"Thinking like an economist, he's obviously hoping to make mass emailing unprofitable"
That's exactly wrong. He's obviously hoping to increase state income with email tax revenue. It would actually be quite profitable, because since nobody could do anything to stop the spam anyway, they wouldn't spend any of the collected tax on trying. It would just be free money from the legit email users.
I'm sorry if I just don't get it, but I did not really see any mention of anything that actually refuted any of the DOJ claims.
All I see is a bunch of clarification of the points that would not have been appropriate to mention at a press conference (the likes of which the soundbytes were taken from).
I also notice that none of the new powers can simply be used willy-nilly. They all require the permission of a judge (who may well interpret the warrant request as, well, unwarranted).
But as far as listening to some music or news, just remember that less than half of the US is populated by Internet users. And it will be a VERY long time before the Internet enjoys the coverage area, simplicity, reliability, and cost of equipment factors of radio. Remember, lots of areas in this country still have pulse phone equipment.
Who cares how many plants it takes to make a gallon of gas? It's not like the process was decided in a board meeting.
What assumptions are we supposed to make here? Since the process is inefficient, we shouldnt use the oil? It's already there for chrissakes!
Why not instead examine the amount of gasoline we get from one barrel of crude oil? After all, humans actually instigate that process. The current yield of petrol from one drum of crude is slightly below 50%. That's pretty good I think. So, what happens to the other half? Is it wasted? burned up? Dumped in the ocean? No.
Most of the rest of it paves your roads, waterproofs your roofs, bags your garbage, and is formed into uncountable different plastic products, lubricants, rubbers, esthers, ethers, etc. There is actually only a very tiny amount of waste from the refineries.
But what the hey, I'll jump on the bandwagon. The next time I pump 1.2 kilotons of dead plants into my Ford, I'll try to remember to curse planet earth for her crappy efficiency.
Fine, I'll stop using "english definitions" to knock this idea down. I'll use pieces from the article instead
1. "the microwave background ripples should have an unlimited range of sizes"
2. But, "On the largest scales, WMAP has shown that the ripples almost disappear"
3. "it could mean that space itself is not big enough to support the broadest ripples"
4. and "any fluctuations in space cannot be larger than space itself,"
5. however, "If you exit the football through one pentagon, you re-enter the same region through the opposite face"
6. which makes me wonder... What keeps large ripples from doing the same thing?
If I have a guitar string, and I attach it to earth, and I fly my spaceship straight across the universe until I come back to the solar system (unreeling string the whole way), then I just do a flyby, still reeling out my string, until I come back to the solar system a second time, then I attach the other end of my string to mars and give that sucker a cosmic twang, couldn't the wavelength of my string be twice the size of the universe?
So, using point 5, I can contradict point 4, which contradicts 3, which does not allow an explanation of point 2 and validates point 1, which is unsupported by 2.
Inherent problem with this argument... explaining that the universe folds in on itself in such a way that it is "inescapable", is at the same time saying that there is something bigger than the universe... that there is an "outside" place, which then must also be part of "the universe" (maintaining its infinity).
In other words, if the "universe" is an encapsulated thing, it must be encapsulated with respect to some bigger picture.
-> MAIL FROM: <sender@somedomain.com>
<- 250 2.1.0 Sender ok
-> RCPT TO: <recipient@otherdomain.com>
<- 451 4.7.1 Please try again later
So, the suggestion is to hold the session open at "rcpt to:" while searching a database for the triplet? And then, depending on what is found, continuing the session or killing it? For each email? How much impact will that delay have on the capabilities of a busy server?
Have you ever played the shell game? That's the whole point. To make people think that they can "reason" the odds in their favor. The pretty blinky-lights are simply a disception and have little or nothing to do with the paid out percentage. Suckers will believe that there is some level of skill in pulling a lever, or that their decisions make a difference in how the machine calculates it's odds.
If you simply look at the payoff percentages following any perscribed line of actions, or random actions, you will be able to determine if the machine is cheating or not. If instead you try to analize the machine by using the info on the display as valid input, you are wasting your time. It isn't valid input. It's bait.
From the article:"And in almost all cases, no matter what you chose, the result would be the same.",
Almost? Hmmmmm.
