The sad point of all of this is that I'm going to (sort of) defend the cocaine dealers and point out that they are responding to basic economic forces that we all respond to at one level or another. As long as coke dealers can take in more money than it costs them, they will continue to sell cocaine. This is "rational" behavior in the economic sense.
The sad point of all of this is that I'm going to (sort of) defend the child pornographers and point out that they are responding to basic economic forces that we all respond to at one level or another. As long as child pornographers can take in more money than it costs them, they will continue to rape children. This is "rational" behavior in the economic sense.
The fact is, engaging in kiddie porn, drug dealing, and spamming requires more than a profit incentive; It also requires a complete lack of any moral compass whatsoever, which we all agree that the three groups above do.
I am quite frankly amazed that no one has shot Richter or Ralsky in the head with a large-caliber shotgun yet. Once THAT happens, the tide of spam will turn.
At any rate, I could argue that they are NOT responding to basic market forces; Before spam inundated our inboxes, did any one want to be carpet bombed with offers to "3n14rge yur ===) and (.)?" NO. At a point in the not so distant past, the ratio of gullible morons on the internet reached a high enough value that it became profitable to defraud them en masse. When everyone but the aforementioned candidates for "You Are A Fucking Moron 9" (google for it) took offense, the spammers did the same thing America did in Vietnam: Step up the carpet bombing; You've got to hit one eventually, regardless of the number of innocents you hit in the process.
Because a key requirement for a molecule to be the base of life is it's ability to polymerize - ie form long-chain molecules. Carbon is very good at this at earthlike temperatures, which is why it became the basis of life on Earth. Silicon, I hear, can be convinced to do so at high temperatures, which means it could concievably give rise to some sort of life.
You know what happens when the government gets an inch; They take a foot.
Personally, I would much rather let an organization like ARIN handle things: If too many people complain that any site is fraudlent, their IP space is deallocated, period.
However, regardless of any other solution, I can't imagine anything worse than exposing internet registries to highly concentrated Administratium.
Amen... I don't even use an inkjet anymore. I bought a Panasonic KX-P2023 at a swap meet for $4 (no loss even if it didn't work:), and I've never looked back.
To me, it wasn't so much getting shafted for ink as that the inkjet Wouldn't Stop CLOGGING. As often as I used it (not very), I would try to print something and every time spend an hour desperately trying to get all the colors to come out correctly. Oh, yeah... I went through like 3 of them in 2 years. On the other hand, the KX-P has never had any ink problems (besides the cartridge it came with being 10 years old, and even that worked). It accepts tractor-fed paper. And most importantly (for someone into retrocomputing), it will print ASCII directly from my Tandy M100.
Unfortunately, I made a decision driven by the desire for instant gratification to get refill cartridges from an office supply store, and got screwed for ink: $20 for two carts. Never again...
The scientific answer would be that we can adapt to our surroundings. Robots may be designed to do one or many things well, but humans can do almost anything reasonably.
The philosophic answer would probably be that it's in our nature to wander off and explore, just like Columbus.
The political answer is that "no one ever threw a ticker tape parade for a robot."
That might be a good idea in *most* cases, but unfortunately, I don't think that a virus could both be small enough not to clog a network and complex enough to discriminate between valid/spam SMTP traffic with acceptable reliability (Which businesses often define as 100%).
Once all/most/many of the relays that they can use without *overtly* breaking the law close up, spammers will simply turn to *overtly* breaking the law, as in creating zombie networks. And as soon as those poorly maintained computers are cleaned up, they will simply use the same virus/worm/exploit to 0wn more poorly maintained computers (These computers will coincedently tend to be crawling with malware already).
Though any such move would doubtlessly be controversial, I suggest writing a "white hat" virus what would:
1) Check if a machine was unpatched/0wned (Probably meaning "it could infect it in the first place")
2) Once loading itself, download and run anti-spyware/-adware/-spamware/-malware applications to clean up the computer
3) Contact and infect other hosts, but NOT at such a rate as to bring down networks.
I omitted suggesting that it download the latest patches, because (as is oft pointed out) one reason many people and organizations DON'T download the latest patches for Windows is that they often break other things.
Although, again, this would be extremely controversial, I am suprised at never having seen it suggested before.
I haven't seen this idea thrown around here that I remember. I think that most of us will agree on the following points:
A) Spammers are too poor to afford the large network of computers needed to send their trash fast enough.
B) Because of this, they steal resources in the form of "zombie networks"
C) The "zombie networks" are composed of unpatched Windows computers that were 0wn3d 5 minutes after they were connected to the internet.
I think you can see that the weak point is the zombie network, without which spammers are left unable to pollute the internet with enough of thier trash to generate money. No zombies, No spam.
