Perhaps it's just because I'm old enough to know that I'm not, never have been and never will be the great driver that I once thought I was. I also know that driving is the most dangerous thing that I do on a regular basis, it being so easy to make a fatal mistake. In addition, most commutes are pretty boring; I usually wish I could spend the time reading something instead. The idea of having my own personal chauffeur is also appealing for other reasons, such as if I drink too much, or perhaps it would eventually even be possible for the vehicle to drop me off in one place and then park itself somewhere else (although society would then have to develop laws for dealing with driverless vehicles). Another major advantage is that filling the roads with autonomous vehicles may also prove to be the ultimate solution to the problem of traffic jams.
The challenges involved in the creation of auto-pilots that we can all trust involve safety, security and privacy. First, no one is going to entrust their life to such a system unless it proves to be safe. Moreover, human psychology will undoubtedly require that the auto-pilot be much safer and more efficient driver than the owner of the vehicle can ever hope to be, or else they probably won't want to use it.
Second: security. For example, back-door access and remote control. It's one thing for a malevolent third party to take advantage of your computer, but the idea that anyone might be able to take advantage of your vehicle while you're in it seems completely unacceptable to me. One theory about the recent death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings is that someone gained remote control over his car (at least the accelerator and breaks), which according to eyewitnesses seemed completely out of control just before he crashed. I can imagine even more sinister things involving a car with a real auto-pilot, for instance a remote control kidnapping where the victims are locked into their own vehicles and then driven to an unknown destination.
Third: privacy. I would just hate the idea that my vehicle's manufacturer was also working happily with, for example, intelligence agencies to use my car to spy on me, or marketing companies to more effectively target me with advertising. Just because you own a vehicle with an auto-pilot does not mean that you should expect to have your rights trampled upon.
The beginning of a solution for all of this would be for the vehicle manufacturers to collaborate on as open source project for the auto-pilot and vehicle communications software. In my view that approach would certainly lead to better safety, security and privacy, but somehow I don't think it will work out like that.
Agree. I would even go so far as to say that 9/11 may actually have been a conspiracy... by the Bush administration to ignore Richard A. Clarke and others who were sounding the alarm before that fateful day, precisely so as to end up where we are now.
The question is how to turn this situation around. In theory this is possible simply by electing honest people to represent us in the federal government, but the root of the problem is that 95% of the time the candidate with the most money is the one that gets elected. So, without money a candidate can almost always forget winning an election.
Where do successful candidates get most of their money from? Not from thousands of small donations. They get it in large chunks from a much smaller group of donors -- super-rich folks and corporations who, thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling in 2010 on Citizens United vs. the FEC, can now donate as much as they want. But of course there are always strings attached to such donations, which is why the entire Federal government basically don't work for us anymore: they now work almost exclusively for their donors. Both of the main parties are guilty of this. Later, after leaving office, most of them simply move on to become lobbyists and usually end up earning about 15x as much as they did before. This practice is so bad that Congress has been referred to by insiders as "a farming operation for K Street."
The most promising solution for reform that I've heard of so far is to start by getting money out of politics. Obviously we can never trust Congress to do that, but the U.S. Constitution actually offers a solution in the form of an Article V Convention. This provision allows state legislatures to band together and bypass Congress in order to alter the Constitution. It does require a 75% majority for approval, which is a daunting task, but the idea would be pass a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections.
Only 10,000 developers for the Linux kernel, compared to which, Microsoft has about 100,000 employees and the best they can do is Windows 8. Sad, isn't it?
That's what you get when even the most impressive army of developers is only allowed to add new features and code improvements for the sake of profit, as opposed to adding them for their own sake.
Although I voted for him twice, I agree. Since 2008 he has become less like the man of hope that was first voted into office and more like the man he replaced. In some ways, he's even worse. However, Congress will never impeach him, because as far as his impeachable offenses are concerned, the majority on both sides of the isle actually approves of that behavior. They are two sides of the same coin, working only for their donors while they play good cop/bad cop with the rest of us. The only solution I know of is: http://www.wolf-pac.com/
... to protect him from this kind of calamity, for example by using mirrored disks (even with SSDs) whenever possible and by ensuring that regular backups are made of all of his important data. Of course, privacy-wise it would be better if he did it himself, but apparently it's just not a priority. I've long found it curious that so many excellent programmers are comparatively inept when it comes to looking after their own machines and data.
Well, routing it outside of gmail keep gmails hands off it, well the half that doesn't originate with them to start with. But i think you'll need to do quite a bit more to keep the us govt out of it.
Of course you're right about that, especially if I correspond with someone with e.g. a gmail account. But, why make it any easier for the NSA? It gets a harder for them to listen in when I correspond with people who also maintain their own email servers, and whole a lot harder when those servers can also do automatic encryption. If what they're doing is unconstitutional and a violation of your privacy, why make life easy for them and knowingly play into their hands?
And allow Google and the US government to scan all of my mail? No thanks. The same goes for Hotmail, Yahoo and any other commercial email service provider (and certainly those based in the US). These days it makes more sense than ever to maintain your own MTA.
