In this case you don't just leave the door unlocked, but prop it wide open and put up a sign saying "Come on in, help yourself".
Leaving the door unlocked would be akin to leaving your Windows box unpatched. In that case, you're still a grade-a moron, but anyone who takes advantage of it is acting in a manner that is less than ethical and bears some of the responsibility. If you share something private out through a P2P service, the fault lies entirely with you.
Anti-American bias I'll grant. But it's hard to imagine a Canadian being virulent about anything other than whether or not the stuff in the poutine was proper cheese curd or just cheese.
I take it you've never seen Canadians watch a hockey game, eh? ^^
You seem to be operating under the assumption that resources available to us are finite and irreplaceable. I believe that this assumption is quite false.
There's a huge free fusion reactor hanging right over our heads just waiting to have its energy harvested, and more raw materials orbiting it than we could use up in a thousand years. By the time we start running out of resources under our feet, it will be cost-effective to start utilizing the ones over our heads, even if we stop dying off and start breeding like rabbits again.
As for clean water and clean air, I think those are just engineering problems. There are already desalinization plants in operation throughout the world, and most of our oxygen is purified by algae rather than trees as it is. Nothing a bit of bioengineering won't fix, especially if we are going to have ample manpower and cheap energy.
That is because at a flea market, people try to sell real products to a few hundred potential customers (a few thousand if the market is particularly big), all of whom come because they are interested in seeing the available wares.
A spammer, on the other hand, tries to sell nothing (i.e. defraud) to millions of potential customers, the vast majority of whom is not only uninterested in the spammer's wares, but are openly hostile to them.
This means that a) every sucker that buys the spammer's pitch is pure profit and b) the millions being pitched to are annoyed by the spammer. Hence the national attention.
I really fail to see where you pulled the flea market analogy from. This seems pretty apples and oranges to me.
Finally, regarding your original post, you seem to be under the impression that spammers are running legitimate publicly traded businesses that are open to legal outside investment. Everything that I have read on the subject seems to indicate that that is not the case, and that even if some investment banker was deluded enough to consider pouring money into some spammer's operation, there are no legitimate means by which he could do so.
Actually, the rural proportion of the US population dropped below 50% of the total sometime around the 1920 census, IIRC, and has been dropping further ever since.
Personally, I would be perfectly happy to live and work in the society you just described, and reap both the benefits and the risks involved. Though I see no need for euthanizing those who own enough resources to pay for their own livelihood, or have family, friends, or other well-wishers who are willing to divert their own resources in order to support them.
It is my belief that the fact that someone is born sharing the same basic genetic pattern as me does not entitle him to either my good will or the fruits of my labor in and of itself. Both of these have to be earned, not assumed as basic rights.
If there's a winner, there is no longer competition and the system can no longer be considered capitalistic. The role of the government in a capitalist system is precisely to insure that the contestants keep on competing and that no one walks away with the prize.
Unfortunately, at the moment the government seems to have become the prize rather than the referee.
In Russian, the word "marodior" (marauder) is the term used to describe any kind of looter. Trust me, you do not want to get yourself shot while looking for radioactive souvenirs.
Computers are neither lazy nor pressed for time, and therefore can afford to read and evaluate every single line of every single message. Humans generally can't be bothered to be so diligent, and while they have the ability to get a 100% rate, in most cases they devote so little attention to the task of filtering email that the success rate drops.
When these factors are considered, I think it's quite possible to write software that in the long run has a higher success rate than a human who has better things to do than filter his mail all day.
The problem is that if there's enough knowledge out there for one person to discover the doomsday device, then it is only a matter of time until other people make the same discovery.
Chances are, if the results are published openly and immediately, that there will be more people aware of the threat such a weapon presents and more resources devoted to developing the countermeasures.
