I don't know - hard core gamers, granted, spend all the money they make working at Taco Bell on a new $450 vid card every 4 months. However, there are a lot of the rest of us who don't want to drop that kind of cash, who cant tell the difference between 100 fps and 140 fps, and who would have to look a while to tell the difference between 24 bit and 32 bit graphics. We are NOT the people who buy games at midnight the day they come out, dressed up as a damned orc (yeah, you WC III freaks, that's you) or some Jedi retard for Outcast. We even wait until the games come down from $50 to buy them. There are a lot of people like that. Check it out - NVIDIA is still selling the shit out of the Ti 4200, and even GF III's. There is a market there, and while I don't trust Trident, I will be buying a $150-$200 GeForce in a few months - to replace my, ahem, TNT2. *duck*
Re:Spammers are middlemen
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
They are, indeed. But as the article points out, there are hundreds (thousands?) of companies hiring a relative few spammers - probably less than 100 egregious offenders. It may be preferable to hit the company, kind of like you'd rather get the mob boss than the hit man, but in this case the numbers are reversed - if there were only 5 hitmen in NYC, what would you do if you were the cops?
Also, spammers often lie to companies. They say they have opt-in lists - they don't. They say they have their own servers - they don't. I think most companies hiring these guys don't want to see a bunch of foreign open relays on their mail headers, but it happens. I think a lot of companies probably turn a blind eye, but some are just clueless.
Ultimately, you can't prove what the company knew. But the actions of the spammer are clear. You have to hit him.
Also, how about getting China, HK, and Korea to pass laws making it illegal to take over a mail server (even if it does have open relays)? Then, extradict these assholes, and they serve hard time in a foreign prison.
Even if you only do it to a handful, it'll scare the crap out of them.
Isn't defeating a spam filter nearly the same thing as defeating encryption? Under DMCA (our favorite law!) that is supposed to be illegal.
If we have to live with this fucking DMCA bullshit, at least we can get some benefit from it. If it becomes illegal to intentionally defeat a spam filter, then spam filters will actually work. Note this doesn't have any first amendment issues - they can say what they want, you have absolutely no obligation to listen, and they can't make you listen.
You don't have that freedom, never have. It's illegal to spam over the phone too if you ask the company to stop. That's how it's supposed to work in most states with spam, but the SOB's don't have functional REMOVE addy's, or usually it just traps your email and puts it on a "live email" sell list.
If you're jsut a general anarchist, well, that's another issue.
Then if she expects support she can buy fully commercial software. Seriously, when you get an ENTIRE OS and bundled software for like $50 (pick your fave Linux distro), you have no right to expect hand-holding. And Red Hat can make a very real case that they are just a distributor, or at most selling manuals, a shiny box, and a CD. The software is free - they GIVE it away on their web site (for anyone with a T1, heh). So you get a warranty against CD and manual defects, you're on your own with the software.
Yay, now we're back to the damned clickwrap on GPL fun!
Gee, anyone wonder if M$ is lobbying hard for this warranty law? Kind of goes with their whole "Open Source is bad for Intellectual Property" bullshit line.
The best ever has to be boot magic. I made the mistake of just deleting that crap. I had to actually format the MBR with linux's fdisk to get rid of that crap.
Seriously, all of the pro-MS comments are from people who had their win pre-installed and heard linux is hard from a friend.
I recently had to do this. I installed Slackware linux, the HARDEST linux to install, and Win 98. It was harder to find drivers for WINDOWS, it took longer to install WINDOWS, etc. Have you ever installed windows from scratch? (That means bare HDD, not an upgrade). And no cheating using that handy install disk that came with your PC.
Supposedly crossover is ready, or so it would seem since they charge like $50 for it. Except it crashes more than windows programs do on their own. And it doesn't run much except M$Office. And it does that badly, and it crashes permanantly, and you find yourself re-installing office every week. Not fun.
Waaaaah. It's called flexibility. Learn to use new things. Otherwise, you end up being that jackassed programmer who can only program in COBOL, maybe a little FORTRAN, and PASCAL is that hot new language.
A decent art-geek needs to discover that GIMP>Photoshop, LATEX>Pagemaker. Learn to use either and you will never go back voluntarily.
You can always tell the windows fans when they talk about the lack of "support" for linux. Like there aren't millions of people willing to help, like say on linuxnewbie or whatever. I mean, a lot of them will say asshole crap like RTFM, but a lot more will actually help.
Hell, MS help is so crappy I use online help for windows problems anyway.
I ask you M$ fans - how many of you have EVER used the "support" (I use the term loosely) from MS?
And how many IT people actually need help from the morons that M$ hires for tech support?
MS may provide the tools, but they won't aid in the deployment; thus, buggy MSware will remain the standard. There's a reason people use IE and Outlook (yes, most of the world does) - it isn't because they're the best, it's because they come pre-installed. Windows security, unlike linux to an extent, depends completely on what comes pre-installed. And MS only pre-installs their own stuff. And last I checked, OEMs weren't willing to challenge MS on installing things themselves.
DotNet's acceptance remains to be seen, anyway. Passport, anyone? Hell, every Microsoft product "coming out in two years" was supposed to solve the problem - 3.11, 95, 98, 982E, Win Me (HA!), Win2K, XP - and it hasn't happened. I will remain skeptical if you don't mind.
Jurisdiction on internet is typically the user - recall mid 90's when a NY porn site was busted in TN for things that were legal in NY but illegal in TN. They should be able to extradict.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know - hard core gamers, granted, spend all the money they make working at Taco Bell on a new $450 vid card every 4 months.
