Really? What free IDE do you recommend for Windows?
Or are you asserting that 'gcc' and 'gnumake' constitute an integrated development environment?
(Note: Don't read this as a flame unless you actually DON'T have one in mind. If you do, I want to hear about it, because I have some stuff I'd like to develop under Windows, but I don't copy software and I can't afford a MS developer's subscription.)
But to some people irrelevant, since your little conversational example is, by the strict rules of grammar, incorrect also.
There is a problem with correcting other people's grammar. A lousy writer uses poor grammar. A decent writer uses good grammar, with some mistakes. A good writer uses perfect grammar, except when quoting people, and even cleans out some quotes out of courtesy.
A truly talented writer, or even just an experienced, professional one, knows exactly when and where to break the rules of grammar in order for his writing to have maximum impact. He knows exactly what agrammatical or antigrammatical constructions will flow more smoothly than a correctly grammatical sentence. ('A preposition really isn't all that bad a thing to end a sentence with.') And, more importantly, he knows exactly when he doesn't WANT a smooth flow, and exactly which laws of grammar to violate in order to make his reader sit up and take notice.
The talented one does this instinctively. The professional does this with full malice aforethought.
Basically, then, this: the way to become a really excellent writer is to learn all of the rules of grammar, follow them for a while, and THEN learn when it's necessary to deviate from them.
Or you can just keep sucking, and pointing out the grammatical inconsistencies that the gentlemen with way more experience and professionalism put in there deliberately.
(By the way, I would say that the person who came up with 'Think Different' was exactly such a naturally talented person. It forces you to take notice: it is completely comprehensible to anyone, but it's also nothing you've ever heard before, and doesn't quite follow the rules. That is, it's just jarring enough to make you think about it.)
What is it with these game companies? I have two monitors, why can't they give me the OPTION of not blacking one out while I play? And/or playing in a window? Diablo & Diablo 2 do. Civilization 2 does. Master of Orion 2 does.
Alpha Centauri does, but only because *I* talked with the main guy doing the Mac port and specifically asked him to include it.
So the main poster says 'It's unreasonable to expect to pay only $7 per album today, when that's what it cost 25 years ago and there's been inflation.'
And I say, 'Ah, but you're not getting everything you paid for back then... no album cover, no distribution costs, no actual tangible item, and so forth. So $7 wouldn't be an unreasonable price for them to ask.'
And you say 'You're paying $50 per month to your cable company!'
If you used a bit of context, and thought for 4 seconds, you would realize that my argument was that the $7 for an album DOESN'T INCLUDE distribution, so they don't have to charge as much in that price. I.e. 'when you're paying them $7 you're not paying them for distribution'. But no, leap first, foot in mouth and jaws firmly closed.
> but if owning a car is otherwise a necessity, then riding the bus saves me parking fees and some maintenance costs > and very little else
Flawed example, but your point is sound.
I drive about 10,000 miles a year right at the moment. (I bike to work, and to rehearsals, and to a lot of other stuff.) My insurance is on the order of a one to two hundred dollars a year lower than an 'average' driver solely because of this (though you do have to keep it up for a year.) Gas prices right now for me (I live in the Bay area and my car requires premium unleaded) are upwards of $2.00 per gallon. If we extrapolate that out for a year (I sure HOPE it doesn't last that long, but it may) I pay $667 per year in gas prices (at 30 mpg), instead of $1333 for a more average driver.
Plus I change my oil on the order of three times a year (even though the manufacturer suggests every 7,500 miles), which saves me $60. And this is all not to mention the extra wear and tear, which costs money in terms of repairs and eventual replacement of parts, tires, and even eventually the wole car.
I bought this car with 5000 miles on it, for $10,000. At the rate I'm using it, I won't have to replace it for another 15 years... 20 years total. That's $500/year for a car. Not bad. If I drove it twice as far, assuming I'm planning on selling it when it hit 200,000 miles (like I did with my last Acura), it would cost me twice as much per year.
So if we make all these naive assumptions, none of which are perfectly accurate but all of which are reasonable... then I'm saving myself $667 (gas) + $500 (car cost) + $200 (insurance) + $60 (oil changes) + $??? (maintenance/replacemet costs/etc) = $1427/year plus whatever the $??? turns out to be.
