Yes I agree, the only way of stopping spam is to do something about the companies employing spammers to carry out their evil work.
OK so there are a lot of people saying
"Yes but the companies just employ other direct marketing organisations through some kind of shady cloak and dagger money in a brown envelope type agreement. So it's impossible to do anything about that."
Really I think that's a cop out, first of all these companies probably have a pretty good idea of the kind of people they're hiring as soon as the brown envelope is mentioned and so there should be some kind of penalty introduced for these companies.
Secondly the company employing the spammers should be investigated with a view to tracking down the spamming company, which should be possible by following where the money went to, and they should then be prosecuted.
It's really no good passing laws to control spam, as many countries are now doing without having the necessary powers to enfore those rules.
As we are seeing techincal soloutions are far from ideal in preventing spam and even less ideal for bringing the spammers to account all of which makes it even more imperative to to pursue this problem down traditional rather than techincal paths.
As it stands it's obviously very difficult to enforce penalties against offending companies and this is what we should look at changing to deal with the problem.
TCP is a great idea in theory from a technical security point of view, with computers or systems which are only allowed to run authenticated, sanctioned programs you can easily cut out viruses, spam and all manner of other 'rogue' programs.
In practice however all this security relies on the trustworthiness of whatever government organisations, or more likley corporations are running the system.
It would be a fair bet that any website with instructions on how to defeat TCP measure would be effectivley barred from being viewed by TCP systems and from their we would likley see anything which was not approved of by our guardian corporations also disappearing from sight.
Given the general behaviour of most large companies in pursuit of their only goal in life ( to make money for shareholders ) and governments ( let's all start some wars and look for 'terrorists' ) it would seem like an incrediably stupid idea to give them control over what is probably the greatest medium for mass communication ever invented.
It seems like Microsoft is all about emphasing the technical benefits ( to themselves ) and is totally ignoring the social implications.
"Citizen 6767323#2 you do not have sufficient security clearance to access this page, your local Police have been automatically informed of this infraction. Have a nice day"
If this really did take off then the option to run in "untrusted" mode would probably be worthless since everything else you needed to connect to or use would probably not accept you unless you were in "trusted" mode.
So you'd have the option to use your computer with the feature disabled provided all you wanted to do was stare at the screen and not actually do anything.
It might not start off like this immediatley but it'd be the thin end of the wedge. MS and others probably realise that people will not immediatley leap at the idea of having their computer use subject to outside control so what I'd expect them to do is think of a lot of cool things users would really like to use which are only available once they activate the palladium device to get them used to doing it. Then once this was the widespread normal mode of operating we'd all be f@cked and they can do what they like.
Ooops, Actually I think I was thinking of "The Sword Of Shanarra" anyway and now I think about it some more I have read some Dragonlance and for a quick read if you time to kill they aren't too bad although I wouldn't go so far as to say they were great, or even especially interesting literature.
Yeah but you have to draw the line somewhere don't you, how about people wanting to use their hairdryer whilst squatting in a washing machine ( strangulation on by the cable risk ) or people who think they can use their hairdryer to dry their nasal hair and accidentally bite through the cable whilst trying to ram it down their throat to reach the end of their nasal passage.
Speeding's an entirely different thing because you stand a good chance of damaging other people or property - carrying on with the hairdryer example you would have to spefically warn people not to club people over the head with the hair dryer, not to take it apart - remove all the sharp bits and hammer through someones chest etc etc etc.
Sure there are some really stupid people around but manufactures shouldn't be liable for every stupid decision they make about how to use a particular product - courts should just say "You're stupid, it was your own fault and maybe this will make think twice before doing it again"
Robert E Howard has written some great books and Michael Moorcock is a fantastic author.
I once read one of the Dragonlance books ( when I was around 13-14 ) because my friends wouldn't shut up about how great it was. It was obvious after maybe 3-4 pages that the book was complete and utter crap but I persevered and discovered that by the end of the book it was still a load of complete and utter crap and I had just wasted a couple hours of my young life.
As I pointed out to my friends the whole thing couldn't have been a more blatant ( and uninteresting, badly written and pointless ) rip off of Lord Of The Rings. "No !" they cried, it's nothing like it for example in Dragonlance Elves live in the caves and mine stuff whereas Dwarves live in forest and make beautiful music and that's like 100% different !
Concorde was not an total economic failure by any means, despite British Airways being pretty cagey about the actual costs of running Concorde it was making a good 4 - 10 Million pounds for British Airways before the Air France disaster.
