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User: amber_lux

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Comments · 29

  1. Re:Portland OR on A Geek's Tour Of North America? · · Score: 1



    >Who in their right mind visits anouther country to read through books in a bookstore? Worst suggestion EVAR!

    I do. But then it is because the books were/are not available in my country. Sure, you can go to amazon.com amazon.jp, amazon.de, amazon.uk, amazon.ca, and order books from those countries.

    But how bad books will you buy that way? And in my case, the books I am interested in, are not sold by amazon.*. [ Hulle ken nie die taal nie.]

    Wind Under Thy Wings

    Amber

  2. Re:Hm. on The Interplanetary Internet · · Score: 1

    There's just somethin odd about all other planets already having internet addresses.

    It means that spammers can be cut off with one IP address.

    Oops, the spam is not coming from there, it is going there. They might need a slightly different solution.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  3. Re:Screw you, America on U.S. Says Canada Cares Too Much About Liberties · · Score: 1

    What makes you think that the US-Canadian border won't be defended by that time.

    History. The US v Canada: Round three? Round four?

    Anyway, read up the last time the US tried to go to war with canada The Great Pig War. Bullets were actually fired, though less than during the Indian Attack on Seattle. Hmm, come to think of it, both events had the same number of casualties --- no people.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  4. Re:Well, that might be the only counter weight to on Available To The Right Buyer: Sun Microsystems · · Score: 1

    Troll???????????????

    I should not feed the Trolls.
    I should not feed the Trolls
    I should not feed thr trolls.

    I will burn my karma anyway, feeding this troll.

    How do you figure?

    A nice little thing known as a EULA.


    Feeding the troll is stupid.

    Does Microsoft have exhorbatant fees on the licenses?

    Do you consider giving a third party blanket permission to delete any and all software on your system to be be something other than exhorbatant? Especially if you only find out about it, after the fact.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  5. Re:My Mom on Searching for the Oldest Running Application · · Score: 1

    uses some DOS word processor on an old 286 with a 5" floppy

    Probably Wordstar. The Wordstar Command set is very extensive, and intuitive. OTOH, I am noted for considering that GUIs are user-hostile, and designed to minimize productivity.

    spewing out 80 words a minute

    At that speed, a GUI will drop her typing speed by between ten and twenty percent. Fifty percent if it is from that crappy company that might one day learn how to write software that works.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  6. Re:While I admire the stance... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 1

    Most publishers have vast holdings of works that are no longer profitable.

    They are either really bad, or nobody knows about them. In either instances Print on Demand Publishing would be profitable.

    They will neither release these works themselves, nor allow others to do so. This flies in the face of the WHOLE POINT of copyright.

    The point of copyright is to make money. Not all publishers understand that one can make more money, by lowering the cost of doing business.

    Several years ago I was wanting to translate some books from German to English. Between royalties that were unreasonable [ $1/page/copy ] and demanding control of the entire operation [ They wanted to study the curricula vita of the janitorial staff, to ensure that they were qualified to do translation work, and if not, terminate them.], I could not see a way to sell the books at anything close to a breakeven point.

    If I had thought about it some more, I would have translated and published them in Namibia, or another country that does not honour any copyright convention. At times, I think about doing just that.

    The public domain is for items that are no longer profitable to print.

    With On-Demand Publishing, it is profitable to keep books in print for ever. There is no reason for a book to go out of print. Any publisher of mass market titles with a brain should be doing that for all titles, once the initial print run has been sold. Likewise for scholastic publishing houses. Print a nice first edition, and then zap it to print on demand for copy number 2 000 and up.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  7. Re:Pronounciation on Review of SuSE 8.2 · · Score: 1

    most of these pronunciations sound like the Zulu word for "fart".

    Now I'm trying to remember what that word in Tswana and Sutho is.

    I've wondered if this doesn't undermine the good work done by translate.org.za and SuSE's support of languages

    Their decision to not implement spell checkers in Zulu/Xhosa/Venda/Pedi/Sutho/Tswana probably undermines things more.

    Wondering if creating a dictionary in Aspell is really that hard. The noun classes and related concords do make it more difficult than, say Afrikaans.

    like Zulu and Xhose in S. Africa...

    The ditty:
    Igqira lendlela nguqo ngqothwane
    Igqira lendlela nguqo ngqothwane
    Sebeqabele gqi thapha bathi nguqo ngqothwane
    Sebeqabele gqi thapha bathi nguqo ngqothwane
    neither killed nor disuaded Europeans trying to learn Xhosa.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  8. Re:Uhh..... who? on New Ultra-Intrusive Pop-up Ads Introduced · · Score: 1

    I have NO IDEA who Crazy Eddie is.

    You do not read much do you?

