Well, yea, sure. That is easy to say when only one or two satellites are affected. The bigger point is what happens when ALL (or a significant percentage) of our communications, GPS, and weather satellites go out simultaneously. Can the world deal with greatly reduced phone, internet, GPS, service for any appreciable period of time?
With all this reliance on satellite technology for GPS, communications, and weather prediction what happens when (not if) the sun hits a more active solar cycle eliminating all of these satellites in one fell swoop? We have become terribly dependent on satellite technology (that I agree is cool). However, there have been solar storms that would knock out all of our satellites in recent memory -- only we did not have any satellites up yet. Now the satellites are up and the next large solar storm is just lurking out there getting ready to strike.
As usual, beware any significant reliance on any one technology.
This could be viewed as Microsoft making a bid to buy Netscape. Remember that AOL owns what is left of Netscape. This of course, includes the FireFox browser as well.
So beyond the anti-trust issues surrounding a joined MSN-AOL portal / service, is the issue of Microsoft potentially owning at least a stake in the major browser that competes against Internet Explorer. Also, it is important to note that partial buy-outs are often precursors to complete buyouts.
One thing that must be kept in mind when dealing with GPS systems is that they were developed by the United States military. They are of course, a significant part of the reason why the U.S. can bomb a bunker in Baghdad without having to carpet bomb the entire area (and all the civilians).
As such, the U.S. military can turn off the satelites or scramble their signal whenever it deems appropriate. So, before our friends the Germans decide to become overly dependant on U.S. technology, they ought to ensure that the world is a stable place otherwise they may find themselves hung out to dry on the reef.
Ooops. As was pointed out by an astute reader, my finger was getting a little heavy on the "w"... The URL should be: http://www.freeaudio.org NOT http://wwww.freeaudio.org/
I run FreeAudio.org. The goal is to create audiobooks of the most important literary works on liberty and freedom. I regularly share our first work: Frederic Bastiat's classic book "The Law" via LimeWire. The works are intended to be downloaded and shared. (You can even post them on your website as long as the copyright info is kept intact.) Sometime today or tomorrow, I'll be posting our second work: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. With both of these works, there is a statement at the beginning encouraging people to share them "via their favorite file sharing service." So, not only is sharing via P2P allowed, it is encouraged. (Add one more to your list.)
Yes, but it was their targeting that really had problems. Part of this is due to the complexities of multi-stage rockets. What was transfered to China (through Lorral) was the targeting technology so that austensibly they could place satelites into exact orbits. This same technology is used to target warheads so that theey don't explode in your general vacinity but right on top of you.
This isn't too surprising. Bill Clinton sold China our multi-stage missile technology for satellite launching. China is using this to build ICBMs to target the western United States. (And have since threatened to hit Los Angeles with a nuclear warhead if we ever interfere in regards to our ally Taiwan.) This was after he received numerous under the table donations for his campaign from the Chinese government and financiers. After he sold out our national security to the Chinese for some campaign donations, giving the Chinese a national search engine is no big deal.
If we can't get people to run anti-virus software to scan their systems and remove viruses, how can we hope people will run a reverse firewall?
Installing anti-virus software is not too difficult but apparently too difficult for a significant number of users. If we can't get people to install anti-virus software to keep the viruses from destroying their hard drive, how can we hope they'll install a firewall to stop their machine from sending spam?
Technically, the farmer did infringe on the patent(s) of Monsato.
However, Monsato was involved in negligence in that they did not provide adequate protection to ensure that their plants seeds / pollen does not infect the plants on other farms.
Since it is now apparently possible for someone to be sued for having "infected" crops, it is up to the growers of GM crops to ensure that their crops do not "infect" others.
This all means that we are treading in new legal waters so it should be interesting seeing how this all shakes out.
You can still take them to small claims court. Keep in mind, you can recover $500 plus collection expenses. Thus it is $500 plus the cost of having the suit served in England and your court fees.
After you get a judgement (which you will do since they will most likely not show up), you can put a lien on any propety or bank accounts or other aspects of their business in the United States. You may even be able to approach Visa / Mastercard and attach a lien against their accounts. Furthermore, once you have a judgement, you should be able to pursue them across national lines due to the many treaties that are in place.