On the mail servers I maintain, I employ SpamAssassin only a last resort because it is resource-intensive. Submitter hmilz's approach is not only resource-intensive, but also labor intensive, so I would never recommend it.
I've used Exim for my MTA since 2001 and my main defense against spam has always been to filter it out before SpamAssassin comes into play based on analysis of header information and checking against DNS black lists. Actually, the first thing I do is look for obvious fakes from a limited number of well-known domains: gmail messages that are not sent from a Google server, eBay messages not from an ebay.com server, etc. Such messages are rejected immediately. However, the bulk of the filters I've collected and developed over the years check a number of items: whether the sender's reverse DNS address is in order, the HELO is correct, whether the sending IP address or any domains mentioned in the header lines are blacklisted, whether the callout works and any DKIM signature is valid, if an RFC-compliant date and To are included, whether any attachments are included with file types that I consider risky (e.g.,bat,.btm,.cmd,.com,.cpl,.dat,.dll,.exe, etc.), if the message headers contain non-ASCII or characters from some unspecified character set, whether any SPF record says that the sending server really is authorized as an MX for the sender's domain, and finally if the incoming message is using one of my domains in its message ID. For all of these types of checks I often have multiple filter statements.
In the past I would usually reject messages that matched any of these filters. I would hardly ever receive any spam, but would see lots of false-positives, so I had to maintain very long white lists. When I finally got tired of that, I modified the above filtering system so that each filter was categorized. Each category has a variable that starts out as zero, but gets changed to a one with a match for any of the filters in that category. Later in the process the system counts the number of category variables that equal one. Generally, I figure "three strikes and you're out" is a good rule to apply.
Moreover, my MTA configuration works with a spambox system. For instance, if an incoming message scores only one or two category matches, and/or the message scores less than a certain number of SpamAssassin points, then it gets deposited in the user's spambox instead of their inbox. I've been running the four MTA's in my care like this for the last three years and they've been very reliable and almost totally free of maintenance. They don't require very much in the way of resources either. But best of all, I've had no more complaints from the users at all.
Comcast generally gives you the same IP address for years, as long as you keep using it (eg, you don't turn your cable modem off).
That's what I would call a typical dynamic IP address service. Apparently, supporting the administration necessary to maintain a fixed IP address for all of their subscribers -- whether they choose to keep their modems switched on all the time or not -- is not something that every ISP wants to do.
Many smaller ISPs offer static IP service for a small fee.
Okay, so the concept is definitely not out of reach to all Americans. That's good to hear.
Comcast will only guarantee you keep the same IP for business customers.
I suspect most ISPs around the world are like Comcast.
However, it is a fake problem because if your IP isn't static, you can just use a dynamic DNS service, so you.somedyndnsservice.com will always point to you. And then you have a local client that updates the record whenever your IP changes.
IMO, DDNS is only a solution for the simplest of home server configurations. Yes, it solves the forward-lookup DNS problem, but it prevents you from running your own DNS server. Also, having a dynamic IP address also means that you will never have a proper reverse-lookup for your server; an often overlooked aspect in configuring a trustworthy mail server. Moreover, maintaining a subscription with an Internet DDNS service means yet more costs, having to put your trust in yet another 3rd party, and always having to run some client software that they give you. I'd rather avoid all that.
Completely agree; I've been doing it like this for longer than services like Gmail and Hotmail have been around. However, with XS4ALL as my ISP here in the Netherlands, things have certainly been made easy for me. For example, my DSL connection has a fixed public IPv4 address and PPP makes it relatively easy for me to arrange for my public IPv4 address to be on my personal server. In turn, this not only allows me to run my own firewall and NAT, thus affording me far better security than I can expect from the firmware on a consumer-grade DSL modem/router, but it also allows me to support protocols like SIP, Kerberos and various tunneling solutions. It's even allowed me to set up an OpenAFS cell that spans multiple Internet connections.
But, how easy is it to do this in the United States these days? Do any ISPs in the US support fixed IPv4 address for their consumer subscribers? Are there any Slashdotters in the States who have managed to configure their public IPv4 address on their personal server without using a professional Internet subscription?
... We don't put our non-technical friends and family on Linux (still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop)....
I do. Well, not for the laptop users (most of them have OS X, and I'm happy that they're happy with that), but I have one friend who's strictly a desktop guy and had been suffering with M$ for years. When his hard disk with Windows XP died last August, I installed a pair of new ones for him (mirrored) with Debian squeeze and an Xfce desktop (on an 8-year-old HP Compaq DC7600 with 2 GB of RAM). He's so happy now! And this guy is no techie. He particularly likes that it's so much faster than before: it starts faster and it runs its programs faster. All of his hardware is supported, he can do everything he wants and no longer needs to worry about viruses. Plus I can access his machine remotely to run updates and install new software.
Yes, under the hood Linux is more complex than Windows, but that's because it was meant to be opened. In contrast, M$ and Apple do their best to hide all that away. But, if your friends are going to rely on you to install and configure all their software for them anyway, why bother with a commercial OS when you know it's only going to make life harder for you, and by extension for them?