It's not a huge amount... but it'd be enough for me to get myself a nice shiny slightly-used PowerMac every year if I wanted one.
This is a test of the idea that so many people have been yelling about for so long.
If, in fact, the reason (some) people don't like paying for CDs is because they have to pay for a bunch of songs they don't want in order to get a few they do, then this model works great.
If, in fact, the reason people don't like paying for CDs is because they want free stuff, then this idea won't go anywhere.
Of course, there are other things that could make this fail, and I'm sure everyone will be keeping a sharp eye out for them. But on the whole, this is a grand test of veracity.
Personally, I don't hold out a lot of hope. But I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.
If you buy a bright neon-colored ugly box (I personally think they're cute, but whatever) you're probably paying about $300 used, which gives you a very different value proposition. ($300 for a used iMac, $693 for music, $1000 total (approximately), or 1000/700 = dollars per song.
No, I don't think buying a new Mac (or even a used one) just to play music on it is rational. There are, however, other reasons, and this would just be one to add to the list.
I already have an old PowerBook that I got for free, running MacOS 9 and iTunes, hooked up to my stereo on one end and a wireless network on the other, and running MP3s (all legal) off of my server in the other room. I would've paid $200 for it... and given that this laptop will never run X, that's about what it goes for these days.
First, let me point out that I am in agreement with your assertion that this is a reasonable price for a reasonable service.
However, your argument that this is worthwhile because your time is worth $60/hour is a fallacious one. Unless you would be working otherwise during the time that you spend chasing songs, what your relaxation time is worth has no definite relation to what you make.
That is to say, suppose I make $50/hour, and work 40 hours per week, and you make $100/hour and work 40 hours a week. That does not mean that if someone wanted me to work an extra five hours, I would do it at that $50/hour rate... that is dependent upon how highly I value my leisure time, and I value it more highly than that. If they want me to work 60 hours a week, they'd better pay me MORE for those additional hours, even if they're not required to by law.
Then again, I know of a person who work two jobs, one for $15/hour (40 hours a week) and one for $10/hour (10-15 hours a week. Is his time worth $15/hour? If so, why is he taking the second job? Maybe it's only worth $10? Basically, he's decided what he'll sell his leisure time for, and it doesn't bear any real resemblance to what he makes in his primary job... it's whatever he can get.
If you assume that my time is worth $150/hour because I did my last big contract at that rate, then there are a LOT of things that I wouldn't do for myself that I'm perfectly happy doing.
You're not paying for duplication, or for distribution. The idea that you can pay the same thing as you did 20 years ago, and get less in return, is not perhaps as unreasonable as you seem to imply.
Well, bear in mind that MS bought a bunch of patents for stuff relating to OpenGL from SGI. If they want to stay a member of the OpenGL group they have to disclose and agree to cross-license patents. Do they have any interest in doing so? Hardly.
Basically, they'll wait a year or two and then serve everyone who uses OpenGL notice that they are infringing on patents and ask for big fines, and promises not to do it again.
I wonder if they can also sue users for using OpenGL patents without a license. I mean, wouldn't it be interesting if MS could sue everyone who bought the (fabled) Linux and Mac versions of Neverwinter Nights? Sort of an inverse class-action.
I don't want this! If I can't play my game on one monitor and check email, compile something, and browse the web on the other monitor, then I won't play the game.
Is this really what we want? A situation where you have to reboot your computer in order to check your email?
Or maybe you suggest that we have a separate computer to play games on. Many people do this already... it's called a PS2, or an X-Box.
Actually, power constraints on a diesel bus are pretty much nonexistant. When I was 12, lo these many years ago, I went on a bus trip around the USA with a 'travel camp'. We had a bunch of computers, which never put the bus's motor out in the least. Basically, you'd have to have an awful lot of computers in there before you even started to suck up the amount of power that a bus-wide air conditioning system does.
How about, to make it interesting, I'll copy a file from one ENCRYPTED virtual filesystem to another ENCRYPTED virtual filesystem, on the same disk. Which actually takes longer, since you have to seek back and forth between the two areas of the disk.