I sure would like to see their expression once they realize that yes, you can pursue them across national bounderies.
-Art
I remember a comment by an engineerring professor when I asked him his opinion of the scientific calculators. His reply: "I'm all for them. Because now, we can concentrate on some REAL math." i.e., the fancier the calculator gets, the more challenging the math and other problems become.
So, is life more easy because you have a fancy scientific calculator? No. The problems just get harder.
I get tired of corporations complaining about new technology. Clearly XM and Sirius are both new technologies and are the wave of the future. Remember when t.v. cable was new and all these same arguements were presented? For ClearChannel to be competitive over the long haul, it needs to get off its rear and create a satelite network of its own or get its shows carried on the various satelite radio providers.
Passing legislation such as this is stupid to put it bluntly. It will not change anything. If passed, in 10 years, we will be back to hearing the same arguments and eventually, the satelite providers will be providing whatever they choose anyway with or without ClearChannel's participation -- just as cable carries your local t.v. stations. In fact, because of cable the television stations do not spend lots of money putting in new translator stations to obtain expanded signal coverage and instead rely on the satelite or cable providers to carry their local broadcasts.
No, this is not the case. The way it would work is this: The sender deposits say $10 in a private (i.e., non-government) escrow account. When the sender sends e-mail, they would get a key from the escrow agency (certifying that the funds are present) and include it in the e-mail.
The recipient's e-mail client on the other hand would look to see if a valid key is present. If it is, then it would let the e-mail through and the user could decide if the e-mail is spam or not and whether to ding the sender say $0.10. The key would be used to obtain the funds from the escrow agency. If the key isn't present then a number of things could happen such as:
The mail is trashed.
The mail is filtered into a spam folder
The mail is spam filtered (more closely) to see if it spam.
A challenge is sent back to the user to make them prove they are human. (Like those numbers/letters you have to enter on some web pages to prove you are human.)
Etc...
Not long ago, a spammer accidentally let their stats out as to how many people responded to a spam. I don't remember the exact figures but it was on the order of 20 responses (not purchases) per 100,000 spams sent. It would not take much cost to make it such that it is not cost efficient to send spam. (At $0.01, the above mailing would cost $1,000 which is more than one is going to get from selling a couple bottles of penis enlargement pills. $0.10 would be $10,000 which even more proves my point.)
The escrow agency would make money by collecting a percentage of the money charged the spammers as well as on the interest on the money in the escrow accounts. Would everybody be able to afford it? Yes, pretty much, $5.00 would last virtually indefinitely if a person didn't spam.
If the ICANN Spam act allowed for people to collect (like some state laws do and which ICANN did away with) then the whole spam situation could go away. If it allowed the recipient to collect say $10 per spam that would be perfect. Why? Some enterprising attorney could make a deal with an ISP (and their customers) to do the collections. Then it isn't a user going after $10 but an attorney going after $100,000 (1,000 users X $10.)
You said:For the record, I'm actually opposed to the widespread use of either program due to the closed nature of both of their formats, which is intended to lock the user in.
Actually, the WordPerefect file format has been widely published since the WordPerfect 5.1 days. It has been on the website since WordPrfect had a website (as WP or Corell).
The philosophy at WordPerfect has always been one of openness. For example, they were the first word processor to ship without copy protection which is one of the primary reasons for its early sucess. (Since it was easier for the people in the office to manag the product and even stolen copies created a trained user base.)
Of course, MS is going the other way where they won't turn on your software unless it is "registered" and you get your software pulled if you reconfigure your machine too many times.
Well, it is simple. They have not only come out with a.NET framework which admittedly, is similar to the Java stuff but, they have also adapted a whole slew of languages to use it. I have yet to see gcc C++ output to JVM byte code. Sure, there are some languages that compile to JVM bytecode but not many highly used ones (except perhaps Python/Jython).