So in order to solve the issue of a completely different UI, you suggest installing Linux that has a completely different UI (and app incompatibility)?
You have a point, but I would ask, If M$ has spent the last two decades making many aspects of their software increasingly user-unfriendly, all for the sake of fighting piracy in order to increase their profit margins (a process that will always continue), when is it ever going to be time to say "to hell with the short-term consequences, it's time to get finally off this train"? To me, long-term Windows users seem like abused spouses: as long as the increase in their torment is never too dramatic, they stay put and figure it's not worth the effort of going through a divorce.
Of course Microsoft isn't doomed, and neither is Windows. In the enterprise world, Exchange-Office will still dominate for many years to come. The problem is on the consumer end, where Windows is heading quickly to irrelevance.
That still spells big trouble for Microsoft, because according to Wall Street a shrinking company is never a healthy company. Once their stock price has fallen far enough, they will be acquired by a stronger company.
One of the barriers to a higher acceptance of telecommuting is IMO the (low) quality of telepresence, which is mainly due to a lack of bandwidth. Imagine what will be possible with Nuro. Of course, it won't make much of a difference on the whole if only a few people in a few areas have access to this kind of bandwidth, but if it ever becomes the norm I think it will make a difference.
The way our society operates, we will never feel the need to invest enough money to set up a self-sustaining off-planet colony for its own sake, because it makes no sense economically. That's just the way we think about this sort of thing, even though it may not be good for us in the long term. Therefore, if we do ever create such a colony, it will be for economic purposes. For example, a commercial mining operation that is considered cheaper to operate precisely because it is self-sustaining.
Indeed, this is not a solution for the fuel-cell problem, but at this point personal transportation is not important. The immediate and most significant aspect of this technology is that it may be a viable replacement for fossil fuels in the not too distant future. If it works, the next problem will be supplying the enormous amounts of xylose needed to maintain the necessary levels of hydrogen production, and that may yet prove to be a challenge regardless of the efficiency of the process.
Not anonymous to the person wearing the device: anonymous to Google! As far as I can tell, that's the way it works: it has to constantly be on-line, sending information about its environment to Google for analysis, after which the results are shared with the wearer. Naturally, they plan to store and data-mine that information, selling those results to 3rd parties. But, of course, governments will have access to it as well.
I actually envisioned something like this in 1999, back before Google even existed. However, where my idea relied heavily on an AI and local processing power, Google solved it by connecting the device to their massive, world-wide computing infrastructure. Sure, the potential for good is huge, but so is the potential for Orwellian abuse, especially in this form and in this day and age.
Google Glass looks set to invade not only the privacy of the people who wear it, but also of all the people they interact with, including those who may wish to remain relatively anonymous. The wearer will inform the system about what the names of these people are and where to find them (address, phone numbers), while the system will then learn what these people look like and what their habits are. If all this were only used to sell everyone more stuff then that wouldn't be so bad, but the problem is that it doesn't stop there, since we already know that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, etc) cooperates with government spy agencies.
As time goes on, I suspect Google Glass will become ever more powerful, adding 360 degree vision, ever higher resolutions, night vision, zoom, image stabilization and the ability to hear as well as see. People will become ever more dependent on the advantages that these devices have to offer, but most will not give a second thought to the possibility that at any moment one or more third parties could also be listening and watching the world around you through your headset. Or, that everything you see and hear would get recorded and stored for later use; perhaps for relatively innocuous ends, but it could also be used to gather information against you, or someone in your vicinity (who you might not even know), and used at some later point in time.
Like all technological developments, inventions like Google Glass are a double-edged sword: they have the potential to offer wonderful advantages to society, but also to do great harm to it. The only solution will be to ensure that it is properly regulated: that effective privacy laws are drawn up, passed and enforced to prevent such inventions from being abused. But unfortunately, America's democracy isn't really working that well at the moment. In fact, it's now more of a corporatocracy than anything else; an environment in which the reverse is much more likely... less regulation and more abuse.
There are lots of ways to prove objectively that the universe is much older than the Bible would suggest and that life, planets and galaxies did indeed evolve. However, there's still no law that requires judges to be scientifically literate, and you can bet that a fair number of them are even creationists. So seeing as Mastropaolo would select the judges himself, he obviously plans to stack the deck in his own favor. He may be ignorant, but he's probably not stupid either.
I am still convinced that battery powered cars are not economically viable, and from an environmental point of view, your average electric car contributes more to global pollution before its even driven a single mile than a generic truck. (due to for instance all the needed platina and rare earth metals) This makes the government sponsoring charging stations (tax breaks and grants) look silly at the least.
It looks like you didn't read the article that I linked for you. From TFA:
... As for toxicity, there's nothing in a high-voltage lithium battery that you'd want to spread on an English muffin. That said, the ingredient list isn't sounding alarm bells among experts, assuming that manufacturers and recyclers follow the rules of production and disposal. Linda Gaines of the Argonne National Laboratory says: "We have not identified any significant environmental impacts from battery production. The worst one is sulfur dioxide from the smelting of cobalt, nickel and copper, which are tightly controlled, at least in the U.S."
