediate software in the fax machine that stored a database of bad phone numbers.
This database, of course, would be obsolete after around 15 minutes.
Usually, most faxes are more crucial than e-mails (otherwise, they'd just e-mail you the information), so a system that filtered out any false positives would be bad.
The optimal approach is to cease using a fax machine. Otherwise, there is really no technical way to filter out unwanted faxes, just as there really is no effective way to filter out spam (assuming you don't want to use a whitelist).
I suppose you could also put in intermediate OCR software that did a Bayesian filter against words in the fax before printing it out, but most faxes don't have any processing power, so you'd have to essentially get a computer.
There are already laws that govern the legal and illegal uses of telephones; there's no reason to make faxes any different.
How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders?
Hard. Consider the difficulty that most normal spam filters are now having. If you're not using whitelisting (which sucks), then you will receive spam. There's simply no content or bayesian filter that can possibly recognize all forms of spam.
Now imagine you don't have any keywords at all, just a source phone number, which probably can be spoofed.
The only identifying information for a fax is the sending phone number. And, unlike e-mails, it's hard to recognize a phone number as being a certain sender.
Can we make computers out of soy.
Here is my reasoning.
The Sierra club is very concerned about the environment. They are so concerned that they send literally millions of letters out to literally hundreds of households, telling the people there that they should be concerned about the environment.
They print all of their materials using soy based inks ! If they're doing that, then soy-based inks must be good. They must be much better than the other inks that companies like, say, Microsoft uses on all of its letters. I bet Microsoft uses radioactive ink to print its letters. The kind that kills.
So, if soy-based ink is better, then let's go one step up: let's make that computers that print out the soy-based ink letters out of soy, too.
We all know that soy can be used to make plastic, and most of a computer is plastic. Everything else in a computer is basically metal -- and metal, as we all know, is perfectly safe in small objects (but not as safe when it is big -- at least, not if it could fall from the ceiling and hit you). The only other part of the computer is silicon, which is sand. And sand is perfectly safe, too, because it is 100% natural and has been around for millions of years.
So, if we just replace the plastic with soy, then we should be just fine.
Also, maybe we could put dust filters in computers, to capture the evil dust. Or maybe we could just put the Surgeon General's warning on the top of computers:
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING
If you are pregnant or smoking, do not breath the toxic fumes coming out of this computer! Also, if you are not smoking or pregnant, they are still bad.
The opposition isn't to bootleg copies of live performances. It's simply copying tracks off of CDs that made them pissed, right?
Or were they opposed to live recording being distributed through Napster as well?
>I do believe given the context, he had a point.
Did he? Did he really? I don't believe anybody has yet proven that such actions cause the band to lose sales.
I don't think sales are the only problem. If we look at some of the anger directed at spammers, it's not all just because it's crowding the inbox, or that it's using up network resources. Why don't we mind physical junk mail as much? It fills up our mailboxes, and if we didn't get it theoretically the USPS would be able to focus all of its attention on sending "important" mail.
Spam pisses people off because the people who committed that act didn't spend any resources to send it out -- it was (mostly) effortless and mindless.
The same can be said for making a piece of music available online. If you're going through the trouble and expense of putting music on a tape and sending it to specific people, a lot of care is being displayed about the music. It's also a limited distribution system. Posting it online takes no effort and costs much less. It's also less specific in its target.
I thought what really pissed Metallica was that one of their pre-release studio recordings somehow made it on Napster, and people were able to hear a song that hadn't been released to the public yet, and that hadn't even been fully mastered/mixed.
What happens is during your life, you get an infection somewhere. Most likely it is in your gums.
Dentists were overjoyed when they learned about this, by the way.
Finally, a way to get people to floss:
Floss, or you die.
Which is why it's always a good idea to actually go ahead and spell out what a link is pointing to.
Now that the pages are slashdotted, anyone who hasn't read the page yet want to make a guess about what "something to do with this" is actually about?
I mean, I applaud the unique way of setting up the links, I really do. I just now have absolutely no idea why Microsoft may or may not have paid up.
I have not been able to recreate this exploit in OS X 10.2.8.
Apparently, only versions 10.3.x are affected.
The world is just, then.
The way I see it, if you limit Internet use then people will treat it like a preminum, which is what traditional computer usage was, a preminum to be used wisely.
:-7 ).
Computer usage used to be a premium because it was too expensive for the common individual to afford. It has now become relatively inexpensive and widespread, so much so that it is within the reach of the middle class (such as it may exist) of China.
The same used to be true for reading and writing, and general learning and education.
During the days of serfdom, owning land was a privilege, reserved only for the nobility and their lieges. Everyone else toiled their entire lives on land that they did not own, and gave a large portion of the food they grew to the nobles. Income taxes pale in comparison.
Owning a book used to be a privilege, before the printing press. Each book would have either been prohibitively expensive, or would have required far too much skill to reproduce. Now, you can get the same information bound in a conveniently sized volume for less than a day's salary (even mine
When you think of things as being privileges, you tend to deify them and feel that there are certain people who don't deserve to have them.
But, everyone deserves to be able to read and write. Everyone deserves to be able to own a book. And, everyone deserves to be able to use the Internet.
Not all uses of these things should or can be permitted. The US has free speech, but you can't yell "Fire!" in a movie theater and you can't say "Fuck" on Public Television. You can have a book, but you can't use it to hit people over the head with it. You can read and write, but you can't write death threats.