I doubt it would have flying for over 25 years, largely on a commercial basis, if it was not making money.
I dread to think what air travel must have been like 30 years ago, having recently taken out around 36 hours of my life going from
Heathrow -> Boston -> San Francisco -> Sydney with a couple of hours hanging around at each place in economy class I can tell you that "wow, this is so comfortable" was not the first thought in my mind at the end of it all ( having discovered that perhaps inevitably my luggage had disappeared somewhere in the vicinity of Boston ) !
Re:There will always be a market for supersonic
on
Son of Concorde
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· Score: 1
According to reports from before the Air France accident Concorde was profitable for both British Airways and Air France earning them between 4 - 10 million pounds a month.
It may not have recovered it's development costs but thats probably got more to do with the Government selling it off to BA before they had a chance to re-coup the money. I think BA have done very well out of Concorde all things considered.
If a new supersonic jet can find routes to fly where it's Sonic Boom is not going to be a problem then I don't see any reason why such a plane cannot make a profit
Re:There will always be a market for supersonic
on
Son of Concorde
·
· Score: 1
I think it was the Government who sold the Concordes to BA for 1, in return for a cut of the profits.
Re:Walk before you run, talk before you sing
on
Synthesized Singers
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"You would really need to spend a large amount of time figuring out how to make the voice sound EMOTIONAL."
Not if you were wanting to create a virtual Kylie, Atomic Kitten, Gareth Gates, Westlife, Robbie Williams, Christina Aguilerra, Madonna, Cher, Britney Spears, J-Lo, Random Pop Muppet you wouldn't.
Tyranical Government ? You mean the settlers who had grown rich through exploiting the land and from slavery decided they didn't want to pay any more taxes to the British Crown.
Luckily the French were on hand to provide a professional army and navy which was just as well since the poorly equipped and badly trained settlers were being cut to pieces by the professional army of the English.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes I agree, the only way of stopping spam is to do something about the companies employing spammers to carry out their evil work.
OK so there are a lot of people saying
"Yes but the companies just employ other direct marketing organisations through some kind of shady cloak and dagger money in a brown envelope type agreement. So it's impossible to do anything about that."
Really I think that's a cop out, first of all these companies probably have a pretty good idea of the kind of people they're hiring as soon as the brown envelope is mentioned and so there should be some kind of penalty introduced for these companies.
Secondly the company employing the spammers should be investigated with a view to tracking down the spamming company, which should be possible by following where the money went to, and they should then be prosecuted.
It's really no good passing laws to control spam, as many countries are now doing without having the necessary powers to enfore those rules.
As we are seeing techincal soloutions are far from ideal in preventing spam and even less ideal for bringing the spammers to account all of which makes it even more imperative to to pursue this problem down traditional rather than techincal paths.
As it stands it's obviously very difficult to enforce penalties against offending companies and this is what we should look at changing to deal with the problem.
In much the same way the cutting the arms and legs off every human being on Earth would be good way of preventing smash and grab robbery
TCP is a great idea in theory from a technical security point of view, with computers or systems which are only allowed to run authenticated, sanctioned programs you can easily cut out viruses, spam and all manner of other 'rogue' programs.
In practice however all this security relies on the trustworthiness of whatever government organisations, or more likley corporations are running the system.
It would be a fair bet that any website with instructions on how to defeat TCP measure would be effectivley barred from being viewed by TCP systems and from their we would likley see anything which was not approved of by our guardian corporations also disappearing from sight.
Given the general behaviour of most large companies in pursuit of their only goal in life ( to make money for shareholders ) and governments ( let's all start some wars and look for 'terrorists' ) it would seem like an incrediably stupid idea to give them control over what is probably the greatest medium for mass communication ever invented.
It seems like Microsoft is all about emphasing the technical benefits ( to themselves ) and is totally ignoring the social implications.
I'm getting the message
"Citizen 6767323#2 you do not have sufficient security clearance to access this page, your local Police have been automatically informed of this infraction. Have a nice day"So I don't think it's Slashdotted.
If this really did take off then the option to run in "untrusted" mode would probably be worthless since everything else you needed to connect to or use would probably not accept you unless you were in "trusted" mode.
So you'd have the option to use your computer with the feature disabled provided all you wanted to do was stare at the screen and not actually do anything.