Cesiel says, "They're not toxic batteries." But even if the chemicals themselves pose no threat, they are still extracted from the earth at a cost. Lithium, copper, manganese and ingredients for next-generation battery technologies all rely on mining or similar processes, which can be ecologically harmful, especially if done in countries with lax environmental laws....
The only responsible, proven and truly sustainable energy forms are nuclear and hydrogen. Everything else is just short term thinking, while creating a huge mess for future generations. What are our grand children going to do with all the wind mills we now place? These too are highly toxic....
Mining is probably never good for the environment, but if it's regulated well enough I don't think that manufacturing a wind turbine from scratch is any worse than making one of those Li-ion batteries (which, apparently, is not so bad either). As for the wind turbines themselves, surely you're not suggesting that they themselves are toxic?
... With nuclear, at least we know it's dangerous and handle it appropriately.
I was up in the air about nuclear for a long time, but there are many downsides to it as well. First, uranium mining is dangerous and, even as mining operations go, environmentally very unfriendly. Second, it's very, very expensive to build a nuclear reactor and it takes a long time to do so. Third, you'll have the nuclear waste to take care of. Fourth, the reactor will have to be dismantled at the end of its life, which means dealing with a whole lot of highly radioactive material. Fifth, there's always the possibility of a nuclear accident. Sixth, uranium can also be used for the purpose of making weapons. Seventh, most countries with nuclear reactors are also still dependent on expensive foreign imports (of uranium). Eighth, are you really willing to trust corporations with all these risks when all they're really interested in is profit? Oh, and don't forget that there is a pro-nuclear lobby that spends lots of money on propaganda to play down all of the drawbacks involved.
... there are already *two* charging points per unique electric car....
Maybe, but then there must be a lot of charging points in relatively inconvenient places. Also in that case why would e-laad be having to tell people that they no longer have the budget to put down any more?
... Paid for with taxpayer money....
Really? Stichting e-laad was set up by the power companies themselves. They say their budget dried up, but make no mention of subsidies. Even if the municipalities or the Dutch government were subsidizing a certain percentage of each charging point, it doesn't look like that's the reason why e-laad stopped rolling them out. If that were the case, then surely they would have said so. But even if you're right, there are worse things that the government can spend taxpayer money on (like bailing out crooked bankers).
... Nobody buys battery powered electric cars...
You overgeneralize. Just because you don't know anyone who wants one doesn't mean nobody does. The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs states that, as of August 2012, there were 1,686 completely electric cars driving around on Dutch roads. That's not nobody, but you could be right about the number of charging points. However, according to an estimate last year the Dutch Automobile Association (ANWB) expects that there will be 200,000 electric vehicles driving in the Netherlands by 2020.
... because they are heavy, unreliable, and are economically written off after only 5 years.
Heavy, yes (but getting lighter), unreliable, no. Nissan expects its batteries to retain 70% to 80% of their capacity after a decade of use and guarantees them for five. Chevrolet guarantee the Volt's batteries for eight years. That doesn't sound so bad to me. Other vehicle manufacturers offer similar values, because many of them buy their batteries from the same battery manufacturers.
IMO all of the plug-in battery electric cars currently available are either impractical due to their limited range, or too expensive (such as the Tesla Model S), or both. Yet, for myself I would still prefer a vehicle with batteries to one powered by hydrogen for a number of reasons.
First of all, read this article: 5 Concerns About Electric-Car Batteries. Its not long and addresses reliability, supply, the environment, recycling and actual carbon emissions.
Personally, I love the idea of being able to charge up my vehicle at home on green energy (even if it's just a little more green) for the lowest price possible. That will free me from my gasoline addiction, which I've come to hate not only because burning fossil fuel is bad for the environment, but also because it means paying regular visits to gas stations, always being dependent on a foreign product that sucks a tremendous amount of money out of the local economy, paying a ridiculous price for gasoline (at around $9.00 a gallon, gas prices in the Netherlands are the absolute highest in the world), and always paying more for my gasoline every year.
Regarding hydrogen, it looks like this technology has more drawbacks than advantages. Li-Ion batteries may be expensive, but hydrogen fuel cells make them look very affordable. Some companies have been promising much lower prices, but talk is cheap and any such units have yet to materialize. In the mean time, there are already battery electric vehicles on the road and more money is being spent every day to make those batteries lighter and more powerful. Moreover, I can only imagine paying
It just so happens that I live in the Netherlands, but I'm not impressed with the availability of charging points. At least, not in my municipality. Things may be better in Amsterdam. There is an NPO, called "e-laad" (e-charge), that was set up by the power companies to install charging points all over the Netherlands (also on request), but then their budget dried up. Which is strange, because if there is a demand, why is there no more supply? This makes it tempting to conclude that the power companies want to look like they're paying the concept more than lip service, but are not really that enthusiastic. On the other hand, it's not like I know a lot of people who can't wait to get their hands on an electric care either; they're still a relatively rare sight. Nevertheless, I look forward to receiving my Lit C-1; with a range of 200 miles or more, I doubt that I'll be making much use of public charging points.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it's just because I'm old enough to know that I'm not, never have been and never will be the great driver that I once thought I was. I also know that driving is the most dangerous thing that I do on a regular basis, it being so easy to make a fatal mistake. In addition, most commutes are pretty boring; I usually wish I could spend the time reading something instead. The idea of having my own personal chauffeur is also appealing for other reasons, such as if I drink too much, or perhaps it would eventually even be possible for the vehicle to drop me off in one place and then park itself somewhere else (although society would then have to develop laws for dealing with driverless vehicles). Another major advantage is that filling the roads with autonomous vehicles may also prove to be the ultimate solution to the problem of traffic jams.