What Microsoft brings to the table is not only.NET but a host of languages to take advantage of it. Not only that but they do it (more or less) in the same distribution (Visual Studio) and finally, they have the type systems interoperate. What the Java community needs to do is to get gcc and other languages/compilers that are available to compile not only to native but also to JVM bytecode and have the languages's type systems interoperate in such a way that linking to libraries from any is as trivial as adding the library to your project.
I'm no fan of Open Source. However, IMHO, the whole underpinning of open source movement is that it is anti-Microsoft and it is trying to abandon Microsoft by competing in a way that Microsoft can not compete. The Microsoft strategy to kill the open source movement (which it will never be able to do entirely) is to "out develop" the open source community. Microsoft has a legion of programmers all dedicated solely to developing libraries and NEW technologies for Longhorn that will make businesses more productive such as including the technologies that they aquired from Great Planes Software directly into the OS/.NET framework. Microsoft's strategy is simply to out develop everybody else.
Up to this point, operating systems have been fairly simple without a whole lot of features. That is why it is possible with a relatively small crew to write one that is fairly good. (It is still a big project don't misunderstand.) However, what Microsoft is planning with Longhorn is to raise the bar almost impossibly high and to make it such that the amount of coding required to offer something similar is almost an impossible task.
Does this mean that the efforts of Sun, IBM, Novell, and the rest of the community to fight Microsoft will fail? No not necessarily. But Microsoft is now fighting for its life and it is not going to go down easily. Microsoft has literally billions of dollars of spare cash it its banks and investments. With these billions of dollars at its immediate disposal, Microsoft's goal (perhaps for the first time) is to offer so much value that it is almost foolish to consider an alternative.
I feel the sudden urge to take up ariel kite photography and go photograph the coastline in and around Malibu. We could document how certain mansions are intruding on the coastline and ruining the view. One in particular seems to obstruct the view more than the others.
Does anybody want to come along? This could be a lot of fun.
Put the computers in the living room. Don't put them in their bed rooms or some other place where they can be reasonably assured that they can use the computer in private (yes, even with the door open.)
One other suggestion would be to install software that monitors their computer access and logs the websites that they visit etc. There are plenty of these out there both for private and commerical use.
Remember, while they are living in your home and are under the age of 18, the computers are not your kids computers but yours. (And even afterwards unless you choose to give them to them.) Thus you have every right to monitor the computers they use. If they do not like that, nobody is forcing them to use the computers you provide. And with the computers being installed in the living room, your kids will be much more likely to view only things that are appropriate for the entire family.
I have to admit from the onset that I am no fan of open source. This is for a variety of reasons. (It is probably sacrilege to state that here.)
Voting machine software is however a case where I firmly believe that open source is not only important but necessary. The ability to vote either among a certain group or among the populace as a whole goes to the heart of our democratic republic. If votes are not tallied properly, not only may mistakes be made but there is the very real possibility that the country through forged votes may be manipulated by those who have nefarious purposes in their heart.
The cryptographic community a long time ago discovered the best way to ensure the security of a cryptographic algorithm is to provide the algorithm to their colleagues. The rest of the cryptographic community then responds by trying to break the algorithm or in the least trying to discover the weaknesses. Because of this review process, the algorithms are then adjusted until they are highly secure. On the other hand, when cryptographic algorithms are kept secret, the review process is skipped and it is not uncommon for unsecure algorithms to make it on the market. When this happens it can cost lives and money.
The same can be said in the case of voting machines. If the source code is not released, security problems will likely go unnoticed until discovered by accident by someone who may or may not have the public's best interest at heart. In fact, the likely hood of it being discovered by someone who wants to manipulate the system will actually go up as they are more likely to be able to obtain the source through deception or to take the time to decompile the voting machine binaries. With the large number of voting machines that could be used around the country -- or in storage between use -- it would not be hard for someone to obtain at least the binaries for the voting machine software. And this goes to the heart of the matter which is this: Someone who wants to manipulate the system will be able to obtain the source either by bribery, theft or through decompiling the software's object code. Thus in a closed source environment, the only people who would not have the source and be able to easily discover the problems would be the good guys.