However, there are a lot of the rest of us who don't want to drop that kind of cash, who cant tell the difference between 100 fps and 140 fps, and who would have to look a while to tell the difference between 24 bit and 32 bit graphics. We are NOT the people who buy games at midnight the day they come out, dressed up as a damned orc (yeah, you WC III freaks, that's you) or some Jedi retard for Outcast. We even wait until the games come down from $50 to buy them.
There are a lot of people like that. Check it out - NVIDIA is still selling the shit out of the Ti 4200, and even GF III's. There is a market there, and while I don't trust Trident, I will be buying a $150-$200 GeForce in a few months - to replace my, ahem, TNT2. *duck*
They are, indeed. But as the article points out, there are hundreds (thousands?) of companies hiring a relative few spammers - probably less than 100 egregious offenders. It may be preferable to hit the company, kind of like you'd rather get the mob boss than the hit man, but in this case the numbers are reversed - if there were only 5 hitmen in NYC, what would you do if you were the cops? Also, spammers often lie to companies. They say they have opt-in lists - they don't. They say they have their own servers - they don't. I think most companies hiring these guys don't want to see a bunch of foreign open relays on their mail headers, but it happens. I think a lot of companies probably turn a blind eye, but some are just clueless. Ultimately, you can't prove what the company knew. But the actions of the spammer are clear. You have to hit him.
Also, how about getting China, HK, and Korea to pass laws making it illegal to take over a mail server (even if it does have open relays)? Then, extradict these assholes, and they serve hard time in a foreign prison. Even if you only do it to a handful, it'll scare the crap out of them.
Isn't defeating a spam filter nearly the same thing as defeating encryption? Under DMCA (our favorite law!) that is supposed to be illegal. If we have to live with this fucking DMCA bullshit, at least we can get some benefit from it. If it becomes illegal to intentionally defeat a spam filter, then spam filters will actually work. Note this doesn't have any first amendment issues - they can say what they want, you have absolutely no obligation to listen, and they can't make you listen.
You don't have that freedom, never have. It's illegal to spam over the phone too if you ask the company to stop. That's how it's supposed to work in most states with spam, but the SOB's don't have functional REMOVE addy's, or usually it just traps your email and puts it on a "live email" sell list. If you're jsut a general anarchist, well, that's another issue.
Then if she expects support she can buy fully commercial software. Seriously, when you get an ENTIRE OS and bundled software for like $50 (pick your fave Linux distro), you have no right to expect hand-holding. And Red Hat can make a very real case that they are just a distributor, or at most selling manuals, a shiny box, and a CD. The software is free - they GIVE it away on their web site (for anyone with a T1, heh). So you get a warranty against CD and manual defects, you're on your own with the software.
Yay, now we're back to the damned clickwrap on GPL fun! Gee, anyone wonder if M$ is lobbying hard for this warranty law? Kind of goes with their whole "Open Source is bad for Intellectual Property" bullshit line.
The best ever has to be boot magic. I made the mistake of just deleting that crap. I had to actually format the MBR with linux's fdisk to get rid of that crap. Seriously, all of the pro-MS comments are from people who had their win pre-installed and heard linux is hard from a friend.
Troll. This discussion should be limited to people who have ever loaded an OS from a bare HDD.
I recently had to do this. I installed Slackware linux, the HARDEST linux to install, and Win 98. It was harder to find drivers for WINDOWS, it took longer to install WINDOWS, etc. Have you ever installed windows from scratch? (That means bare HDD, not an upgrade). And no cheating using that handy install disk that came with your PC.
Supposedly crossover is ready, or so it would seem since they charge like $50 for it. Except it crashes more than windows programs do on their own. And it doesn't run much except M$Office. And it does that badly, and it crashes permanantly, and you find yourself re-installing office every week. Not fun.
Waaaaah. It's called flexibility. Learn to use new things. Otherwise, you end up being that jackassed programmer who can only program in COBOL, maybe a little FORTRAN, and PASCAL is that hot new language. A decent art-geek needs to discover that GIMP>Photoshop, LATEX>Pagemaker. Learn to use either and you will never go back voluntarily.
You can always tell the windows fans when they talk about the lack of "support" for linux. Like there aren't millions of people willing to help, like say on linuxnewbie or whatever. I mean, a lot of them will say asshole crap like RTFM, but a lot more will actually help. Hell, MS help is so crappy I use online help for windows problems anyway. I ask you M$ fans - how many of you have EVER used the "support" (I use the term loosely) from MS? And how many IT people actually need help from the morons that M$ hires for tech support?
MS may provide the tools, but they won't aid in the deployment; thus, buggy MSware will remain the standard. There's a reason people use IE and Outlook (yes, most of the world does) - it isn't because they're the best, it's because they come pre-installed. Windows security, unlike linux to an extent, depends completely on what comes pre-installed. And MS only pre-installs their own stuff. And last I checked, OEMs weren't willing to challenge MS on installing things themselves. DotNet's acceptance remains to be seen, anyway. Passport, anyone? Hell, every Microsoft product "coming out in two years" was supposed to solve the problem - 3.11, 95, 98, 982E, Win Me (HA!), Win2K, XP - and it hasn't happened. I will remain skeptical if you don't mind.
Jurisdiction on internet is typically the user - recall mid 90's when a NY porn site was busted in TN for things that were legal in NY but illegal in TN. They should be able to extradict.