    Oops. wrong Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie's was an electronics firm whose owner played fast and loose with the inventory. Some low level managers realized that they could take a some money out of the company, without getting detected. They were deteced, but the head honcho figured that was a great cover for him to scam more. Between all the insiders grabbing money from wherever, on non-existent stock, and a flattening revenue line, things goot a little suspicious, for some investigators.

    And so the head honcho was charged with a couple of felonies.

    The rest is history

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  9. Re:Browsers on SBC Getting Aggressive With Frames Patent · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You don't just use frame code and cross your fingers that it'll do what you have in mind.

    Ever browsed a website with a browser that does implement frames, and seen a comment such as This site uses frames. Please use a browser that implements frames.

    Or gone a website that whisks one to downloading a wanna-be browser from a two bit company that can't stand one bit of competition without at least checking that that browser would run on surfers platform.

    Web designers do cross their fingers and hope that nobody notices the difference.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  10. Re:Just for Ralsky on Virginia Anti-Spam Law; FTC Forum on Spam · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's a lot of viagra emails to send to get to 25k

    2 500 emails at $10.00 is $25 000 dollars. AOL claims to block up to one billion spam messages per day.

    Ralsky claims to be able to send 650 000 messages per hour on each of his 190 email servers.

    If AOL sues Ralsky, the maximum they can get from him, per day, is $25 000. Meanwhile, he can throw 2 964 000 000 emails per day at AOL, if he so chooses.

    Statutory damages should be $500.00 per email. ISPs could claim $500 multiplied by the number of undelivered emails in damages, with no maximum. That would change Ralsky's $25K per day habit with AOL, to a $250 000 000+ per day habit --- assuming that Ralsky is responsible for 10% of the spam at AOL.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  11. Re:what makes it debian? on Debian NetBSD for Sparc · · Score: 1

    Well, it's Debian GNU/Hurd when Hurd is the kernel, so I see no reason why Debian GNU/NetBSD is not acceptable when the NetBSD kernel is used.

    Does that mean you have Debian GNU/FreeDOS when somebody there decides to simply compile the Debian source with DJGPP?

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  12. Just for Ralsky on Virginia Anti-Spam Law; FTC Forum on Spam · · Score: 3, Interesting

    B: A person is guilty of a Class 6 felony if he commits a violation of subsection A and:
    1. The volume of UBE transmitted exceeded 10,000 attempted recipients in any 24-hour period, 100,000 attempted recipients in any 30-day time period, or one million attempted recipients in any one-year time period;

    I think Ralsky would get that many bounces in an hour, if he did not forge headers, and hijack mail servers.

    Penalty is only $10.00 per email or $25K, whichever is less.

    Not enough financial damage to spammers, but it is a start. If the statutory damages were higher, it might have a legitimate claim to being the toughest in the country.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  13. Re:Unemployment! on Unemployed? How Long Until You Find That Next Job · · Score: 1

    This raises an interesting point. why should the state finance the unemployed?

    The state should not. The state does not. Unemployment compensation is paid for by businesses. It is one of the taxes that they pay for the hiring you. A percentage of your income is payed to the state, for your unemployment.

    At the end of the day most people are unemployed because they don't want to apply for the jobs that are available.

    Last week I had a job interview witha temp agency. They could not place me anywhere because my experience is to broad for their current clients.[ That was my first interview, with over 100 applications submitted, in three months.]

    My old temp service would not even put me back on the active list --- that is how few positions then can place people at. Back in August of 2001, they were calling me, to work for one of their clients.

    All I need to find is a company that is willing to hire me. That has not yet happened.

    I do note your qualifier: most people. There are a few people who do abuse the system, but not many. Maybe 1 in a 1 000.

    Anybody know of a company that needs somebody who is very good at customer service, and speaks fluent English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa. Can also read Spanish, German, French, Latin, Gaelic, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Zulu, Pedi, Flemish, Danish, and Portuguese? [ At least six, and probably a dozen more languages ommitted from that list. ]

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  14. Re:Dumb and Dumber on AOL, MS & Yahoo Unite On Anti-Spam Initiative · · Score: 1

    1) Set a technical standard for senders to classify emails in the header fields. Say, an X-header like "X-Mail-Classification: ".

    Is this in addition to the "X-Priority" header that is abused by spammers?

    Is this in addition to the requirements in various states that all commercial email shall have a subject line prefix of "ADV:", "ADLT:ADV", "ADV-ADULT", or "ADVERT"?

    2) Set a similar technical standard for rating the adultness of websites. Make an HTTP header field, call it "Content-Rating"

    Like the "meta NAME="Rating" CONTENT ="General" http header which is fairly common.
    Or the more common:
    "meta HTTP-EQUIV =" PICS-Label" CONTENT =' (PICS-1.1 "http://www.weburbia.com/safe/ratings.htm" 1 r (s 0) )'"
    which happens to be safesurf. There are several organizations which provide a similar service.