The challenges involved in the creation of auto-pilots that we can all trust involve safety, security and privacy. First, no one is going to entrust their life to such a system unless it proves to be safe. Moreover, human psychology will undoubtedly require that the auto-pilot be much safer and more efficient driver than the owner of the vehicle can ever hope to be, or else they probably won't want to use it.
Second: security. For example, back-door access and remote control. It's one thing for a malevolent third party to take advantage of your computer, but the idea that anyone might be able to take advantage of your vehicle while you're in it seems completely unacceptable to me. One theory about the recent death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings is that someone gained remote control over his car (at least the accelerator and breaks), which according to eyewitnesses seemed completely out of control just before he crashed. I can imagine even more sinister things involving a car with a real auto-pilot, for instance a remote control kidnapping where the victims are locked into their own vehicles and then driven to an unknown destination.
Third: privacy. I would just hate the idea that my vehicle's manufacturer was also working happily with, for example, intelligence agencies to use my car to spy on me, or marketing companies to more effectively target me with advertising. Just because you own a vehicle with an auto-pilot does not mean that you should expect to have your rights trampled upon.
The beginning of a solution for all of this would be for the vehicle manufacturers to collaborate on as open source project for the auto-pilot and vehicle communications software. In my view that approach would certainly lead to better safety, security and privacy, but somehow I don't think it will work out like that.
Agree. I would even go so far as to say that 9/11 may actually have been a conspiracy... by the Bush administration to ignore Richard A. Clarke and others who were sounding the alarm before that fateful day, precisely so as to end up where we are now.
The question is how to turn this situation around. In theory this is possible simply by electing honest people to represent us in the federal government, but the root of the problem is that 95% of the time the candidate with the most money is the one that gets elected. So, without money a candidate can almost always forget winning an election.
Where do successful candidates get most of their money from? Not from thousands of small donations. They get it in large chunks from a much smaller group of donors -- super-rich folks and corporations who, thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling in 2010 on Citizens United vs. the FEC, can now donate as much as they want. But of course there are always strings attached to such donations, which is why the entire Federal government basically don't work for us anymore: they now work almost exclusively for their donors. Both of the main parties are guilty of this. Later, after leaving office, most of them simply move on to become lobbyists and usually end up earning about 15x as much as they did before. This practice is so bad that Congress has been referred to by insiders as "a farming operation for K Street."
The most promising solution for reform that I've heard of so far is to start by getting money out of politics. Obviously we can never trust Congress to do that, but the U.S. Constitution actually offers a solution in the form of an Article V Convention. This provision allows state legislatures to band together and bypass Congress in order to alter the Constitution. It does require a 75% majority for approval, which is a daunting task, but the idea would be pass a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections.
The organization behind this plan? Wolf-PAC.
Only 10,000 developers for the Linux kernel, compared to which, Microsoft has about 100,000 employees and the best they can do is Windows 8. Sad, isn't it?
That's what you get when even the most impressive army of developers is only allowed to add new features and code improvements for the sake of profit, as opposed to adding them for their own sake.
Although I voted for him twice, I agree. Since 2008 he has become less like the man of hope that was first voted into office and more like the man he replaced. In some ways, he's even worse. However, Congress will never impeach him, because as far as his impeachable offenses are concerned, the majority on both sides of the isle actually approves of that behavior. They are two sides of the same coin, working only for their donors while they play good cop/bad cop with the rest of us. The only solution I know of is: http://www.wolf-pac.com/
... to protect him from this kind of calamity, for example by using mirrored disks (even with SSDs) whenever possible and by ensuring that regular backups are made of all of his important data. Of course, privacy-wise it would be better if he did it himself, but apparently it's just not a priority. I've long found it curious that so many excellent programmers are comparatively inept when it comes to looking after their own machines and data.
That's Raspberry Pi with a 'p'. You'd think the /. editors could at least catch simple spelling errors in article titles.
Thousands more exoplanets coming your way! Good news indeed.
Well, routing it outside of gmail keep gmails hands off it, well the half that doesn't originate with them to start with. But i think you'll need to do quite a bit more to keep the us govt out of it.