First off, I was just using that as an example. The point being that many of the arguements that people use against Microsoft could also apply to some of the Linux distributions. And because of this, it leaves Microsoft legal openings and arguements.
Second off, I am not a Linux person. Personally, I find Linux rough and unpolished in comparison to Windows or the Mac. That is not a slam, just my opinion. Don't expect everybody in to be a hard-core Linux person nor stupid if they aren't.
Third, you can provide a simple correction without trying to make it a slam.
In fact, you could even extend the arguement further.
How many non-open-source applications are distributed by RedHat or the other Linux distributors? If RealAudio came out with a RealPlayer for Linux in binary form, would it get distributed in the various distributions? I doubt it.
Of course, if these sorts of applications didn't get included with the various Linux distributions, it would only serve to bolster Microsoft's legal position.
In fact, I think that one could make the arguement that the open source movement might make it easier for Microsoft's legal position to be held up in court. This because Microsoft can always point to "free" software and simply say that they are providing a "free" equivelent. In fact, Microsoft could even say that they are at a disadvantage since they are not providing source.
Re:Move the onus from the recipient to the sender.
on
IETF to Look at Spam
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yes, this is correct. The end user would never even know that they have received the spam. It would go into the bit-bucket (if it was spam) before it ever appeared in their in-box if the sending server (or for that matter the senders themselves) canceled it before it was picked up. So it would be totally transparent to the user and this avoids having confused users wondering where their mail is.
Since most spam affects 100's if not 100's of 1,000's of people, using a local blackhole list would create allow e-mail to be self moderating. After 1 or N people had reported a given server or server/user as a source of spam, they would be automatically added for a period of N days and this would last until the spam barrage was over. So while yes, some spam would get out, only very few would ever see it before it was canceled by the originating ISP or by others who recived the spam before you did.
-Art
Pollarda@lextek.com
Lextek: Suppliers of High Performance Text Retrieval Engines.
I was the original poster. You got it basically right in your synopsis too.
To recount, my idea is for when someone sends a mail message, the message itself goes onto the local mail server and the header for the message would go to the recipient. The recipient's mail client would then download the message. However, it would be possible for the mail server to delete the message _before_ the mail client ever sees it in which case, the mail server tells the client this and the client would then throw away the header and the end user _would_never_even_know_ that the mail (spam) had been sent. This would be totally transparent. It would also allow of course, for sender of the mail to be able to tell if / when a mail message had been picked up. (Not read but simply picked up.)
One of the big advantages of a system such as this is that you know for 100% certainty where the spam (or other e-mail) is coming from. You don't have to spend time looking through forged headers etc. in order to send a complaint to the ISP.
ISPs on the other hand would be capable of canceling spam after it had been sent and before it was picked up by the end user. For example, someone send's 100,000 spams from an AOL account. Somebody notifies AOL that they received spam from the offending person, AOL looks and AOL then is capable of cancelling all unpicked up spams -- before they are ever delivered to the end user. Alternatively, AOL could also simply look on their servers and say: "hey, we have 100,000 messages that are waiting to be picked up, we had better look into this" and then make a determination from that point as to whether the mail should be canceled -- again before anybody (or very few) sees the spam.
Blacklists could easily be created too where the site is blacklisted for only a certain period of time. So after three days (for example) the blacklisting would go away automatically. This avoids the problem that many ISPs have where they get blacklisted due to a single user and then they can't figure out how to get off the blacklist. Using this approach, the blacklisting would only last for as long as the spambarrage continued.
Blacklists would easily be able to be created within certain organizations or groups of people who have similar "moderating" views rather than trying to make one (or very few) blacklist(s) meet everybody's needs as is now the case -- and often hurting people's ability to send and receive legitimate mail.
The protocol could not only specify what server the mail came from but also the user. So, for example, if someone were spamming from AOL, it might not be a great idea to blacklist AOL but only that user from AOL. This would work for mail systems where you know it is a legitimate business but with a few unruly users.
So, using this technique, it would be possible for a spammer to get a few spams out but it would be nearly impossible for them to spam very many people before it was caught by their ISP and canceled or the user/ISP was blacklisted for a period of time.