    3) Pass a bill in congress making it a legal requirement that all sites and emails MUST contain these headers, unless they fall in the "best" category

    Spammer Rule # 3 kicks in at that point, and effectively defeats the purpose of that legislation. Review the state legislation at Spamlaws.com/state and count the number of states that require the subject line to state that it is an add. Then count the number that require the subject line to not be misleading.

    4) Obviously once the headers are well-defined, and prevalent because of the legal requirement,

    Current anti-spam legislation is clearly defined --- for individual states. Yet the amount of spam has gone up since the legislation was passed, not down.

    Most current browsers can, and to take advantage of filtering systems such as that offered by SafeSurf.

    My solution for email is to use RBLs like SPEWS --- except that SPEWS is way too tolerant of spammers, and spam supporting domains.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  15. Re:AOL, MS & Yahoo, again? on AOL, MS & Yahoo Unite On Anti-Spam Initiative · · Score: 1

    Ultimately the only way to put a stop to spamming is a few civil trials (possibly criminal, too, wire fraud, etc.) and hang a few examples out to dry.

    • Spamford Wallace:
      http://www.clickz.com/em_mkt/em_mkt/print.php/1871 971
      http://news.com.com/2100-1023-279546.html?tag=bpls t
      http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/web_sys tems_corp_v_cyber_promotions.shtml
      http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/concent ric_network_corp_v_wallace.shtml
      http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/bigfoot _partners_v_cyberPromotions.shtml
      http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/aol_v_c yberpromo.shtml
    • Christopher Moss:
      http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/hotmail _v_vans_money_pie_inc.shtml
    • Bulk ISP:
      http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/13 4390118_spam12m.html
      http://slashdot.org/articles/01/12/13/149225.shtml
    • CyberData:
      http://www.smallclaim.info/cyberdata/
    • Print Doctor, Inc:
      http://www.smallclaim.info/printdoctor/
    • Xavier Exotic Herbs:
      http://www.smallclaim.info/xavierenterprises/
    • Jason Heckel:
      http://www.phillipsnizer.com/library/cases/lib_cas e285.cfm
    • Gillman:
      http://www.spamlaws.com/cases/gillman1.html

    Need more cases, look at SpamLaws.com Benchmark is conspicious by its absence in the above list. [ At least three states nailed him. ]

    I think my point is clear. There have been successfull lawsuits by both private individuals, and mega-corporations, with fines / damages ranging from $500 to $2 000 000.

    And the spam keeps pouring in.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  16. Re:AOL CENSORS THEIR EMAIL on AOL, MS & Yahoo Unite On Anti-Spam Initiative · · Score: 1

    and spamproof the other account

    Even easier is to simply setup an account at SpamGourmet and when somebody asks for your email address, give them something like slashdot.2.alux@spamgourmet.com. Spamgourmet will simple forward the third and all subsequent emails to Dave Null.

    If the only address one ever gives out, is that spamgourmet one, then anything not from support/management at your ISP or went through spamgourmet, can be deleted as spam. Procmail can do that check for you.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  17. Re:Purpose of Spam on Will Bounties Cure The Spam Problem? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    to buy the item which is being advertised.

    For some items, yes. For stock scams, and the like, no. Just blast 10 000 000 emails out, and enough idiots will buy the stock in question to push the price up. Spammer sells his stock at a profit, and is virtually untraceable.

    if laws accept that as sufficient evidence.

    Washington State has statutory damaages of $500 for spamming. People can sue the spammer, once they track them down. The problems are:

    • Proving that the forged header was really sent by the spammer.
    • Getting a judge in small claims court to accept your case.
    • Convincing the judge that the case is serious.
    • Convincing the judge that the case is not frivolous. At least one judge is on record as stating that these ( anti-spammer ) suits are frivolous, and she will dismiss them on request.
    • If, after all that, one wins the case, the problem is one of collecting the judgement amount.
    • And since spammers use shells of shells of shells, where is the government going to get the money from, if it can not find the money from the spammer.

    Basically, a nice idea, but based upon experience in Washington, and other places where spammers can be sued, there are some problems with the idea.

    a competitor sending spam which advertises stuff from someone else, to cause problems for someone else.

    Joe-Jobbing the competition.

    That is a current practice of the florida scumbags. Their competition being the people who run SPEWS, MAPS, etc.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  18. Re:What's in it for Verizon? on Verizon Set Back Again in DMCA Subpoena Case · · Score: 1

    Pursuing this is costing them millions, and making them powerful enemies.

    Damage control

    If Verizon can get it squashed, they won't have to deal with these in the future. And that has a potential savings to them.