Plus I've got a dozen or so apps open, one of which is MS Word, and I'm browsing the actually useful and interesting articles on slashdot in a DIFFERENT window.
Ah, that would be... a 100 meg file... in 44 seconds.
Not bad, when you're reading a chunk from a disk, decrypting it, seeking over to the other side of the disk, encrypting it, writing it, seeking back over to the first part of the disk again, reading another chunk... etc.
> Rule 17 was not the only example of Loebner and co. being pompous and humorless.
I've looked over the article and some of the transcripts. It seems pretty obvious to me who gets the mantle of 'pompous and humorless.'
Minsky's best attempt at humor was his $100 'prize', and Loebner turned that around and made it bite him so hard that I doubt the man will ever attempt humor again. Which is okay, I guess... it was amazingly pathetic and meanspirited even before Loebner hit him over the head with it.
Basically, you have a person who everyone in the field thinks is a god. Is it any wonder that everyone in the field thinks that every time he opens his mouth, whatever he's arguing against is successfully demolished? They don't even have to listen to whatever he's saying... I mean, how often does God get out-argued in the bible? Can't happen. Ignore all evidence to the contrary. I guess it's not even surprising that his arguments don't hold water... if you've been considered a god for a while, your 'intelligent argument' muscles start to atrophy. And no matter what anyone says, those are diffreent muscles than the ones you flex when you're thinking about how to set up a new kind of neural net.
It seems to me that Loebner has his points. You may not agree with them, but at least try to find sound reasons for disagreeing. Saying that HE is humorless and pompous, when Minsky has laid nearly exclusive claim to that particular high ground in the conversation, just makes you look, uh, humorless and pompous. And maybe a wee bit... dumb?
It's fine, trying to be reasonable. I like that. So here's me trying to reciprocate.
You've misread the article.
The original Washington state anti-spam legislation was passed years ago. It has nothing what-so-ever to do with putting 'ADV:' into the header of advertisments. It says 'you can't spam in Washington state', to put it simply.
The article claims that the new legislation does three things:
1) Requires all unsolicited commercial e-mail to include "ADV:" as the first four letters of the Subject. Of course, this is on TOP of the fact that it is illegal, so it does seem a little silly.
2) Carves out a broad exemption, not only to the new 'ADV:' part of the bill but to the original UCE law currently in effect, for businesses that have 'done business with' the person they're sending email to in the past.
3) COMPLETELY exempts all ISPs, not only from the new 'ADV:' part of the bill but to the original UCE law currently in effect.
4) Lowers damages to a point where large companies such as MS would not be at all bothered by them, and caps them at $25k per day: peanuts to Microsoft, but a lot for a small business or lone spammer. This are not only damages for breaking the 'ADV:' part of the bill, but for the original UCE law currently in effect.
So MS is lobbying to eliminate an older law which prohibits it from spamming. It has taken three separate approaches, any one of which will allow it to spam with impunity if it goes through.
Incidentally, if you read the old law, commercial email is email that is designed to solicit users to buy or sell a product or service. Under this law, there is no way that any notification of a security patch could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called UCE under the bill. Nor could any information sent by an ISP about a violation of the terms of use.
So, you stated your opinion. My opinion is that you should do a little research, and perhaps even reread the article, before stating your opinion. Not doing so simply spreads ignorance further. And insulting those people who have read the article more carefully than you have makes you look like the one who needs a banana.
There... I was civil. I was nice. I didn't say where he should put the banana.:-)
Supporting evidence? Documentation? You clearly haven't read the actual proposed amendments, or you would have made some reference to them.
You assume (as many Slashdotters do) that the person who wrote the original article, as well as the people he interviewed, must all be dumber than you, and that nobody else thought of this interpretation, instead of having thought of it and discarded it.
In the absence of any documentation other than the article, you take the parts of the article that conform to your worldview and paint a picture with them. You assume that anything in the article that doesn't conform to your worldview can be safely discounted... in effect, that you are so much smarter than the people interviewed and the writer that you don't need to check their sources... you just somehow know the truth.
This is commonly known as hubris. (Or, well, it would be, if people had bigger vocabularies these days.)