Anyway, what does it matter? Everyone knows that those machines have always given out less than they take in. What difference does it make what method they use? My dad has an old British slot machine that is 100% mechanical. Even it has dials inside that allow you to increase or decrease payouts to players. Anyone who buys a slot machine intends to make money with it. If it was a gamble to own the machine, nobody would. Vegas slots are all wired together to collectively "rip you off". Is this really a news flash to anyone?
If you can't afford to lose the money, you shouldn't put it in the machine.
Buying food at the grocery store and preparing it is vastly cheaper than eating out. A fast food tax is like a luxury tax. People don't "need" fast food. In fact, it hasn't even been around all that long.
I buy a wide variety of food at the grocery store, including meat, and I can eat for a wole month on about $160. In that month I might additionally eat two fast food meals.
A tax on the poor? Get real. The only time my home cooked meals approach the price of fast food is when I eat steaks and seafood. If you want to make this fast food tax idea into a discrimination issue, call it a tax on people who can't cook.
I think these ideas are on the right track in that they acknowledge the largest fault with the current email system to be lack of control over accounts by the owner of the accounts. However, the hazy ideas that are hinted at as solutions are not the right idea. They are overburdensome to implement, and I can still think of plenty of ways around them.
As for getting people to begin moving to a new system, it will need to be more than just certificate additions and user controlled filters. It will need to be something that end users can immediately understand as "this is better and easier". With the given proposals, people will have no incentive to change. that attitude will be, "Sure, I'm told the new thingy is better, but I'd rather just deal with the spam than have to deal with something new that I dont understand." End users mostly have the attitude of, "If i do nothing, I can still get my emails. If I change to something new, I might break something and be without my daily communications".
Absolutely. The problem with the Occams Razor idea is that it presumes an equal level of knowledge by all parties. It does not address the differences of perspective between people who are knowledgable about a topic and those that are not.
This email case is a perfect example. Christopher Caldwell does not know anything about email except that he can use it to communicate with people. The actual process of what goes on behind the scenes has been abstracted to a simple series of clicks and windows with a lot of verbiage that parallels it to a postal mail system. He has a simplistic view to start with, so applying the principle of "The simplest model is the best" results in a horrific complicated mess when it goes to the implementation stage.
Reading it now, I should have tried to explain my point more thoroughly. The reason that the simplest way is almost never the best way is that the simplest way most often comes from people who do not see the whole picture.
Every problem that we have that revolves around a man-made technology is fixable with a man made technology. We don't need taxes, we need to fix the core of the email system.
"The simplest way to regulate spam is through a tax."
Perhaps this is true, but the simplest way is almost NEVER the best way. How are you going to define the differences between email and every other electronic message passing? Will the tax suddenly apply to IM's? then web pages? then internet phone calls? What happens 20 years from now when the technology is different? Will the tax stop? Hell no! Most likeley there will be a new tax code buried in every little packet so that the government can get even more money for nothing.
Why should the burden of the "fix" for this problem be shouldered mostly by the people that it is trying to "protect"? I don't want to pay my government for the privelage of doing something that was previously free. That does not solve anything! I want the people sending spam to pay ME!
This tax might sound innocent on its surface, but it only takes one little thing like this to make it seem acceptable to throw a tax on every digital transaction.
To all you dopes that think this is a good idea, think about the big picture. This point in time is not static. Technology is changing constantly. Spam will die when the time is right. For now we can just deal with it with the methods available to us. Do not let the government see the Internet as the latest frontier where they can profit by "saving us from ourselves".
I never say "Guh-new" because it is a waste of time. I usually end up trying to explain what it is to people. As the name for a "software movement" it is a stupid name. The name itself is unfriendly simply in its construction.
It is a:
one vowel
two syllable
three letter word which is an
unintuitively pronouncable
recursive acronym.
Very clever. Very purpose defeating. I love the idea behind it, but I despise "Guh-new". They guh-need to guh-et a guh-nother guh-name.
Slashdot Mirror
"Thinking like an economist, he's obviously hoping to make mass emailing unprofitable"
That's exactly wrong. He's obviously hoping to increase state income with email tax revenue. It would actually be quite profitable, because since nobody could do anything to stop the spam anyway, they wouldn't spend any of the collected tax on trying. It would just be free money from the legit email users.
ACM Queue... "Tomorrow's computing today"
so tomorrow, I get to look forward to more underpowered web servers?
This "movie" (The last third of this "trilogy") is the hollywood equivalent of the last third of Metal Gear Solid 2.
It's like the whole cast is suddenly trying to play the role of Confucious, but they all manage to avoid saying anything enlightening.