Of course you're right about that, especially if I correspond with someone with e.g. a gmail account. But, why make it any easier for the NSA? It gets a harder for them to listen in when I correspond with people who also maintain their own email servers, and whole a lot harder when those servers can also do automatic encryption. If what they're doing is unconstitutional and a violation of your privacy, why make life easy for them and knowingly play into their hands?
And allow Google and the US government to scan all of my mail? No thanks. The same goes for Hotmail, Yahoo and any other commercial email service provider (and certainly those based in the US). These days it makes more sense than ever to maintain your own MTA.
On the mail servers I maintain, I employ SpamAssassin only a last resort because it is resource-intensive. Submitter hmilz's approach is not only resource-intensive, but also labor intensive, so I would never recommend it.
I've used Exim for my MTA since 2001 and my main defense against spam has always been to filter it out before SpamAssassin comes into play based on analysis of header information and checking against DNS black lists. Actually, the first thing I do is look for obvious fakes from a limited number of well-known domains: gmail messages that are not sent from a Google server, eBay messages not from an ebay.com server, etc. Such messages are rejected immediately. However, the bulk of the filters I've collected and developed over the years check a number of items: whether the sender's reverse DNS address is in order, the HELO is correct, whether the sending IP address or any domains mentioned in the header lines are blacklisted, whether the callout works and any DKIM signature is valid, if an RFC-compliant date and To are included, whether any attachments are included with file types that I consider risky (e.g. ,bat, .btm, .cmd, .com, .cpl, .dat, .dll, .exe, etc.), if the message headers contain non-ASCII or characters from some unspecified character set, whether any SPF record says that the sending server really is authorized as an MX for the sender's domain, and finally if the incoming message is using one of my domains in its message ID. For all of these types of checks I often have multiple filter statements.
In the past I would usually reject messages that matched any of these filters. I would hardly ever receive any spam, but would see lots of false-positives, so I had to maintain very long white lists. When I finally got tired of that, I modified the above filtering system so that each filter was categorized. Each category has a variable that starts out as zero, but gets changed to a one with a match for any of the filters in that category. Later in the process the system counts the number of category variables that equal one. Generally, I figure "three strikes and you're out" is a good rule to apply.
Moreover, my MTA configuration works with a spambox system. For instance, if an incoming message scores only one or two category matches, and/or the message scores less than a certain number of SpamAssassin points, then it gets deposited in the user's spambox instead of their inbox. I've been running the four MTA's in my care like this for the last three years and they've been very reliable and almost totally free of maintenance. They don't require very much in the way of resources either. But best of all, I've had no more complaints from the users at all.
Comcast generally gives you the same IP address for years, as long as you keep using it (eg, you don't turn your cable modem off).
That's what I would call a typical dynamic IP address service. Apparently, supporting the administration necessary to maintain a fixed IP address for all of their subscribers -- whether they choose to keep their modems switched on all the time or not -- is not something that every ISP wants to do.
Many smaller ISPs offer static IP service for a small fee.
Okay, so the concept is definitely not out of reach to all Americans. That's good to hear.
Comcast will only guarantee you keep the same IP for business customers.
I suspect most ISPs around the world are like Comcast.
However, it is a fake problem because if your IP isn't static, you can just use a dynamic DNS service, so you.somedyndnsservice.com will always point to you. And then you have a local client that updates the record whenever your IP changes.
IMO, DDNS is only a solution for the simplest of home server configurations. Yes, it solves the forward-lookup DNS problem, but it prevents you from running your own DNS server. Also, having a dynamic IP address also means that you will never have a proper reverse-lookup for your server; an often overlooked aspect in configuring a trustworthy mail server. Moreover, maintaining a subscription with an Internet DDNS service means yet more costs, having to put your trust in yet another 3rd party, and always having to run some client software that they give you. I'd rather avoid all that.
Completely agree; I've been doing it like this for longer than services like Gmail and Hotmail have been around. However, with XS4ALL as my ISP here in the Netherlands, things have certainly been made easy for me. For example, my DSL connection has a fixed public IPv4 address and PPP makes it relatively easy for me to arrange for my public IPv4 address to be on my personal server. In turn, this not only allows me to run my own firewall and NAT, thus affording me far better security than I can expect from the firmware on a consumer-grade DSL modem/router, but it also allows me to support protocols like SIP, Kerberos and various tunneling solutions. It's even allowed me to set up an OpenAFS cell that spans multiple Internet connections.
But, how easy is it to do this in the United States these days? Do any ISPs in the US support fixed IPv4 address for their consumer subscribers? Are there any Slashdotters in the States who have managed to configure their public IPv4 address on their personal server without using a professional Internet subscription?
... We don't put our non-technical friends and family on Linux (still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop). ...
I do. Well, not for the laptop users (most of them have OS X, and I'm happy that they're happy with that), but I have one friend who's strictly a desktop guy and had been suffering with M$ for years. When his hard disk with Windows XP died last August, I installed a pair of new ones for him (mirrored) with Debian squeeze and an Xfce desktop (on an 8-year-old HP Compaq DC7600 with 2 GB of RAM). He's so happy now! And this guy is no techie. He particularly likes that it's so much faster than before: it starts faster and it runs its programs faster. All of his hardware is supported, he can do everything he wants and no longer needs to worry about viruses. Plus I can access his machine remotely to run updates and install new software.