Even MS, in the article, states that the bill is 'aimed at balancing the interests of consumers... with businesses' desire to tap the Internet as an advertising medium.' Not 'with ISPs' desire not to be left holding the bag'.
Plus they want damages capped at $25k per day, which MS could pay out of petty cash, as could any other huge business, but which basically knocks small business out of the illegal spam game.
Microsoft does, in fact, sell email addresses. I have firm firsthand evidence of this.
They do NOT automatically sell email any address created on MSN. They DO sell addresses, probably at irregular intervals, of people who have somehow gotten onto their mailing lists. They MAY filter out all of the MSN email addresses before they sell those lists; I wouldn't know, since I've never had a MSN account.
But I have one account (msspam@mymachine.com) that I only gave to Microsoft, when I needed to give them an email address to sign up for something. This address now gets some very odd spam, albiet very rarely, as well as a MS mailing list that, with my browser, there appears to be no way to unsubscribe from.
I suppose it is possible that someone managed to compromise the mailing list by hacking into Microsoft, or perhaps by somehow interposing themselves between me and Microsoft and sniffing the email address as I sent it to them. I deem this less likely than MS selling it to someone, who sold it to someone, who... well... you get the idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? What free IDE do you recommend for Windows?
Or are you asserting that 'gcc' and 'gnumake' constitute an integrated development environment?
(Note: Don't read this as a flame unless you actually DON'T have one in mind. If you do, I want to hear about it, because I have some stuff I'd like to develop under Windows, but I don't copy software and I can't afford a MS developer's subscription.)
-fred
But to some people irrelevant, since your little conversational example is, by the strict rules of grammar, incorrect also.
There is a problem with correcting other people's grammar. A lousy writer uses poor grammar. A decent writer uses good grammar, with some mistakes. A good writer uses perfect grammar, except when quoting people, and even cleans out some quotes out of courtesy.
A truly talented writer, or even just an experienced, professional one, knows exactly when and where to break the rules of grammar in order for his writing to have maximum impact. He knows exactly what agrammatical or antigrammatical constructions will flow more smoothly than a correctly grammatical sentence. ('A preposition really isn't all that bad a thing to end a sentence with.') And, more importantly, he knows exactly when he doesn't WANT a smooth flow, and exactly which laws of grammar to violate in order to make his reader sit up and take notice.
The talented one does this instinctively. The professional does this with full malice aforethought.
Basically, then, this: the way to become a really excellent writer is to learn all of the rules of grammar, follow them for a while, and THEN learn when it's necessary to deviate from them.
Or you can just keep sucking, and pointing out the grammatical inconsistencies that the gentlemen with way more experience and professionalism put in there deliberately.
(By the way, I would say that the person who came up with 'Think Different' was exactly such a naturally talented person. It forces you to take notice: it is completely comprehensible to anyone, but it's also nothing you've ever heard before, and doesn't quite follow the rules. That is, it's just jarring enough to make you think about it.)
-fred
What is it with these game companies? I have two monitors, why can't they give me the OPTION of not blacking one out while I play? And/or playing in a window? Diablo & Diablo 2 do. Civilization 2 does. Master of Orion 2 does.
Alpha Centauri does, but only because *I* talked with the main guy doing the Mac port and specifically asked him to include it.
The development investment is trivial.
-fred
So the main poster says 'It's unreasonable to expect to pay only $7 per album today, when that's what it cost 25 years ago and there's been inflation.'
And I say, 'Ah, but you're not getting everything you paid for back then... no album cover, no distribution costs, no actual tangible item, and so forth. So $7 wouldn't be an unreasonable price for them to ask.'
And you say 'You're paying $50 per month to your cable company!'
If you used a bit of context, and thought for 4 seconds, you would realize that my argument was that the $7 for an album DOESN'T INCLUDE distribution, so they don't have to charge as much in that price. I.e. 'when you're paying them $7 you're not paying them for distribution'. But no, leap first, foot in mouth and jaws firmly closed.
-fred
> but if owning a car is otherwise a necessity, then riding the bus saves me parking fees and some maintenance costs
> and very little else
Flawed example, but your point is sound.