    The other thing is that verizon is spreading to europe. If they can squash that subpoena in the us, they have a claim to adhering to european privacy standards.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  19. Who would use the service? ( Was: Re:FP!!!) on Russia to Offer Space Mail · · Score: 2, Insightful

    really be? an fp?

    And like most first posts, yours is a total waste of a message.

    My question is who, other than topical philatelists, would be interested in sending snail mail to orbit for $20K.

    I do know of some philatelists who are crazy enough to do that, but then, philatelists are crazy, anyway.

    Wind under They Wings

    Amber

  20. You have forgotten the precursor to Chaos Theory on The First Steps Towards Asimov's Psychohistory? · · Score: 1

    Human behavior is a reaction to our surroundings -- and if it's impossible to predict our surroundings on a long timeline, then the same goes for human behavior.

    Catastrophe Theory

    Which was, and maybe still is, used to predict both short term and long term behaviour patterns.

  21. Re:Not exactly spam... on Online Marketers to Stamp out Spam? · · Score: 1

    The only sender I've noticed using this is HarrisDirect, an online polling company.,

    Topica.com uses it. At least for some email. That still did not get it out of Spews.

    I have seen a few individuals use it. First report I saw for it, was by a spammer.

    One other thing, the spammer gets one free pass. Which, to my way of thinking, means that the spammer can forge the Haiku, and spam all year long, without any consequences of alleged copyright violation.

    Wind under They Wings

    Amber

  22. Unwritten guidelines for small businesses on Starting a Home-Based Software Company? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What to do:

    1. Stay under the radar as far as government authorities are concerned.
    2. Do not annoy the neighbours.

    How to do it:

    1. No noise from the business.
    2. No odours from the business
    3. No ( pedestrian / vehicle ) traffic generated by the business
    4. Nothing that looks like a business is visible from the street.

    The first rule eliminates wannabe rockstars. the second one eliminates the production of the number one agricultural cash crop in canada and the us.The third one eliminates any retail sales establishment. The fourth one eliminates a great big sign, like golden arches, or a little sign, for that matter.

    Pay your taxes.

    Inc Magazine used, and probably still does have a book on the guidelines to starting a business at home.

    Wind uder Thy Wings

    Amber

  23. Re:Ive said it before.... on Time to Face the Music · · Score: 1

    See, that's what I don't get about the labels. $15 is an iffy purchase price for a CD, as far as I'm concerned, but won't likely stop me.

    I just found an online place that sells the CD's of my favorite vocalist for $15.00 each. Or about half of what I pay in the local stores. When I am working, I will be buying most of the one's that I don't have from that company.

    Now can somebody explain why that online store can sell the CDs for half of what my local independent cd merchandiser sells them for? And why are chains like Tower Records, Peaches, Coconut, etc are totally unable to get the CDs in the first place?

    FWIW, the artist is A*Mei. [ If somebody can tell me how to input CJK characters I'd use her real name. OS is Mandrake 9.0, browser is Knoqueror or Galleon.]

    Wind under Thy Wings.

    Amber

  24. Re:Cut out the middleman on EFF Lawyer Argues For Compulsory Music Licenses · · Score: 1

    You don't have to let your songs pressed at a plant anymore.

    The problem is, and has always been one of distribution. Prior to 78s, the only option was to have a live performance. Now, at least in theory, one can gain fans, without having live performances.

    I'm listening to A-Mei now. I think her last US tour was in 2001. I would have gone to at least one concert, had I known about it beforehand. TicketMaster did not sell tickets to her concerts, so she wasn't on the "upcoming events" list. Which is merely another aspect of distribution.

    Simply distribute by means of mp3 or any other audio format which you like.

    Sound quality. The average mp3 sounds much worse than the average vinyl. Now if the fans don't care about the difference in quality, then, maybe, mp3 is an acceptable option. But for those who like good music, and can hear the difference between an mp3, vinyl, and cd, the mp3 will lose it most of the time. [ When the record company is cutting corners on quality, the cd and vinyl can sound equally bad. That is one virtue of mp3. It can be cleaned up by the end user, if they are willing to spend a lot of time.

    This way the artist finally gets payed a decent amount of royalties without some overgrown organisation eating it all.

    I have never understood why I can pay $40.00 for a cd, and the artist gets a fraction of a penny in royalties. She would make more money if I bought everything used, and sent her a dollar for each cd.

    Wind under Thy Wings

    Amber

  25. But does it also do Hebrew or Arabic? on Complex Language Support for PDA's? · · Score: 1

    Zaurus must be *THE* only PDA that includes kanji input - as in, written by hand. (Okay so you can write kana into it too. ...

    How well does it handle to right to left writing systems, like Hebrew, Arabic, etc?

    Wind under thy Wings.

    Amber