It might not start off like this immediatley but it'd be the thin end of the wedge. MS and others probably realise that people will not immediatley leap at the idea of having their computer use subject to outside control so what I'd expect them to do is think of a lot of cool things users would really like to use which are only available once they activate the palladium device to get them used to doing it. Then once this was the widespread normal mode of operating we'd all be f@cked and they can do what they like.
they have more than one talk at same time
Ooops, Actually I think I was thinking of "The Sword Of Shanarra" anyway and now I think about it some more I have read some Dragonlance and for a quick read if you time to kill they aren't too bad although I wouldn't go so far as to say they were great, or even especially interesting literature.
That'll be because SCO is using the untrained variety
Is there such a thing as "statistically impossible" ? Either something is possible or it isn't, what's statistics got to do with it ?
Yeah but you have to draw the line somewhere don't you, how about people wanting to use their hairdryer whilst squatting in a washing machine ( strangulation on by the cable risk ) or people who think they can use their hairdryer to dry their nasal hair and accidentally bite through the cable whilst trying to ram it down their throat to reach the end of their nasal passage.
Speeding's an entirely different thing because you stand a good chance of damaging other people or property - carrying on with the hairdryer example you would have to spefically warn people not to club people over the head with the hair dryer, not to take it apart - remove all the sharp bits and hammer through someones chest etc etc etc.
Sure there are some really stupid people around but manufactures shouldn't be liable for every stupid decision they make about how to use a particular product - courts should just say "You're stupid, it was your own fault and maybe this will make think twice before doing it again"
I think people probably are experts on what has influenced them when writing a book or creating any kind of art.
Also there is a world of difference by being influenced by events and writing an allegorical story about them.
Robert E Howard has written some great books and Michael Moorcock is a fantastic author.
I once read one of the Dragonlance books ( when I was around 13-14 ) because my friends wouldn't shut up about how great it was. It was obvious after maybe 3-4 pages that the book was complete and utter crap but I persevered and discovered that by the end of the book it was still a load of complete and utter crap and I had just wasted a couple hours of my young life.
As I pointed out to my friends the whole thing couldn't have been a more blatant ( and uninteresting, badly written and pointless ) rip off of Lord Of The Rings. "No !" they cried, it's nothing like it for example in Dragonlance Elves live in the caves and mine stuff whereas Dwarves live in forest and make beautiful music and that's like 100% different !
Concorde was not an total economic failure by any means, despite British Airways being pretty cagey about the actual costs of running Concorde it was making a good 4 - 10 Million pounds for British Airways before the Air France disaster.
I doubt it would have flying for over 25 years, largely on a commercial basis, if it was not making money.
I dread to think what air travel must have been like 30 years ago, having recently taken out around 36 hours of my life going from Heathrow -> Boston -> San Francisco -> Sydney with a couple of hours hanging around at each place in economy class I can tell you that "wow, this is so comfortable" was not the first thought in my mind at the end of it all ( having discovered that perhaps inevitably my luggage had disappeared somewhere in the vicinity of Boston ) !
Exubarent, toasty !
Also quite probably Supersonic flight as well Miles Supersonic Aircraft
According to reports from before the Air France accident Concorde was profitable for both British Airways and Air France earning them between 4 - 10 million pounds a month.
It may not have recovered it's development costs but thats probably got more to do with the Government selling it off to BA before they had a chance to re-coup the money. I think BA have done very well out of Concorde all things considered.
If a new supersonic jet can find routes to fly where it's Sonic Boom is not going to be a problem then I don't see any reason why such a plane cannot make a profit
Here's a BBC article about it BBC Article
I think it was the Government who sold the Concordes to BA for 1, in return for a cut of the profits.
Not if you were wanting to create a virtual Kylie, Atomic Kitten, Gareth Gates, Westlife, Robbie Williams, Christina Aguilerra, Madonna, Cher, Britney Spears, J-Lo, Random Pop Muppet you wouldn't.
Hmmm, smooth.
well, actually yes I do but then that may be because I work in KFC
how would you stop birds and insects etc flying through the beam and becoming incinerated ?
are those pigs ? flying past the window ?
Tyranical Government ? You mean the settlers who had grown rich through exploiting the land and from slavery decided they didn't want to pay any more taxes to the British Crown.
Luckily the French were on hand to provide a professional army and navy which was just as well since the poorly equipped and badly trained settlers were being cut to pieces by the professional army of the English.
mmfhguumble hruffallmmn