I drive about 10,000 miles a year right at the moment. (I bike to work, and to rehearsals, and to a lot of other stuff.) My insurance is on the order of a one to two hundred dollars a year lower than an 'average' driver solely because of this (though you do have to keep it up for a year.) Gas prices right now for me (I live in the Bay area and my car requires premium unleaded) are upwards of $2.00 per gallon. If we extrapolate that out for a year (I sure HOPE it doesn't last that long, but it may) I pay $667 per year in gas prices (at 30 mpg), instead of $1333 for a more average driver.
Plus I change my oil on the order of three times a year (even though the manufacturer suggests every 7,500 miles), which saves me $60. And this is all not to mention the extra wear and tear, which costs money in terms of repairs and eventual replacement of parts, tires, and even eventually the wole car.
I bought this car with 5000 miles on it, for $10,000. At the rate I'm using it, I won't have to replace it for another 15 years... 20 years total. That's $500/year for a car. Not bad. If I drove it twice as far, assuming I'm planning on selling it when it hit 200,000 miles (like I did with my last Acura), it would cost me twice as much per year.
So if we make all these naive assumptions, none of which are perfectly accurate but all of which are reasonable... then I'm saving myself $667 (gas) + $500 (car cost) + $200 (insurance) + $60 (oil changes) + $??? (maintenance/replacemet costs/etc) = $1427/year plus whatever the $??? turns out to be.
It's not a huge amount... but it'd be enough for me to get myself a nice shiny slightly-used PowerMac every year if I wanted one.
-fred
This is a test of the idea that so many people have been yelling about for so long.
If, in fact, the reason (some) people don't like paying for CDs is because they have to pay for a bunch of songs they don't want in order to get a few they do, then this model works great.
If, in fact, the reason people don't like paying for CDs is because they want free stuff, then this idea won't go anywhere.
Of course, there are other things that could make this fail, and I'm sure everyone will be keeping a sharp eye out for them. But on the whole, this is a grand test of veracity.
Personally, I don't hold out a lot of hope. But I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.
-fred
If you buy a bright neon-colored ugly box (I personally think they're cute, but whatever) you're probably paying about $300 used, which gives you a very different value proposition. ($300 for a used iMac, $693 for music, $1000 total (approximately), or 1000/700 = dollars per song.
No, I don't think buying a new Mac (or even a used one) just to play music on it is rational. There are, however, other reasons, and this would just be one to add to the list.
I already have an old PowerBook that I got for free, running MacOS 9 and iTunes, hooked up to my stereo on one end and a wireless network on the other, and running MP3s (all legal) off of my server in the other room. I would've paid $200 for it... and given that this laptop will never run X, that's about what it goes for these days.
-fred
...are fear, surprise, and fanatical dedication to the Jobs-man!
Or something like that.
-fred
First, let me point out that I am in agreement with your assertion that this is a reasonable price for a reasonable service.
However, your argument that this is worthwhile because your time is worth $60/hour is a fallacious one. Unless you would be working otherwise during the time that you spend chasing songs, what your relaxation time is worth has no definite relation to what you make.
That is to say, suppose I make $50/hour, and work 40 hours per week, and you make $100/hour and work 40 hours a week. That does not mean that if someone wanted me to work an extra five hours, I would do it at that $50/hour rate... that is dependent upon how highly I value my leisure time, and I value it more highly than that. If they want me to work 60 hours a week, they'd better pay me MORE for those additional hours, even if they're not required to by law.
Then again, I know of a person who work two jobs, one for $15/hour (40 hours a week) and one for $10/hour (10-15 hours a week. Is his time worth $15/hour? If so, why is he taking the second job? Maybe it's only worth $10? Basically, he's decided what he'll sell his leisure time for, and it doesn't bear any real resemblance to what he makes in his primary job... it's whatever he can get.
If you assume that my time is worth $150/hour because I did my last big contract at that rate, then there are a LOT of things that I wouldn't do for myself that I'm perfectly happy doing.
It's just not a useful way of looking at things.
-fred
You're not paying for duplication, or for distribution. The idea that you can pay the same thing as you did 20 years ago, and get less in return, is not perhaps as unreasonable as you seem to imply.
-fred
Well, bear in mind that MS bought a bunch of patents for stuff relating to OpenGL from SGI. If they want to stay a member of the OpenGL group they have to disclose and agree to cross-license patents. Do they have any interest in doing so? Hardly.
Basically, they'll wait a year or two and then serve everyone who uses OpenGL notice that they are infringing on patents and ask for big fines, and promises not to do it again.
I wonder if they can also sue users for using OpenGL patents without a license. I mean, wouldn't it be interesting if MS could sue everyone who bought the (fabled) Linux and Mac versions of Neverwinter Nights? Sort of an inverse class-action.
-fred
The problem is, we're pretty forgiving folk... people actually have to break the law and screw things up pretty badly before we get mad at them.
Then again, some of us aren't smart enough to figure out the problems even when they do.
-fred
I don't want this! If I can't play my game on one monitor and check email, compile something, and browse the web on the other monitor, then I won't play the game.
Is this really what we want? A situation where you have to reboot your computer in order to check your email?
Or maybe you suggest that we have a separate computer to play games on. Many people do this already... it's called a PS2, or an X-Box.
-fred
Actually, power constraints on a diesel bus are pretty much nonexistant. When I was 12, lo these many years ago, I went on a bus trip around the USA with a 'travel camp'. We had a bunch of computers, which never put the bus's motor out in the least. Basically, you'd have to have an awful lot of computers in there before you even started to suck up the amount of power that a bus-wide air conditioning system does.
-fred
What's an ID3 tag?
-fred
...came originally from The Register,
2 9. html
www.theregister.co.uk
Last line of this story:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/75
Apparently someone named Andrew N wrote a letter with that, and the moniker stuck.
-fred
Hmm. I'm on a 400 mhz G4.
How about, to make it interesting, I'll copy a file from one ENCRYPTED virtual filesystem to another ENCRYPTED virtual filesystem, on the same disk. Which actually takes longer, since you have to seek back and forth between the two areas of the disk.
Plus I've got a dozen or so apps open, one of which is MS Word, and I'm browsing the actually useful and interesting articles on slashdot in a DIFFERENT window.
Ah, that would be... a 100 meg file... in 44 seconds.
Not bad, when you're reading a chunk from a disk, decrypting it, seeking over to the other side of the disk, encrypting it, writing it, seeking back over to the first part of the disk again, reading another chunk... etc.
-fred
>> The post wasn't really meant to be taken that seriously.
> Tough.
Clearly the sense of humor of the machines has caught up to that of *some* people, at least.
-fred
> Rule 17 was not the only example of Loebner and co. being pompous and humorless.
I've looked over the article and some of the transcripts. It seems pretty obvious to me who gets the mantle of 'pompous and humorless.'
Minsky's best attempt at humor was his $100 'prize', and Loebner turned that around and made it bite him so hard that I doubt the man will ever attempt humor again. Which is okay, I guess... it was amazingly pathetic and meanspirited even before Loebner hit him over the head with it.
Basically, you have a person who everyone in the field thinks is a god. Is it any wonder that everyone in the field thinks that every time he opens his mouth, whatever he's arguing against is successfully demolished? They don't even have to listen to whatever he's saying... I mean, how often does God get out-argued in the bible? Can't happen. Ignore all evidence to the contrary. I guess it's not even surprising that his arguments don't hold water... if you've been considered a god for a while, your 'intelligent argument' muscles start to atrophy. And no matter what anyone says, those are diffreent muscles than the ones you flex when you're thinking about how to set up a new kind of neural net.
It seems to me that Loebner has his points. You may not agree with them, but at least try to find sound reasons for disagreeing. Saying that HE is humorless and pompous, when Minsky has laid nearly exclusive claim to that particular high ground in the conversation, just makes you look, uh, humorless and pompous. And maybe a wee bit... dumb?
-fred
But apparently soon. We shall see... that's what they said about Neverwinter Nights, too... and where is it?
-fred
State of Washington, senate bill 5734.
http://www.leg.wa.gov/sl/5734-s_sl.pdf
But it looks a little different from the way they described it...
> AN ACT Relating to agricultural fairs; amending RCW 15.76.140; and declaring an emergency.
So... unsolicited agricultural fairs... Microsoft wanting desparately to run their own agricultural fair... hmm.
It appears that the state of Washington REUSES BILL NUMBERS. After less than TWO YEARS.
I am in awe. That's the stupidest thing I've heard this evening, INCLUDING every slashdot comment I read.
-fred
It's fine, trying to be reasonable. I like that. So here's me trying to reciprocate.
:-)
You've misread the article.
The original Washington state anti-spam legislation was passed years ago. It has nothing what-so-ever to do with putting 'ADV:' into the header of advertisments. It says 'you can't spam in Washington state', to put it simply.
The article claims that the new legislation does three things:
1) Requires all unsolicited commercial e-mail to include "ADV:" as the first four letters of the Subject. Of course, this is on TOP of the fact that it is illegal, so it does seem a little silly.
2) Carves out a broad exemption, not only to the new 'ADV:' part of the bill but to the original UCE law currently in effect, for businesses that have 'done business with' the person they're sending email to in the past.
3) COMPLETELY exempts all ISPs, not only from the new 'ADV:' part of the bill but to the original UCE law currently in effect.
4) Lowers damages to a point where large companies such as MS would not be at all bothered by them, and caps them at $25k per day: peanuts to Microsoft, but a lot for a small business or lone spammer. This are not only damages for breaking the 'ADV:' part of the bill, but for the original UCE law currently in effect.
So MS is lobbying to eliminate an older law which prohibits it from spamming. It has taken three separate approaches, any one of which will allow it to spam with impunity if it goes through.
Incidentally, if you read the old law, commercial email is email that is designed to solicit users to buy or sell a product or service. Under this law, there is no way that any notification of a security patch could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called UCE under the bill. Nor could any information sent by an ISP about a violation of the terms of use.
So, you stated your opinion. My opinion is that you should do a little research, and perhaps even reread the article, before stating your opinion. Not doing so simply spreads ignorance further. And insulting those people who have read the article more carefully than you have makes you look like the one who needs a banana.
There... I was civil. I was nice. I didn't say where he should put the banana.
-fred
Supporting evidence? Documentation? You clearly haven't read the actual proposed amendments, or you would have made some reference to them.
... with businesses' desire to tap the Internet as an advertising medium.' Not 'with ISPs' desire not to be left holding the bag'.
You assume (as many Slashdotters do) that the person who wrote the original article, as well as the people he interviewed, must all be dumber than you, and that nobody else thought of this interpretation, instead of having thought of it and discarded it.
In the absence of any documentation other than the article, you take the parts of the article that conform to your worldview and paint a picture with them. You assume that anything in the article that doesn't conform to your worldview can be safely discounted... in effect, that you are so much smarter than the people interviewed and the writer that you don't need to check their sources... you just somehow know the truth.
This is commonly known as hubris. (Or, well, it would be, if people had bigger vocabularies these days.)
Even MS, in the article, states that the bill is 'aimed at balancing the interests of consumers
Plus they want damages capped at $25k per day, which MS could pay out of petty cash, as could any other huge business, but which basically knocks small business out of the illegal spam game.
Hubris. Look it up.
-fred
...I'd mod his sig as '+11: funniest damn thing I've ever seen'.
-fred
Microsoft does, in fact, sell email addresses. I have firm firsthand evidence of this.
They do NOT automatically sell email any address created on MSN. They DO sell addresses, probably at irregular intervals, of people who have somehow gotten onto their mailing lists. They MAY filter out all of the MSN email addresses before they sell those lists; I wouldn't know, since I've never had a MSN account.
But I have one account (msspam@mymachine.com) that I only gave to Microsoft, when I needed to give them an email address to sign up for something. This address now gets some very odd spam, albiet very rarely, as well as a MS mailing list that, with my browser, there appears to be no way to unsubscribe from.
I suppose it is possible that someone managed to compromise the mailing list by hacking into Microsoft, or perhaps by somehow interposing themselves between me and Microsoft and sniffing the email address as I sent it to them. I deem this less likely than MS selling it to someone, who sold it to someone, who... well... you get the idea.
-fred