-Art
Pollarda@Lextek.com
Lextek: Suppliers of High Performance Text Retrieval Engines
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yea, sure. That is easy to say when only one or two satellites are affected. The bigger point is what happens when ALL (or a significant percentage) of our communications, GPS, and weather satellites go out simultaneously. Can the world deal with greatly reduced phone, internet, GPS, service for any appreciable period of time?
With all this reliance on satellite technology for GPS, communications, and weather prediction what happens when (not if) the sun hits a more active solar cycle eliminating all of these satellites in one fell swoop? We have become terribly dependent on satellite technology (that I agree is cool). However, there have been solar storms that would knock out all of our satellites in recent memory -- only we did not have any satellites up yet. Now the satellites are up and the next large solar storm is just lurking out there getting ready to strike.
As usual, beware any significant reliance on any one technology.
This could be viewed as Microsoft making a bid to buy Netscape. Remember that AOL owns what is left of Netscape. This of course, includes the FireFox browser as well.
So beyond the anti-trust issues surrounding a joined MSN-AOL portal / service, is the issue of Microsoft potentially owning at least a stake in the major browser that competes against Internet Explorer. Also, it is important to note that partial buy-outs are often precursors to complete buyouts.
As such, the U.S. military can turn off the satelites or scramble their signal whenever it deems appropriate. So, before our friends the Germans decide to become overly dependant on U.S. technology, they ought to ensure that the world is a stable place otherwise they may find themselves hung out to dry on the reef.
When you can go from place to place in a fax machine? There is something really nostalgic about it.
"Do you remember mommy when we went to Disneyland in the fax machine?"
Ooops. As was pointed out by an astute reader, my finger was getting a little heavy on the "w"... The URL should be: http://www.freeaudio.org NOT http://wwww.freeaudio.org/
I run FreeAudio.org. The goal is to create audiobooks of the most important literary works on liberty and freedom. I regularly share our first work: Frederic Bastiat's classic book "The Law" via LimeWire. The works are intended to be downloaded and shared. (You can even post them on your website as long as the copyright info is kept intact.) Sometime today or tomorrow, I'll be posting our second work: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. With both of these works, there is a statement at the beginning encouraging people to share them "via their favorite file sharing service." So, not only is sharing via P2P allowed, it is encouraged. (Add one more to your list.)
Yes, but it was their targeting that really had problems. Part of this is due to the complexities of multi-stage rockets. What was transfered to China (through Lorral) was the targeting technology so that austensibly they could place satelites into exact orbits. This same technology is used to target warheads so that theey don't explode in your general vacinity but right on top of you.
This isn't too surprising. Bill Clinton sold China our multi-stage missile technology for satellite launching. China is using this to build ICBMs to target the western United States. (And have since threatened to hit Los Angeles with a nuclear warhead if we ever interfere in regards to our ally Taiwan.) This was after he received numerous under the table donations for his campaign from the Chinese government and financiers. After he sold out our national security to the Chinese for some campaign donations, giving the Chinese a national search engine is no big deal.
If we can't get people to run anti-virus software to scan their systems and remove viruses, how can we hope people will run a reverse firewall?
Installing anti-virus software is not too difficult but apparently too difficult for a significant number of users. If we can't get people to install anti-virus software to keep the viruses from destroying their hard drive, how can we hope they'll install a firewall to stop their machine from sending spam?
-Art
However, Monsato was involved in negligence in that they did not provide adequate protection to ensure that their plants seeds / pollen does not infect the plants on other farms.
Since it is now apparently possible for someone to be sued for having "infected" crops, it is up to the growers of GM crops to ensure that their crops do not "infect" others.
This all means that we are treading in new legal waters so it should be interesting seeing how this all shakes out.
My signature is a pizza.
You can still take them to small claims court. Keep in mind, you can recover $500 plus collection expenses. Thus it is $500 plus the cost of having the suit served in England and your court fees.
After you get a judgement (which you will do since they will most likely not show up), you can put a lien on any propety or bank accounts or other aspects of their business in the United States. You may even be able to approach Visa / Mastercard and attach a lien against their accounts. Furthermore, once you have a judgement, you should be able to pursue them across national lines due to the many treaties that are in place.