I know I already responded to your post but this paragraph caught my eye again and I wanted to respond to it in particular.
I had the good fortune to talk to someone whose degree was in library science. Their final assignment in college was to find a picture of a specified resource (It was a sculpture by an artist, but the name of both the sculpture and artist escapes me). The dozen or so students worked together, pored through the library resources, searched indexes and were finally able to uncover information about the artist and the sculpture, but were in the end unable to find any photo of the sculpture. This was in the 1970s or thereabouts.
A few weeks ago, he went to google, punched in the name of the artist and of the sculpture. The first three results had photos of the work.
For better or worse, the Internet has completely transformed the way that we find information. To deny people that tool is to ultimately make them impotent.
A DVD contains a limited subset of information; the Internet has a much larger set of information. So a DVD may or may not have the information you really want; the Internet almost certainly will.
I would be the first to agree that computers are overhyped and overtaught.
Allowing the government of China to control the behavior of their citizens is not going to keep the burgers and corn syrup away.
While I would agree that there are an increase of cases involving children and computers, consider for a moment the introduction of the automobile in widespread use during the 50s and 60s. No doubt a large population of children/young adults were all of a sudden being arrested for crimes related to driving cars: too fast, recklessly, etc. Many of them were illiterate with earlier modes of transportation -- they would be unable to ride a horse, for example. Nonetheless, I would say that the introduction of the car was overall a beneficial thing, and that allowing young adults to drive is also a good thing.
It sounds to me that your main issue is that individuals in the United States are increasingly likely to be jailed for performing actions online that don't harm anyone else and which are considered illicit only because they are happening through a computer. While this is a tragedy, it is ultimately unrelated to China's decision to close down the cybercafes and to the effect that this decision will have. China is not performing this function to save its citizens from being arrested by the state, anymore than the United States is allowing cybercafes to remain open so that it can have a steady supply of inmates for its prisons.
Our freedoms are not what China needs. Our freedoms aren't freedoms, they're "privledges", and we pay dearly for them.
Our freedoms *are* freedoms, not privileges. We have the right in the US to protest, and if we feel our freedoms are being limited it is our responsibility to voice our opposition to that limitation. As Utah Philips once said:
The problem in the United States is not that our freedoms are limited; the problem has become that people have put too much emphasis on their "pursuit of happiness" and not enough on their liberty.
Online activity is monitored and every ISP in the country is ready and willing to lift their skirts for every court order rubbed lovingly against their cheek.
I know that ISPs keep trac
Yeah, I know, IHBT.
Still:
There are plenty of good reasons for using the Internet. There are plenty of bad reasons for using it.
The cafe's aren't being closed because of how the Internet is used -- at least, not along the traditional "bad use/good use" lines. They're being closed to keep kids from being able to access the Internet period, plain and simple.
Most kids aren't hackers. Most kids just want to have the freedom to communicate with other people around the world, and do research. That would be good Internet use.
Sheesh. I'm glad some people got it. Attention mods: time to get your humor chips upgraded.
I don't see how having problems with traffic and parking is an Irish stereotype. I have the same problem in the town where I live, and we're populated with elite intellectual types.
Sounds to me like the parent poster knows something about Dublin, so he either lives there or stayed there long enough to learn about its traffic patterns.
Also, I'd say hanging around in a pub/bar is average behavior for most guys around the world. Just because there's a huge Irish drinking stereotype doesn't mean that most people around the world aren't lushes too.
I'm an American, so I'm not sure what busking is.
Get a sense of humor.
What about playing Neverwinter Nights? That counts, right?
Our company provides e-mail and webhosting, but not internet service. A lot of our clients use ISPs that block port 25, and the solution is we route the mail through port 26. I frankly don't see the port blocking as being a real solution, since there's nothing to prevent someone from using a port other than 25.
In an ideal world, our clients wouldn't have to call us and have us guide them through changing the default SMTP port, because their port 25 wouldn't be blocked. They have a legitimate use of port 25, since they're sending out messages through our mail server.
The solution is to re-educate our activists to work with industry nto against it, because practically the demand will remain weather the stuff comes from Brazil or Idaho, minus well ensure it's harvested as cleanly as possible.
The problem has always been that you can't easily change how people as a whole behave, but you can put in laws to limit corporations. Really, the solution is to reduce consumption. I mean, Americans eat too much, right? And we eat a lot of meat -- a lot more meat than we need, and often we eat it without really "enjoying" it -- it's just a cheap easy meal. But it costs a lot of resources. We also don't need all the products we buy, and the clothes that we wear. The amount of oil, water, and other resources that each American uses (directly and indirectly) each year is staggering. I remember reading somewhere that if everyone on the planet used resources at the level that the US does, we would need three Earths to supply them. If this is the case, then obviously the ideal solution is not to move the supplier of our overconsumption overseas, but rather to lower our consumption.
But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I think this actually explains the Bush-Cheney environmental platform: Armageddon is just around the corner anyway, so the best thing to do is just take out as much of the resources as possible before everything goes to hell.
it's not a person.
Actually, that's part of the problem. Legally, corporations *are* treated just like a person in many respects, meaning that they are given the same rights and priveleges that a human being has. In Unequal Protection , Thom Hartmann argues that this legal standing in fact has no real legal basis, and that it has had a negative effect overall: