That could be explained easily by the "FUNNY" tag to the right of the story on the main page. It's HUMOR. Funny. You're supposed to laugh. Why do so many people lack a basic sense of humor?
It's probably actually political and social re-education. Turn out a bunch of kids who are already used to the Microsoft Way(tm)(c)(r)(sm) and you ensure that you have at least SOME drones who will still ask themselves, "Is this good for the company?" With open source and linux becoming more popular in schools, they cannot take the risk that everyone will start to realize the fundamental flaws in their business model and software architecture. Again, this is a good way to ensure that some kids remain "pure" as we move into the new millenium.
The buddy system worked for me. My former supervisor was a very nice guy and talked about his personal life JUST enough that you felt like he was your friend. He never used anything you said against you. He lived about an hour and 15 minutes away from the office, and would almost every day talk to me for the entire drive home about all of the stupid crap that went down. I'm not dumb; at first I didn't state that I saw anything wrong with the way things were done... I let him throw the first punches and name names. After that, it was a nice bitch session every day, including smoke breaks that I would spend with him complaining about the idiots that run the place, and how ineffective the entire management structure was. It was great. I was laid off due to financial constraits (and I was the last in the door; the customer [I was a contractor] decided on me, not my supervisor). My boss went to bat for me and tried to find me positions on other teams in the company. After he told me about that in my "we have to let you go" meeting, he actually produced a STACK of papers that were email trails with the leaders of the teams he was trying to get me positions with. He left the company since because he couldn't stand the way they ran things. He left cold without another job lined up. He can't even get unemployment as a result. Things were THAT bad there. In closing, I'm very glad that I got to have discussions about all of the "water cooler rumors" that spread around the office with him, and got to share my TRUE concerns and hear his about the way the company was run. I still talk to him on the phone to this day... He is a little more free to talk to me about what happened there now that his job is no longer at risk;)
The buddy system worked for me. My former supervisor was a very nice guy and talked about his personal life JUST enough that you felt like he was your friend. He never used anything you said against you. He lived about an hour and 15 minutes away from the office, and would almost every day talk to me for the entire drive home about all of the stupid crap that went down. I'm not dumb; at first I didn't state that I saw anything wrong with the way things were done... I let him throw the first punches and name names. After that, it was a nice bitch session every day, including smoke breaks that I would spend with him complaining about the idiots that run the place, and how ineffective the entire management structure was. It was great. I was laid off due to financial constraits (and I was the last in the door; the customer [I was a contractor] decided on me, not my supervisor). My boss went to bat for me and tried to find me positions on other teams in the company. After he told me about that in my "we have to let you go" meeting, he actually produced a STACK of papers that were email trails with the leaders of the teams he was trying to get me positions with. He left the company since because he couldn't stand the way they ran things. He left cold without another job lined up. He can't even get unemployment as a result. Things were THAT bad there. In closing, I'm very glad that I got to have discussions about all of the "water cooler rumors" that spread around the office with him, and got to share my TRUE concerns and hear his about the way the company was run. I still talk to him on the phone to this day... He is a little more free to talk to me about what happened there now that his job is no longer at risk;)
There's really no point in asking the ACLU to step in because Google hasn't expressed an interest in defending themselves from this in the first place. Simply, they aren't asking for help; they're just caving in. Why bother helping them? Let them watch their users start leaving because of this, and perhaps at that point they will want to defend themselves and enlist the help of the ACLU or the EFF.
...just apply for credit cards you can never possibly get. You know, the rich-people-only ultra-gold-platinum-reward cards or whatever... You'll surely be denied and then you can get your reports free. You can even apply for the same card twice sometimes.;)
This may be total flamebait, but I've been "out of the ISP business" for a few years now and I don't remember (honestly) anyone suggesting this:
Facts: 1. Email comes in from an IP address.
That's all you need to take into consideration for this.
Solution:
1. Have the recipient mail server check the sending server for an open relay. If it exists, send an email to "root@, postmaster@, and/or administrator@" on the originating server letting them know they have an open relay and the message sent was disallowed.
2. Have the recipient server keep a compressed (or otherwise optimally-indexed) log of IP address mail is sent from, recipient, and some sort of searchable indicator of the body content of the message.
3. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages from any particular IP with a body and/or subject matching or closely resembling the indexed bodies if the message is sent from the originating server at a particular rate (e.g. 25 or more emails in 5 minutes' time) to any recipient address on the system.
4. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages originating from a unique mail server that appear to be dictionary-based scans (e.g. aaa@, aab@, aac@).
5. Combined with the above or separately, configure recipient mail server to deny messages to (z) invalid addresses at a rate of (x per y minutes) with identical bodies or nearly identical bodies and/or subjects.
6. If a user on the recipeint system/network forwards an email to spam@recipeint.domain, automatically quarrantine all messages from sending server for a period of (x) minutes to allow the recipient server to "collect more evidence" in its incoming spam scans without actually delivering more messages to the recipients' inboxes.
I'm truly looking for feedback. I don't want "you're an idiot because you didn't think about a, b, and c" type replies. I obviously haven't thought of every possible loophole or abuse case, so I'd like constructive comments. I believe, at a high level, that this could work.
Your ISP probably has metered connections to whatever backbones they use. They pay for excessive traffic. They probably limit downlink speed but don't bother to tell anyone about it. Upload speed is capped to save leased-line money as well, but they're telling you about it to attempt to get you to use even less. Bastards.
This may be total flamebait, but I've been "out of the ISP business" for a few years now and I don't remember (honestly) anyone suggesting this:
Facts: 1. Email comes in from an IP address.
That's all you need to take into consideration for this.
Solution:
1. Have the recipient mail server check the sending server for an open relay. If it exists, send an email to "root@, postmaster@, and/or administrator@" on the originating server letting them know they have an open relay and the message sent was disallowed.
2. Have the recipient server keep a compressed (or otherwise optimally-indexed) log of IP address mail is sent from, recipient, and some sort of searchable indicator of the body content of the message.
3. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages from any particular IP with a body and/or subject matching or closely resembling the indexed bodies if the message is sent from the originating server at a particular rate (e.g. 25 or more emails in 5 minutes' time) to any recipient address on the system.
4. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages originating from a unique mail server that appear to be dictionary-based scans (e.g. aaa@, aab@, aac@).
5. Combined with the above or separately, configure recipient mail server to deny messages to (z) invalid addresses at a rate of (x per y minutes) with identical bodies or nearly identical bodies and/or subjects.
6. If a user on the recipeint system/network forwards an email to spam@recipeint.domain, automatically quarrantine all messages from sending server for a period of (x) minutes to allow the recipient server to "collect more evidence" in its incoming spam scans without actually delivering more messages to the recipients' inboxes.
I'm truly looking for feedback. I don't want "you're an idiot because you didn't think about a, b, and c" type replies. I obviously haven't thought of every possible loophole or abuse case, so I'd like constructive comments. I believe, at a high level, that this could work.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if the RIAA gets an encrytped block of crap and decrypts it. That may be circumventing encryption, but the main threat was missed. It's the same with illegal operations like child porn rings and other nefarious crap I won't get into...
The crap's encrypted. We can all agree on that. You provide your friends with a password to decrypt it. Great, they can get it and decrypt it.
They like it, so they share the password with a friend of theirs and that person gets it and decrypts it.
Descend 10 generations of this method.
Someone in the RIAA or an RIAA snitch gets ahold of the password. NOW they can go legally decrypt the crap.
Until a way can be developed to know WHO is getting your crap and that they aren't someone you don't want having it, there's really no way to address this.
The RIAA can hire any number of people they want to in order to develop "trust relationships" with any trust-based services etc. Those people with trust relationships can then gather as much inside information as they want to and pass it along. That would be enough for a search warrant, and the presence of encryption would make the penalty for any illegal activity even worse.
...it was a ploy to gain public attention. Once the robot was free, they could then point out how well its guidnace systems are working and how many features it has. Hence, venture capital or other funding;)
Great work, RIAA. Spend hundreds of thousands (closer to millions in the future) on lawsuits only to have the defendants file bankruptcy to discharge the judgments. Guess what you've done? Instead of "losing a billion dollars in sales" you've now lost a billion and a half in "lost sales" and dead-end lawsuits. Wait, that's not counting all of the people that will stop buying CDs because you're being pricks... that's another half billion. So instead of losing a billion dollars and spending money on developing new technology, distribution methods, and business models, you've lost two billion and you're RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU STARTED. Sometimes the idiocy astounds me. No, all the time.