I sure would like to see their expression once they realize that yes, you can pursue them across national bounderies. -Art
Oh, I don't know about that.
I remember a comment by an engineerring professor when I asked him his opinion of the scientific calculators. His reply: "I'm all for them. Because now, we can concentrate on some REAL math." i.e., the fancier the calculator gets, the more challenging the math and other problems become.
So, is life more easy because you have a fancy scientific calculator? No. The problems just get harder.
I get tired of corporations complaining about new technology. Clearly XM and Sirius are both new technologies and are the wave of the future. Remember when t.v. cable was new and all these same arguements were presented? For ClearChannel to be competitive over the long haul, it needs to get off its rear and create a satelite network of its own or get its shows carried on the various satelite radio providers.
Passing legislation such as this is stupid to put it bluntly. It will not change anything. If passed, in 10 years, we will be back to hearing the same arguments and eventually, the satelite providers will be providing whatever they choose anyway with or without ClearChannel's participation -- just as cable carries your local t.v. stations. In fact, because of cable the television stations do not spend lots of money putting in new translator stations to obtain expanded signal coverage and instead rely on the satelite or cable providers to carry their local broadcasts.
No, this is not the case. The way it would work is this: The sender deposits say $10 in a private (i.e., non-government) escrow account. When the sender sends e-mail, they would get a key from the escrow agency (certifying that the funds are present) and include it in the e-mail.
The recipient's e-mail client on the other hand would look to see if a valid key is present. If it is, then it would let the e-mail through and the user could decide if the e-mail is spam or not and whether to ding the sender say $0.10. The key would be used to obtain the funds from the escrow agency. If the key isn't present then a number of things could happen such as:
Not long ago, a spammer accidentally let their stats out as to how many people responded to a spam. I don't remember the exact figures but it was on the order of 20 responses (not purchases) per 100,000 spams sent. It would not take much cost to make it such that it is not cost efficient to send spam. (At $0.01, the above mailing would cost $1,000 which is more than one is going to get from selling a couple bottles of penis enlargement pills. $0.10 would be $10,000 which even more proves my point.)
The escrow agency would make money by collecting a percentage of the money charged the spammers as well as on the interest on the money in the escrow accounts. Would everybody be able to afford it? Yes, pretty much, $5.00 would last virtually indefinitely if a person didn't spam.
If the ICANN Spam act allowed for people to collect (like some state laws do and which ICANN did away with) then the whole spam situation could go away. If it allowed the recipient to collect say $10 per spam that would be perfect. Why? Some enterprising attorney could make a deal with an ISP (and their customers) to do the collections. Then it isn't a user going after $10 but an attorney going after $100,000 (1,000 users X $10.)
Just my $0.00002, this is SlashDot after all.
-Art
Slash what? And what is a .sig anyway?
You said:For the record, I'm actually opposed to the widespread use of either program due to the closed nature of both of their formats, which is intended to lock the user in.
Actually, the WordPerefect file format has been widely published since the WordPerfect 5.1 days. It has been on the website since WordPrfect had a website (as WP or Corell).
The philosophy at WordPerfect has always been one of openness. For example, they were the first word processor to ship without copy protection which is one of the primary reasons for its early sucess. (Since it was easier for the people in the office to manag the product and even stolen copies created a trained user base.)
Of course, MS is going the other way where they won't turn on your software unless it is "registered" and you get your software pulled if you reconfigure your machine too many times.
Well, it is simple. They have not only come out with a .NET framework which admittedly, is similar to the Java stuff but, they have also adapted a whole slew of languages to use it. I have yet to see gcc C++ output to JVM byte code. Sure, there are some languages that compile to JVM bytecode but not many highly used ones (except perhaps Python/Jython).
What Microsoft brings to the table is not only .NET but a host of languages to take advantage of it. Not only that but they do it (more or less) in the same distribution (Visual Studio) and finally, they have the type systems interoperate. What the Java community needs to do is to get gcc and other languages/compilers that are available to compile not only to native but also to JVM bytecode and have the languages's type systems interoperate in such a way that linking to libraries from any is as trivial as adding the library to your project.