If the weapon is difficult to produce, deploy, and/or conceal, then the increased public awareness of its existance, distinguishing characteristics, and the threat it represents will improve security in the long run. If the weapon is trivial to secretly construct and activate, then the species is doomed no matter how much secrecy is applied due to the inevitability of independant discovery and the ease of disseminating information.
Problem is that the vast majority of the anti-nuclear people are immune to reason and prefer to ignore facts that undermine their position. Rather than arguing with highly vocal fanatics, it's much easier to slip something under their radar by changing its name.
That's just in Tokyo, it attracts giant monsters and aliens like midwestern trailer parks do tornados. Move somewhere quiet like Sendai, and all you'll have to insure yourself against will be the occasional earthquake ^^
You seem to view intellectual property as a natural right. A large number of posters to this site (myself included) choose to disagree. Intellectual property as a concept has been derived from a set of laws that have been enacted to encourage the generation of information (books, code, widgets, etc) by giving authors and inventors a financial incentive. Now the question is, would you be more likely to write another book if you knew you could live off off your previous book for the rest of your life, or if you had to keep writing new ones in order to keep supporting yourself through writing?
Moreover, where do your children come into the equation? They have done nothing to contribute to the creation of the book you've written, so why should they be entitled to keep collecting profits from it? If you so desire, you're free to put a fraction of your own profits from your book into trust funds for them, but that's about it.
Not all AMD processors are sold with the default heatsink/fan. I know I bought just the processor when I was building my current machine, and saved myself over $30 as a result. That $30 got me a tube of Arctic Silver 3, a copper shim, and a heat sink that got my processor running about 10C cooler than what I've seen posted for the default heatsink/fan. Had to pay a bit extra for the fan to go along with it, but the reduced noise was worth every penny. Assuming I didn't crack the processor during installation of the heatsink (that's what the shim is for!), why shouldn't my processor be covered by the warranty?
George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" is the best SF/Fantasy series that I've read in a very long time. It's the most realistic and the most politically intricate epic fantasy I have yet read, and most of the people to whom I've lent the books have had a similar reaction. The series presents an incredibly detailed world, and does so from the points of view of a vast number of carefully developed characters.
There are three books out already out of an expected total of seven (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords) and another one is supposed to be out in March.
Slashdot Mirror
If ten thousand years from now we are still stuck on this rock and still don't know how to dispose of nuclear waste, we'll deserve what we get.
Leaving the door unlocked would be akin to leaving your Windows box unpatched. In that case, you're still a grade-a moron, but anyone who takes advantage of it is acting in a manner that is less than ethical and bears some of the responsibility. If you share something private out through a P2P service, the fault lies entirely with you.
Anti-American bias I'll grant. But it's hard to imagine a Canadian being virulent about anything other than whether or not the stuff in the poutine was proper cheese curd or just cheese. I take it you've never seen Canadians watch a hockey game, eh? ^^
There's a huge free fusion reactor hanging right over our heads just waiting to have its energy harvested, and more raw materials orbiting it than we could use up in a thousand years. By the time we start running out of resources under our feet, it will be cost-effective to start utilizing the ones over our heads, even if we stop dying off and start breeding like rabbits again.
As for clean water and clean air, I think those are just engineering problems. There are already desalinization plants in operation throughout the world, and most of our oxygen is purified by algae rather than trees as it is. Nothing a bit of bioengineering won't fix, especially if we are going to have ample manpower and cheap energy.
A spammer, on the other hand, tries to sell nothing (i.e. defraud) to millions of potential customers, the vast majority of whom is not only uninterested in the spammer's wares, but are openly hostile to them.
This means that a) every sucker that buys the spammer's pitch is pure profit and b) the millions being pitched to are annoyed by the spammer. Hence the national attention.
I really fail to see where you pulled the flea market analogy from. This seems pretty apples and oranges to me.
Finally, regarding your original post, you seem to be under the impression that spammers are running legitimate publicly traded businesses that are open to legal outside investment. Everything that I have read on the subject seems to indicate that that is not the case, and that even if some investment banker was deluded enough to consider pouring money into some spammer's operation, there are no legitimate means by which he could do so.