"Which, in my experience has proven inferior to every other format available."
You have never experienced RealAudio? You lucky lucky man you.
We need a best posts ever top 10, and this should be the top one.
Ingenious.
My stomach is hurting from laughter.
"All of todays encryption becomes irrelevant"
and all of tomorrows encryption becomes relevant.
"The universal gate would be the basis for quantum computing. "
What would a universal gate do to the theory of a closed universe?
I'm sorry if I just don't get it, but I did not really see any mention of anything that actually refuted any of the DOJ claims.
All I see is a bunch of clarification of the points that would not have been appropriate to mention at a press conference (the likes of which the soundbytes were taken from).
I also notice that none of the new powers can simply be used willy-nilly. They all require the permission of a judge (who may well interpret the warrant request as, well, unwarranted).
But as far as listening to some music or news, just remember that less than half of the US is populated by Internet users. And it will be a VERY long time before the Internet enjoys the coverage area, simplicity, reliability, and cost of equipment factors of radio. Remember, lots of areas in this country still have pulse phone equipment.
Who cares how many plants it takes to make a gallon of gas? It's not like the process was decided in a board meeting.
What assumptions are we supposed to make here? Since the process is inefficient, we shouldnt use the oil? It's already there for chrissakes!
Why not instead examine the amount of gasoline we get from one barrel of crude oil? After all, humans actually instigate that process. The current yield of petrol from one drum of crude is slightly below 50%. That's pretty good I think. So, what happens to the other half? Is it wasted? burned up? Dumped in the ocean? No. Most of the rest of it paves your roads, waterproofs your roofs, bags your garbage, and is formed into uncountable different plastic products, lubricants, rubbers, esthers, ethers, etc. There is actually only a very tiny amount of waste from the refineries.
But what the hey, I'll jump on the bandwagon. The next time I pump 1.2 kilotons of dead plants into my Ford, I'll try to remember to curse planet earth for her crappy efficiency.
please.
They're essentially talking about standing waves, which can't have a periodicity greater than the size of the universe
Why not?
Fine, I'll stop using "english definitions" to knock this idea down. I'll use pieces from the article instead
1. "the microwave background ripples should have an unlimited range of sizes"
2. But, "On the largest scales, WMAP has shown that the ripples almost disappear"
3. "it could mean that space itself is not big enough to support the broadest ripples"
4. and "any fluctuations in space cannot be larger than space itself,"
5. however, "If you exit the football through one pentagon, you re-enter the same region through the opposite face"
6. which makes me wonder... What keeps large ripples from doing the same thing?
If I have a guitar string, and I attach it to earth, and I fly my spaceship straight across the universe until I come back to the solar system (unreeling string the whole way), then I just do a flyby, still reeling out my string, until I come back to the solar system a second time, then I attach the other end of my string to mars and give that sucker a cosmic twang, couldn't the wavelength of my string be twice the size of the universe?
So, using point 5, I can contradict point 4, which contradicts 3, which does not allow an explanation of point 2 and validates point 1, which is unsupported by 2.
Inherent problem with this argument... explaining that the universe folds in on itself in such a way that it is "inescapable", is at the same time saying that there is something bigger than the universe... that there is an "outside" place, which then must also be part of "the universe" (maintaining its infinity).
In other words, if the "universe" is an encapsulated thing, it must be encapsulated with respect to some bigger picture.
Agreed. It would be like wanting to teach an art class in a machine shop full of programmable lathes.
OOooh... that might be cool actually.
-> MAIL FROM: <sender@somedomain.com>
<- 250 2.1.0 Sender ok
-> RCPT TO: <recipient@otherdomain.com>
<- 451 4.7.1 Please try again later
So, the suggestion is to hold the session open at "rcpt to:" while searching a database for the triplet? And then, depending on what is found, continuing the session or killing it? For each email? How much impact will that delay have on the capabilities of a busy server?
His perception will be skewed correspondingly
Have you ever played the shell game? That's the whole point. To make people think that they can "reason" the odds in their favor. The pretty blinky-lights are simply a disception and have little or nothing to do with the paid out percentage. Suckers will believe that there is some level of skill in pulling a lever, or that their decisions make a difference in how the machine calculates it's odds.
If you simply look at the payoff percentages following any perscribed line of actions, or random actions, you will be able to determine if the machine is cheating or not. If instead you try to analize the machine by using the info on the display as valid input, you are wasting your time. It isn't valid input. It's bait.