I'm no fan of Open Source. However, IMHO, the whole underpinning of open source movement is that it is anti-Microsoft and it is trying to abandon Microsoft by competing in a way that Microsoft can not compete. The Microsoft strategy to kill the open source movement (which it will never be able to do entirely) is to "out develop" the open source community. Microsoft has a legion of programmers all dedicated solely to developing libraries and NEW technologies for Longhorn that will make businesses more productive such as including the technologies that they aquired from Great Planes Software directly into the OS/.NET framework. Microsoft's strategy is simply to out develop everybody else.
Up to this point, operating systems have been fairly simple without a whole lot of features. That is why it is possible with a relatively small crew to write one that is fairly good. (It is still a big project don't misunderstand.) However, what Microsoft is planning with Longhorn is to raise the bar almost impossibly high and to make it such that the amount of coding required to offer something similar is almost an impossible task.
Does this mean that the efforts of Sun, IBM, Novell, and the rest of the community to fight Microsoft will fail? No not necessarily. But Microsoft is now fighting for its life and it is not going to go down easily. Microsoft has literally billions of dollars of spare cash it its banks and investments. With these billions of dollars at its immediate disposal, Microsoft's goal (perhaps for the first time) is to offer so much value that it is almost foolish to consider an alternative.
-Art
.sig? What's a .sig?
I feel the sudden urge to take up ariel kite photography and go photograph the coastline in and around Malibu. We could document how certain mansions are intruding on the coastline and ruining the view. One in particular seems to obstruct the view more than the others.
Does anybody want to come along? This could be a lot of fun.
-Art
.sig what's that?
I have a couple simple suggestions....
Put the computers in the living room. Don't put them in their bed rooms or some other place where they can be reasonably assured that they can use the computer in private (yes, even with the door open.)
One other suggestion would be to install software that monitors their computer access and logs the websites that they visit etc. There are plenty of these out there both for private and commerical use.
Remember, while they are living in your home and are under the age of 18, the computers are not your kids computers but yours. (And even afterwards unless you choose to give them to them.) Thus you have every right to monitor the computers they use. If they do not like that, nobody is forcing them to use the computers you provide. And with the computers being installed in the living room, your kids will be much more likely to view only things that are appropriate for the entire family.
I have to admit from the onset that I am no fan of open source. This is for a variety of reasons. (It is probably sacrilege to state that here.)
Voting machine software is however a case where I firmly believe that open source is not only important but necessary. The ability to vote either among a certain group or among the populace as a whole goes to the heart of our democratic republic. If votes are not tallied properly, not only may mistakes be made but there is the very real possibility that the country through forged votes may be manipulated by those who have nefarious purposes in their heart.
The cryptographic community a long time ago discovered the best way to ensure the security of a cryptographic algorithm is to provide the algorithm to their colleagues. The rest of the cryptographic community then responds by trying to break the algorithm or in the least trying to discover the weaknesses. Because of this review process, the algorithms are then adjusted until they are highly secure. On the other hand, when cryptographic algorithms are kept secret, the review process is skipped and it is not uncommon for unsecure algorithms to make it on the market. When this happens it can cost lives and money.
The same can be said in the case of voting machines. If the source code is not released, security problems will likely go unnoticed until discovered by accident by someone who may or may not have the public's best interest at heart. In fact, the likely hood of it being discovered by someone who wants to manipulate the system will actually go up as they are more likely to be able to obtain the source through deception or to take the time to decompile the voting machine binaries. With the large number of voting machines that could be used around the country -- or in storage between use -- it would not be hard for someone to obtain at least the binaries for the voting machine software. And this goes to the heart of the matter which is this: Someone who wants to manipulate the system will be able to obtain the source either by bribery, theft or through decompiling the software's object code. Thus in a closed source environment, the only people who would not have the source and be able to easily discover the problems would be the good guys.
First off, I was just using that as an example. The point being that many of the arguements that people use against Microsoft could also apply to some of the Linux distributions. And because of this, it leaves Microsoft legal openings and arguements.