Never slashdot Slashdot until Slashdot slashdots you?
Actually, the rural proportion of the US population dropped below 50% of the total sometime around the 1920 census, IIRC, and has been dropping further ever since.
But if it did happen, people would line up to see it, which was the point of the original post.
It is my belief that the fact that someone is born sharing the same basic genetic pattern as me does not entitle him to either my good will or the fruits of my labor in and of itself. Both of these have to be earned, not assumed as basic rights.
Unfortunately, at the moment the government seems to have become the prize rather than the referee.
In Russian, the word "marodior" (marauder) is the term used to describe any kind of looter. Trust me, you do not want to get yourself shot while looking for radioactive souvenirs.
The cyrillic characters read "mk R / ch" which I assume to stand for "mikro Rengen v chas" or "micro-Roengen per hour". So yeah, it's accurate.
When these factors are considered, I think it's quite possible to write software that in the long run has a higher success rate than a human who has better things to do than filter his mail all day.
Sure they do, especially in school. Ever try to buy an ounce of pot? ^^
Huh? BT resumes downloads just fine, have done so multiple times myself
Chances are, if the results are published openly and immediately, that there will be more people aware of the threat such a weapon presents and more resources devoted to developing the countermeasures.
If the weapon is difficult to produce, deploy, and/or conceal, then the increased public awareness of its existance, distinguishing characteristics, and the threat it represents will improve security in the long run. If the weapon is trivial to secretly construct and activate, then the species is doomed no matter how much secrecy is applied due to the inevitability of independant discovery and the ease of disseminating information.
And it's based on a 486 too!
Sending her to prison for 5 years sounds about right. Just have to make sure they send her to a men's prison.
Problem is that the vast majority of the anti-nuclear people are immune to reason and prefer to ignore facts that undermine their position. Rather than arguing with highly vocal fanatics, it's much easier to slip something under their radar by changing its name.
That's just in Tokyo, it attracts giant monsters and aliens like midwestern trailer parks do tornados. Move somewhere quiet like Sendai, and all you'll have to insure yourself against will be the occasional earthquake ^^
Otherwise known as the Cock Sucker
You seem to view intellectual property as a natural right. A large number of posters to this site (myself included) choose to disagree. Intellectual property as a concept has been derived from a set of laws that have been enacted to encourage the generation of information (books, code, widgets, etc) by giving authors and inventors a financial incentive. Now the question is, would you be more likely to write another book if you knew you could live off off your previous book for the rest of your life, or if you had to keep writing new ones in order to keep supporting yourself through writing? Moreover, where do your children come into the equation? They have done nothing to contribute to the creation of the book you've written, so why should they be entitled to keep collecting profits from it? If you so desire, you're free to put a fraction of your own profits from your book into trust funds for them, but that's about it.
Not all AMD processors are sold with the default heatsink/fan. I know I bought just the processor when I was building my current machine, and saved myself over $30 as a result. That $30 got me a tube of Arctic Silver 3, a copper shim, and a heat sink that got my processor running about 10C cooler than what I've seen posted for the default heatsink/fan. Had to pay a bit extra for the fan to go along with it, but the reduced noise was worth every penny. Assuming I didn't crack the processor during installation of the heatsink (that's what the shim is for!), why shouldn't my processor be covered by the warranty?
Because it's a madlib-style troll, and has nothing to do with Dr. Niven or his opinions
George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" is the best SF/Fantasy series that I've read in a very long time. It's the most realistic and the most politically intricate epic fantasy I have yet read, and most of the people to whom I've lent the books have had a similar reaction. The series presents an incredibly detailed world, and does so from the points of view of a vast number of carefully developed characters.
There are three books out already out of an expected total of seven (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords) and another one is supposed to be out in March.