All I can say is this: The industry offered a solution to the file swapping problem, and the artists rejected it. I don't feel a bit sorry for them. Not one little bit. When they become quickly unpopular and start REALLY losing money (no, I'm not talking about this whining they're doing right now), I will not feel in the least bit guilty or sad. They deserve whatever they get at this point.
I'm not sure how much of a cut they'll take. Probably small since assets for the business will be easy to locate and attach. Another poster had some great ideas for obtaining a writ of execution and forcing a Sheriff's sale - I would do that if you don't want to hire a professional judgment executor.
I worked for GE. I can tell you with certainty that each business unit (GE Plastics, GE Aircraft, etc) uses about 10 or 20 public addresses, TOPS. There aren't that many business units. I can't remember how many and I'm too lazy, but it's in the neighborhood of 10 or less. Yeah... sounds like they need a class B to me *laugh*
...posting this as a new thread because it grew a little too large and interesting to leave as a comment.
If people like you succeed in your apparent wish to get rid of them, you'll find out the hard way. The promoters might not be worth what they charge at present, but pretending they don't do anything is just silly.
Sure it will become apparent. Any change makes *something* apparent. Whether or not the change would be good is irrelevant. It's what people want. They'll all find out what the result of their actions is when it's all said and done. If the result is not something people are happy with, they will come up with a solution. If it is, they'll roll with it for a while until something else comes out that will change their perception of the original.
Yep, no-one likes those cookie cutter bands and their cheap, cloned pop from yesteryear. If the record industry just produced new, original material like all these Indie bands, they'd do much better. That's why Britney, Kylie et al. get download figures in the millions over P2P, while most of us have never even heard of the random bands a few people cite in each thread like this one, and often don't like what we do encounter enough to either download it or go out and buy it.
Your argument here is baseless and pointless. People like Britney because she has a hot body. Some like her because she can sing well (that's also debatable given current technology). People like every artist for some reason. What does it matter if they are backed by a large company and the RIAA? It does NOT. What matters is that they have something people want; it does not matter what it is. Then, they must make sure their work is distributed so that other people will become interested.
What would happen to the "cookie-cutter" bands/artists that have nothing to offer except looks? They'll become models instead of pop singers. If they don't have a music product that people want to listen to, why are they a singer?
What would happen if the same bands/artists DID have something to offer? They'd promote their material to radio stations, people would like it, and it would become popular. They would then be able to get advertising deals (yes, agents can still negotiate deals) or other promotional spots. They would be able to have concerts and other events just the way they do today.
If the RIAA did not hold all of the keys, the industry would have to adjust. It would have to adjust to support candid presentation and true feedback. Once the feedback is presented, artists would still have their place. In this model, people would be able to truly determine who makes it or not, and that would probably ensure the music remains fresh and desireable to the public.
What does song-swapping do to the industry (realistically)? I'll tell you what it does - not a hell of a lot. Another poster mentioned that song swapping was around long before the Internet and P2P; they were absolutely correct. If songs couldn't be swapped over P2P anymore (for whatever reason), people would swap songs in some other way. The worst-case scenario is that we'd have to go back to the days of manually copying works and trading them by hand with friends.
What happens if P2P goes away? The industry loses a source of market research. The industry loses free publicity and exposure. The industry (specifically individual labels) loses prospective customers (how can you know you'd like to purchase something if you haven't heard it)?
I can't think of anything good that happens. The industry will be able to determine what artists succeed and fail. They will be able to set a price on that music, and they will be able to track the sale of albums to primary purchasers only. They can't track who trades it and where it ends up.
The last time I checked, this (the U.S.) was a representative republic, not a democracy, not a dictatorship. If the RIAA is in cahoots with the U.S. gov't to attempt and turn this representative republic into a di
Slashdot Mirror
That could be explained easily by the "FUNNY" tag to the right of the story on the main page.
It's HUMOR. Funny. You're supposed to laugh.
Why do so many people lack a basic sense of humor?
The shelves of servers behind him, perchance?