From the article: "And in almost all cases, no matter what you chose, the result would be the same.",
Almost? Hmmmmm.
Anyway, what does it matter? Everyone knows that those machines have always given out less than they take in. What difference does it make what method they use? My dad has an old British slot machine that is 100% mechanical. Even it has dials inside that allow you to increase or decrease payouts to players. Anyone who buys a slot machine intends to make money with it. If it was a gamble to own the machine, nobody would. Vegas slots are all wired together to collectively "rip you off". Is this really a news flash to anyone?
If you can't afford to lose the money, you shouldn't put it in the machine.
...instead of making a museum around it. You are guaranteed to have more fun, and you might get a fruit smoothie out of it like The Cheat did.
(flash required)
Buying food at the grocery store and preparing it is vastly cheaper than eating out. A fast food tax is like a luxury tax. People don't "need" fast food. In fact, it hasn't even been around all that long.
I buy a wide variety of food at the grocery store, including meat, and I can eat for a wole month on about $160. In that month I might additionally eat two fast food meals.
A tax on the poor? Get real. The only time my home cooked meals approach the price of fast food is when I eat steaks and seafood. If you want to make this fast food tax idea into a discrimination issue, call it a tax on people who can't cook.
I think these ideas are on the right track in that they acknowledge the largest fault with the current email system to be lack of control over accounts by the owner of the accounts. However, the hazy ideas that are hinted at as solutions are not the right idea. They are overburdensome to implement, and I can still think of plenty of ways around them.
As for getting people to begin moving to a new system, it will need to be more than just certificate additions and user controlled filters. It will need to be something that end users can immediately understand as "this is better and easier". With the given proposals, people will have no incentive to change. that attitude will be, "Sure, I'm told the new thingy is better, but I'd rather just deal with the spam than have to deal with something new that I dont understand." End users mostly have the attitude of, "If i do nothing, I can still get my emails. If I change to something new, I might break something and be without my daily communications".
That will be where the big hurdle is.
Absolutely. The problem with the Occams Razor idea is that it presumes an equal level of knowledge by all parties. It does not address the differences of perspective between people who are knowledgable about a topic and those that are not.
This email case is a perfect example. Christopher Caldwell does not know anything about email except that he can use it to communicate with people. The actual process of what goes on behind the scenes has been abstracted to a simple series of clicks and windows with a lot of verbiage that parallels it to a postal mail system. He has a simplistic view to start with, so applying the principle of "The simplest model is the best" results in a horrific complicated mess when it goes to the implementation stage.
Reading it now, I should have tried to explain my point more thoroughly. The reason that the simplest way is almost never the best way is that the simplest way most often comes from people who do not see the whole picture.
...so the Slashdot "FP!" crowd can be sending in stragglers for hours.
Every problem that we have that revolves around a man-made technology is fixable with a man made technology. We don't need taxes, we need to fix the core of the email system.
"The simplest way to regulate spam is through a tax."
Perhaps this is true, but the simplest way is almost NEVER the best way. How are you going to define the differences between email and every other electronic message passing? Will the tax suddenly apply to IM's? then web pages? then internet phone calls? What happens 20 years from now when the technology is different? Will the tax stop? Hell no! Most likeley there will be a new tax code buried in every little packet so that the government can get even more money for nothing.
Why should the burden of the "fix" for this problem be shouldered mostly by the people that it is trying to "protect"? I don't want to pay my government for the privelage of doing something that was previously free. That does not solve anything! I want the people sending spam to pay ME!
This tax might sound innocent on its surface, but it only takes one little thing like this to make it seem acceptable to throw a tax on every digital transaction.
To all you dopes that think this is a good idea, think about the big picture. This point in time is not static. Technology is changing constantly. Spam will die when the time is right. For now we can just deal with it with the methods available to us. Do not let the government see the Internet as the latest frontier where they can profit by "saving us from ourselves".
I never say "Guh-new" because it is a waste of time. I usually end up trying to explain what it is to people. As the name for a "software movement" it is a stupid name. The name itself is unfriendly simply in its construction.
It is a:
one vowel
two syllable
three letter word which is an
unintuitively pronouncable
recursive acronym.
Very clever. Very purpose defeating. I love the idea behind it, but I despise "Guh-new". They guh-need to guh-et a guh-nother guh-name.
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