Yes, under the hood Linux is more complex than Windows, but that's because it was meant to be opened. In contrast, M$ and Apple do their best to hide all that away. But, if your friends are going to rely on you to install and configure all their software for them anyway, why bother with a commercial OS when you know it's only going to make life harder for you, and by extension for them?
So in order to solve the issue of a completely different UI, you suggest installing Linux that has a completely different UI (and app incompatibility)?
You have a point, but I would ask, If M$ has spent the last two decades making many aspects of their software increasingly user-unfriendly, all for the sake of fighting piracy in order to increase their profit margins (a process that will always continue), when is it ever going to be time to say "to hell with the short-term consequences, it's time to get finally off this train"? To me, long-term Windows users seem like abused spouses: as long as the increase in their torment is never too dramatic, they stay put and figure it's not worth the effort of going through a divorce.
Of course Microsoft isn't doomed, and neither is Windows. In the enterprise world, Exchange-Office will still dominate for many years to come. The problem is on the consumer end, where Windows is heading quickly to irrelevance.
That still spells big trouble for Microsoft, because according to Wall Street a shrinking company is never a healthy company. Once their stock price has fallen far enough, they will be acquired by a stronger company.
One of the barriers to a higher acceptance of telecommuting is IMO the (low) quality of telepresence, which is mainly due to a lack of bandwidth. Imagine what will be possible with Nuro. Of course, it won't make much of a difference on the whole if only a few people in a few areas have access to this kind of bandwidth, but if it ever becomes the norm I think it will make a difference.
The way our society operates, we will never feel the need to invest enough money to set up a self-sustaining off-planet colony for its own sake, because it makes no sense economically. That's just the way we think about this sort of thing, even though it may not be good for us in the long term. Therefore, if we do ever create such a colony, it will be for economic purposes. For example, a commercial mining operation that is considered cheaper to operate precisely because it is self-sustaining.
Indeed, this is not a solution for the fuel-cell problem, but at this point personal transportation is not important. The immediate and most significant aspect of this technology is that it may be a viable replacement for fossil fuels in the not too distant future. If it works, the next problem will be supplying the enormous amounts of xylose needed to maintain the necessary levels of hydrogen production, and that may yet prove to be a challenge regardless of the efficiency of the process.
And just in case you still think I'm being too paranoid about Google Glass, read this.
Not anonymous to the person wearing the device: anonymous to Google! As far as I can tell, that's the way it works: it has to constantly be on-line, sending information about its environment to Google for analysis, after which the results are shared with the wearer. Naturally, they plan to store and data-mine that information, selling those results to 3rd parties. But, of course, governments will have access to it as well.
I actually envisioned something like this in 1999, back before Google even existed. However, where my idea relied heavily on an AI and local processing power, Google solved it by connecting the device to their massive, world-wide computing infrastructure. Sure, the potential for good is huge, but so is the potential for Orwellian abuse, especially in this form and in this day and age.
Google Glass looks set to invade not only the privacy of the people who wear it, but also of all the people they interact with, including those who may wish to remain relatively anonymous. The wearer will inform the system about what the names of these people are and where to find them (address, phone numbers), while the system will then learn what these people look like and what their habits are. If all this were only used to sell everyone more stuff then that wouldn't be so bad, but the problem is that it doesn't stop there, since we already know that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, etc) cooperates with government spy agencies.
As time goes on, I suspect Google Glass will become ever more powerful, adding 360 degree vision, ever higher resolutions, night vision, zoom, image stabilization and the ability to hear as well as see. People will become ever more dependent on the advantages that these devices have to offer, but most will not give a second thought to the possibility that at any moment one or more third parties could also be listening and watching the world around you through your headset. Or, that everything you see and hear would get recorded and stored for later use; perhaps for relatively innocuous ends, but it could also be used to gather information against you, or someone in your vicinity (who you might not even know), and used at some later point in time.
Like all technological developments, inventions like Google Glass are a double-edged sword: they have the potential to offer wonderful advantages to society, but also to do great harm to it. The only solution will be to ensure that it is properly regulated: that effective privacy laws are drawn up, passed and enforced to prevent such inventions from being abused. But unfortunately, America's democracy isn't really working that well at the moment. In fact, it's now more of a corporatocracy than anything else; an environment in which the reverse is much more likely... less regulation and more abuse.
There are lots of ways to prove objectively that the universe is much older than the Bible would suggest and that life, planets and galaxies did indeed evolve. However, there's still no law that requires judges to be scientifically literate, and you can bet that a fair number of them are even creationists. So seeing as Mastropaolo would select the judges himself, he obviously plans to stack the deck in his own favor. He may be ignorant, but he's probably not stupid either.