It's probably actually political and social re-education. Turn out a bunch of kids who are already used to the Microsoft Way(tm)(c)(r)(sm) and you ensure that you have at least SOME drones who will still ask themselves, "Is this good for the company?"
With open source and linux becoming more popular in schools, they cannot take the risk that everyone will start to realize the fundamental flaws in their business model and software architecture.
Again, this is a good way to ensure that some kids remain "pure" as we move into the new millenium.
The buddy system worked for me. ;)
My former supervisor was a very nice guy and talked about his personal life JUST enough that you felt like he was your friend. He never used anything you said against you.
He lived about an hour and 15 minutes away from the office, and would almost every day talk to me for the entire drive home about all of the stupid crap that went down.
I'm not dumb; at first I didn't state that I saw anything wrong with the way things were done... I let him throw the first punches and name names. After that, it was a nice bitch session every day, including smoke breaks that I would spend with him complaining about the idiots that run the place, and how ineffective the entire management structure was. It was great.
I was laid off due to financial constraits (and I was the last in the door; the customer [I was a contractor] decided on me, not my supervisor).
My boss went to bat for me and tried to find me positions on other teams in the company. After he told me about that in my "we have to let you go" meeting, he actually produced a STACK of papers that were email trails with the leaders of the teams he was trying to get me positions with.
He left the company since because he couldn't stand the way they ran things. He left cold without another job lined up. He can't even get unemployment as a result. Things were THAT bad there.
In closing, I'm very glad that I got to have discussions about all of the "water cooler rumors" that spread around the office with him, and got to share my TRUE concerns and hear his about the way the company was run. I still talk to him on the phone to this day... He is a little more free to talk to me about what happened there now that his job is no longer at risk
The buddy system worked for me. My former supervisor was a very nice guy and talked about his personal life JUST enough that you felt like he was your friend. He never used anything you said against you. ;)
He lived about an hour and 15 minutes away from the office, and would almost every day talk to me for the entire drive home about all of the stupid crap that went down.
I'm not dumb; at first I didn't state that I saw anything wrong with the way things were done... I let him throw the first punches and name names. After that, it was a nice bitch session every day, including smoke breaks that I would spend with him complaining about the idiots that run the place, and how ineffective the entire management structure was. It was great.
I was laid off due to financial constraits (and I was the last in the door; the customer [I was a contractor] decided on me, not my supervisor).
My boss went to bat for me and tried to find me positions on other teams in the company. After he told me about that in my "we have to let you go" meeting, he actually produced a STACK of papers that were email trails with the leaders of the teams he was trying to get me positions with.
He left the company since because he couldn't stand the way they ran things. He left cold without another job lined up. He can't even get unemployment as a result. Things were THAT bad there.
In closing, I'm very glad that I got to have discussions about all of the "water cooler rumors" that spread around the office with him, and got to share my TRUE concerns and hear his about the way the company was run. I still talk to him on the phone to this day... He is a little more free to talk to me about what happened there now that his job is no longer at risk
There's really no point in asking the ACLU to step in because Google hasn't expressed an interest in defending themselves from this in the first place.
Simply, they aren't asking for help; they're just caving in. Why bother helping them?
Let them watch their users start leaving because of this, and perhaps at that point they will want to defend themselves and enlist the help of the ACLU or the EFF.
...called Proxomitron. Free. The thing's a miracle. Only available on win32, though. :(
...just apply for credit cards you can never possibly get. You know, the rich-people-only ultra-gold-platinum-reward cards or whatever... You'll surely be denied and then you can get your reports free. You can even apply for the same card twice sometimes. ;)
In that case, downgrade to 2.2 and call it good ;)
This may be total flamebait, but I've been "out of the ISP business" for a few years now and I don't remember (honestly) anyone suggesting this:
Facts:
1. Email comes in from an IP address.
That's all you need to take into consideration for this.
Solution:
1. Have the recipient mail server check the sending server for an open relay. If it exists, send an email to "root@, postmaster@, and/or administrator@" on the originating server letting them know they have an open relay and the message sent was disallowed.
2. Have the recipient server keep a compressed (or otherwise optimally-indexed) log of IP address mail is sent from, recipient, and some sort of searchable indicator of the body content of the message.
3. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages from any particular IP with a body and/or subject matching or closely resembling the indexed bodies if the message is sent from the originating server at a particular rate (e.g. 25 or more emails in 5 minutes' time) to any recipient address on the system.
4. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages originating from a unique mail server that appear to be dictionary-based scans (e.g. aaa@, aab@, aac@).
5. Combined with the above or separately, configure recipient mail server to deny messages to (z) invalid addresses at a rate of (x per y minutes) with identical bodies or nearly identical bodies and/or subjects.
6. If a user on the recipeint system/network forwards an email to spam@recipeint.domain, automatically quarrantine all messages from sending server for a period of (x) minutes to allow the recipient server to "collect more evidence" in its incoming spam scans without actually delivering more messages to the recipients' inboxes.
I'm truly looking for feedback. I don't want "you're an idiot because you didn't think about a, b, and c" type replies. I obviously haven't thought of every possible loophole or abuse case, so I'd like constructive comments. I believe, at a high level, that this could work.
Your ISP probably has metered connections to whatever backbones they use. They pay for excessive traffic. They probably limit downlink speed but don't bother to tell anyone about it. Upload speed is capped to save leased-line money as well, but they're telling you about it to attempt to get you to use even less. Bastards.
This may be total flamebait, but I've been "out of the ISP business" for a few years now and I don't remember (honestly) anyone suggesting this:
Facts:
1. Email comes in from an IP address.
That's all you need to take into consideration for this.
Solution:
1. Have the recipient mail server check the sending server for an open relay. If it exists, send an email to "root@, postmaster@, and/or administrator@" on the originating server letting them know they have an open relay and the message sent was disallowed.
2. Have the recipient server keep a compressed (or otherwise optimally-indexed) log of IP address mail is sent from, recipient, and some sort of searchable indicator of the body content of the message.
3. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages from any particular IP with a body and/or subject matching or closely resembling the indexed bodies if the message is sent from the originating server at a particular rate (e.g. 25 or more emails in 5 minutes' time) to any recipient address on the system.
4. Configure recipient mail server to deny messages originating from a unique mail server that appear to be dictionary-based scans (e.g. aaa@, aab@, aac@).
5. Combined with the above or separately, configure recipient mail server to deny messages to (z) invalid addresses at a rate of (x per y minutes) with identical bodies or nearly identical bodies and/or subjects.
6. If a user on the recipeint system/network forwards an email to spam@recipeint.domain, automatically quarrantine all messages from sending server for a period of (x) minutes to allow the recipient server to "collect more evidence" in its incoming spam scans without actually delivering more messages to the recipients' inboxes.
I'm truly looking for feedback. I don't want "you're an idiot because you didn't think about a, b, and c" type replies. I obviously haven't thought of every possible loophole or abuse case, so I'd like constructive comments. I believe, at a high level, that this could work.
Excellent post. Do you have any other examples of your commentary available? Your points are concise and realistic. That's refreshing.
Someone REALLY needs to mod this up.
Wow.. how did you get your company to actually consider a smart alternative to M$?
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if the RIAA gets an encrytped block of crap and decrypts it. That may be circumventing encryption, but the main threat was missed. It's the same with illegal operations like child porn rings and other nefarious crap I won't get into...
The crap's encrypted. We can all agree on that. You provide your friends with a password to decrypt it. Great, they can get it and decrypt it.
They like it, so they share the password with a friend of theirs and that person gets it and decrypts it.
Descend 10 generations of this method.
Someone in the RIAA or an RIAA snitch gets ahold of the password. NOW they can go legally decrypt the crap.
Until a way can be developed to know WHO is getting your crap and that they aren't someone you don't want having it, there's really no way to address this.
The RIAA can hire any number of people they want to in order to develop "trust relationships" with any trust-based services etc. Those people with trust relationships can then gather as much inside information as they want to and pass it along. That would be enough for a search warrant, and the presence of encryption would make the penalty for any illegal activity even worse.
...it was a ploy to gain public attention. Once the robot was free, they could then point out how well its guidnace systems are working and how many features it has. Hence, venture capital or other funding ;)
Watch that disappear from their site in a matter of days.
Great work, RIAA. Spend hundreds of thousands (closer to millions in the future) on lawsuits only to have the defendants file bankruptcy to discharge the judgments.