Second off, I am not a Linux person. Personally, I find Linux rough and unpolished in comparison to Windows or the Mac. That is not a slam, just my opinion. Don't expect everybody in to be a hard-core Linux person nor stupid if they aren't.
Third, you can provide a simple correction without trying to make it a slam.
In fact, you could even extend the arguement further.
How many non-open-source applications are distributed by RedHat or the other Linux distributors? If RealAudio came out with a RealPlayer for Linux in binary form, would it get distributed in the various distributions? I doubt it.
Of course, if these sorts of applications didn't get included with the various Linux distributions, it would only serve to bolster Microsoft's legal position.
Good point.
In fact, I think that one could make the arguement that the open source movement might make it easier for Microsoft's legal position to be held up in court. This because Microsoft can always point to "free" software and simply say that they are providing a "free" equivelent. In fact, Microsoft could even say that they are at a disadvantage since they are not providing source.
Yes, this is correct. The end user would never even know that they have received the spam. It would go into the bit-bucket (if it was spam) before it ever appeared in their in-box if the sending server (or for that matter the senders themselves) canceled it before it was picked up. So it would be totally transparent to the user and this avoids having confused users wondering where their mail is.
Since most spam affects 100's if not 100's of 1,000's of people, using a local blackhole list would create allow e-mail to be self moderating. After 1 or N people had reported a given server or server/user as a source of spam, they would be automatically added for a period of N days and this would last until the spam barrage was over. So while yes, some spam would get out, only very few would ever see it before it was canceled by the originating ISP or by others who recived the spam before you did.
-Art
Pollarda@lextek.com
Lextek: Suppliers of High Performance Text Retrieval Engines.
I was the original poster. You got it basically right in your synopsis too.
To recount, my idea is for when someone sends a mail message, the message itself goes onto the local mail server and the header for the message would go to the recipient. The recipient's mail client would then download the message. However, it would be possible for the mail server to delete the message _before_ the mail client ever sees it in which case, the mail server tells the client this and the client would then throw away the header and the end user _would_never_even_know_ that the mail (spam) had been sent. This would be totally transparent. It would also allow of course, for sender of the mail to be able to tell if / when a mail message had been picked up. (Not read but simply picked up.)
One of the big advantages of a system such as this is that you know for 100% certainty where the spam (or other e-mail) is coming from. You don't have to spend time looking through forged headers etc. in order to send a complaint to the ISP.
ISPs on the other hand would be capable of canceling spam after it had been sent and before it was picked up by the end user. For example, someone send's 100,000 spams from an AOL account. Somebody notifies AOL that they received spam from the offending person, AOL looks and AOL then is capable of cancelling all unpicked up spams -- before they are ever delivered to the end user. Alternatively, AOL could also simply look on their servers and say: "hey, we have 100,000 messages that are waiting to be picked up, we had better look into this" and then make a determination from that point as to whether the mail should be canceled -- again before anybody (or very few) sees the spam.
Blacklists could easily be created too where the site is blacklisted for only a certain period of time. So after three days (for example) the blacklisting would go away automatically. This avoids the problem that many ISPs have where they get blacklisted due to a single user and then they can't figure out how to get off the blacklist. Using this approach, the blacklisting would only last for as long as the spambarrage continued.
Blacklists would easily be able to be created within certain organizations or groups of people who have similar "moderating" views rather than trying to make one (or very few) blacklist(s) meet everybody's needs as is now the case -- and often hurting people's ability to send and receive legitimate mail.
The protocol could not only specify what server the mail came from but also the user. So, for example, if someone were spamming from AOL, it might not be a great idea to blacklist AOL but only that user from AOL. This would work for mail systems where you know it is a legitimate business but with a few unruly users.
So, using this technique, it would be possible for a spammer to get a few spams out but it would be nearly impossible for them to spam very many people before it was caught by their ISP and canceled or the user/ISP was blacklisted for a period of time.
-Art
Pollarda@Lextek.com
Lextek: Suppliers of High Performance Text Retrieval Engines