I am still convinced that battery powered cars are not economically viable, and from an environmental point of view, your average electric car contributes more to global pollution before its even driven a single mile than a generic truck. (due to for instance all the needed platina and rare earth metals) This makes the government sponsoring charging stations (tax breaks and grants) look silly at the least.
It looks like you didn't read the article that I linked for you. From TFA:
Cesiel says, "They're not toxic batteries." But even if the chemicals themselves pose no threat, they are still extracted from the earth at a cost. Lithium, copper, manganese and ingredients for next-generation battery technologies all rely on mining or similar processes, which can be ecologically harmful, especially if done in countries with lax environmental laws.
The only responsible, proven and truly sustainable energy forms are nuclear and hydrogen. Everything else is just short term thinking, while creating a huge mess for future generations. What are our grand children going to do with all the wind mills we now place? These too are highly toxic. ...
Mining is probably never good for the environment, but if it's regulated well enough I don't think that manufacturing a wind turbine from scratch is any worse than making one of those Li-ion batteries (which, apparently, is not so bad either). As for the wind turbines themselves, surely you're not suggesting that they themselves are toxic?
I was up in the air about nuclear for a long time, but there are many downsides to it as well. First, uranium mining is dangerous and, even as mining operations go, environmentally very unfriendly. Second, it's very, very expensive to build a nuclear reactor and it takes a long time to do so. Third, you'll have the nuclear waste to take care of. Fourth, the reactor will have to be dismantled at the end of its life, which means dealing with a whole lot of highly radioactive material. Fifth, there's always the possibility of a nuclear accident. Sixth, uranium can also be used for the purpose of making weapons. Seventh, most countries with nuclear reactors are also still dependent on expensive foreign imports (of uranium). Eighth, are you really willing to trust corporations with all these risks when all they're really interested in is profit? Oh, and don't forget that there is a pro-nuclear lobby that spends lots of money on propaganda to play down all of the drawbacks involved.
Maybe, but then there must be a lot of charging points in relatively inconvenient places. Also in that case why would e-laad be having to tell people that they no longer have the budget to put down any more?
Really? Stichting e-laad was set up by the power companies themselves. They say their budget dried up, but make no mention of subsidies. Even if the municipalities or the Dutch government were subsidizing a certain percentage of each charging point, it doesn't look like that's the reason why e-laad stopped rolling them out. If that were the case, then surely they would have said so. But even if you're right, there are worse things that the government can spend taxpayer money on (like bailing out crooked bankers).
You overgeneralize. Just because you don't know anyone who wants one doesn't mean nobody does. The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs states that, as of August 2012, there were 1,686 completely electric cars driving around on Dutch roads. That's not nobody, but you could be right about the number of charging points. However, according to an estimate last year the Dutch Automobile Association (ANWB) expects that there will be 200,000 electric vehicles driving in the Netherlands by 2020.
Heavy, yes (but getting lighter), unreliable, no. Nissan expects its batteries to retain 70% to 80% of their capacity after a decade of use and guarantees them for five. Chevrolet guarantee the Volt's batteries for eight years. That doesn't sound so bad to me. Other vehicle manufacturers offer similar values, because many of them buy their batteries from the same battery manufacturers.
IMO all of the plug-in battery electric cars currently available are either impractical due to their limited range, or too expensive (such as the Tesla Model S), or both. Yet, for myself I would still prefer a vehicle with batteries to one powered by hydrogen for a number of reasons.
First of all, read this article: 5 Concerns About Electric-Car Batteries. Its not long and addresses reliability, supply, the environment, recycling and actual carbon emissions.
Personally, I love the idea of being able to charge up my vehicle at home on green energy (even if it's just a little more green) for the lowest price possible. That will free me from my gasoline addiction, which I've come to hate not only because burning fossil fuel is bad for the environment, but also because it means paying regular visits to gas stations, always being dependent on a foreign product that sucks a tremendous amount of money out of the local economy, paying a ridiculous price for gasoline (at around $9.00 a gallon, gas prices in the Netherlands are the absolute highest in the world), and always paying more for my gasoline every year.
Regarding hydrogen, it looks like this technology has more drawbacks than advantages. Li-Ion batteries may be expensive, but hydrogen fuel cells make them look very affordable. Some companies have been promising much lower prices, but talk is cheap and any such units have yet to materialize. In the mean time, there are already battery electric vehicles on the road and more money is being spent every day to make those batteries lighter and more powerful. Moreover, I can only imagine paying
It just so happens that I live in the Netherlands, but I'm not impressed with the availability of charging points. At least, not in my municipality. Things may be better in Amsterdam. There is an NPO, called "e-laad" (e-charge), that was set up by the power companies to install charging points all over the Netherlands (also on request), but then their budget dried up. Which is strange, because if there is a demand, why is there no more supply? This makes it tempting to conclude that the power companies want to look like they're paying the concept more than lip service, but are not really that enthusiastic. On the other hand, it's not like I know a lot of people who can't wait to get their hands on an electric care either; they're still a relatively rare sight. Nevertheless, I look forward to receiving my Lit C-1; with a range of 200 miles or more, I doubt that I'll be making much use of public charging points.