Guess what you've done? Instead of "losing a billion dollars in sales" you've now lost a billion and a half in "lost sales" and dead-end lawsuits.
Wait, that's not counting all of the people that will stop buying CDs because you're being pricks... that's another half billion.
So instead of losing a billion dollars and spending money on developing new technology, distribution methods, and business models, you've lost two billion and you're RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU STARTED.
Sometimes the idiocy astounds me. No, all the time.
All I can say is this:
The industry offered a solution to the file swapping problem, and the artists rejected it.
I don't feel a bit sorry for them. Not one little bit.
When they become quickly unpopular and start REALLY losing money (no, I'm not talking about this whining they're doing right now), I will not feel in the least bit guilty or sad. They deserve whatever they get at this point.
I'm not sure how much of a cut they'll take. Probably small since assets for the business will be easy to locate and attach.
Another poster had some great ideas for obtaining a writ of execution and forcing a Sheriff's sale - I would do that if you don't want to hire a professional judgment executor.
As it stands now, yes. They are required to notify the subject of investigation.
I worked for GE. I can tell you with certainty that each business unit (GE Plastics, GE Aircraft, etc) uses about 10 or 20 public addresses, TOPS. There aren't that many business units. I can't remember how many and I'm too lazy, but it's in the neighborhood of 10 or less.
Yeah... sounds like they need a class B to me *laugh*
See URL below:& cid=6149 323
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66926
...posting this as a new thread because it grew a little too large and interesting to leave as a comment.
If people like you succeed in your apparent wish to get rid of them, you'll find out the hard way. The promoters might not be worth what they charge at present, but pretending they don't do anything is just silly.
Sure it will become apparent. Any change makes *something* apparent. Whether or not the change would be good is irrelevant. It's what people want. They'll all find out what the result of their actions is when it's all said and done. If the result is not something people are happy with, they will come up with a solution. If it is, they'll roll with it for a while until something else comes out that will change their perception of the original.
Yep, no-one likes those cookie cutter bands and their cheap, cloned pop from yesteryear. If the record industry just produced new, original material like all these Indie bands, they'd do much better. That's why Britney, Kylie et al. get download figures in the millions over P2P, while most of us have never even heard of the random bands a few people cite in each thread like this one, and often don't like what we do encounter enough to either download it or go out and buy it.
Your argument here is baseless and pointless. People like Britney because she has a hot body. Some like her because she can sing well (that's also debatable given current technology). People like every artist for some reason. What does it matter if they are backed by a large company and the RIAA? It does NOT. What matters is that they have something people want; it does not matter what it is. Then, they must make sure their work is distributed so that other people will become interested.
What would happen to the "cookie-cutter" bands/artists that have nothing to offer except looks? They'll become models instead of pop singers. If they don't have a music product that people want to listen to, why are they a singer?
What would happen if the same bands/artists DID have something to offer? They'd promote their material to radio stations, people would like it, and it would become popular. They would then be able to get advertising deals (yes, agents can still negotiate deals) or other promotional spots. They would be able to have concerts and other events just the way they do today.
If the RIAA did not hold all of the keys, the industry would have to adjust. It would have to adjust to support candid presentation and true feedback. Once the feedback is presented, artists would still have their place. In this model, people would be able to truly determine who makes it or not, and that would probably ensure the music remains fresh and desireable to the public.
What does song-swapping do to the industry (realistically)? I'll tell you what it does - not a hell of a lot. Another poster mentioned that song swapping was around long before the Internet and P2P; they were absolutely correct. If songs couldn't be swapped over P2P anymore (for whatever reason), people would swap songs in some other way. The worst-case scenario is that we'd have to go back to the days of manually copying works and trading them by hand with friends.
What happens if P2P goes away? The industry loses a source of market research. The industry loses free publicity and exposure. The industry (specifically individual labels) loses prospective customers (how can you know you'd like to purchase something if you haven't heard it)?
I can't think of anything good that happens. The industry will be able to determine what artists succeed and fail. They will be able to set a price on that music, and they will be able to track the sale of albums to primary purchasers only. They can't track who trades it and where it ends up.
The last time I checked, this (the U.S.) was a representative republic, not a democracy, not a dictatorship. If the RIAA is in cahoots with the U.S. gov't to attempt and turn this representative republic into a di