So, now we need to think of something that can replicate itself through a vast network of vunerable hosts before spammers can respond. A virus.
Fight fire with fire! Write a "virus" that will use one of the dizzying array of Windows remote security holes to install itself, and then (instead of doing something malicious) either
1) Inform the Luser to "Please get and run an up-to-date virus checker.", "Please have one of your tech-savvy friends examine your computer.", etc.
2) Automatically download, install, and run a variety of anti -spyware, -adware, -spamware applications.
The former assumes users with mental abilities excedding those of a cabbage (Eh...), the latter would be a bit more involved to implement.
However, this would effectively kick the spammer's feet out from under them by removing one of the means to spam effectively, no? It's not as if any of these bastards could actually afford to replace a zombie network with a server farm. And since they'd pretty much be forced to put it on THEIR internet connection, it'd be trivial to block (As opposed to hundreds, if not thousands of machines on hundreds, if not thousands of different IP blocks).
The obvious drawbacks are that the courts are unlikely to recognise white hat vs black hat hacking if the writer(s) get caught, and that the virus itself (regardless of the fact that it is NOT malicious) would probably not recieve a very warm welcoming.
This can't be a silver bullet; nothing will be. Not all spammers rely on zombie networks. But I do think it could make a measureable dent in the amount of spam that clogs our inboxes. It will hopefully be one of the thousand paper cuts that bleed spammers to death. And if nothing else, it would eliminate a great deal of malware!
"Tell me, does the Patent and Trademark Office ever deny a patent application?"
Considering they once granted a patent for *ahem* a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I think the answer is a firm no. They will grant you any ridiculous patent you want, and only revoke it if someone takes it to court.
"Microsoft is donating software to the third world." == "Here, your first hit of crack is free." Then you'll *buy* another, and another, and another...
Simply de-allocate the IP blocks of any ISP that continually harbors spammers, meaning it refuses to terminate them immediately? They can't spam if they can't connect to the internet!
And to "strongly discourage" any ISP that would consider flaunting this rule, they get zero compensation for that netblock they paid for and are denied from buying any new netblock for a time (possibly a week).
Because this would necissarly work on the level of ARIN and the root DNS servers, you can't avoid it, because those are known, reputable organizations who will have no choice to comply.
Right now, I'd do anything just to GET the Nvidia drivers working at all. As it is, all their drivers have done is left me without any working OpenGL at all.
I've repeatedly tried using their drivers, version 4496. The first time I did so and started X, it worked a little like Windows Airlines. Everything looked good, until I tried to open the menu bar and the system locked up completely. Absolutely nothing could back out of X or get control back. Taking a look at the logs, it said "Unable to find NVidia Xfree-86 driver."
So after a reboot, I uninstalled their drivers and put "nv" instead of "nvidia" back into XF86Config-4. Ok, my desktop works again, except I have no OpenGL server: "Failed to add GLX extension (NVIDIA XFree86 driver not found)" WTF, I just unistalled their drivers!
Alright, I tried it one more time and this time told it to compile it's own kernel interface. Ok, it makes it's own kernel interface, the Windows plane takes off, reaches crusing altitude, and then waits 20 seconds before exploding: This time I tried opening an application, and MELTDOWN.
I've tried just generating a new X configuration file with xf86config, and that doesn't help. At the moment, I'm using the kludge: Replace "nvidia" with "nv" and be happy that it works at all. What can I do to either A) Get the Nvidia drivers working or B) Restore my original drivers? I don't do much gaming, but I DO work with 3-d programs and WINE, neither of which can even start without GLX. Please, help this pathetic Mandrake user!
We make George Bush the judge. If nothing else, we know he loves the death penalty. Of course, that's AFTER the bastard is convicted, or IT will probably find a way to mess with Bush's mind.
Holographic film has grains that are literally the size of a wavelength of light or smaller to record interference patterns. It's equivalent to 3000+ lines of resolution per millimeter horizontally and vertically, which is 9 "megapixels" per square millimeter. A square centimeter of holographic film has.9 gigapixels on it.
I know that most holograms are used in science, but there are people who take pictures of normal objects which are not scientific, so I think this counts.
Factory owners terrorizing workers who were unionizing in the early 20th century, or Al Capone. And I seem to remember that the Unions won, and that Capone went to jail.
However, you also have to remember that back then the common people actually had spines. They knew they were probably going to get raped; They didn't bend over and they sure as hell didn't relax and enjoy it.
It's like Marty says in BTTF 1: "If you don't stand up now, he'll walk all over you for the rest of your life!"
We aren't stuck with chemical propellants. It's just that people have an irrationally large fear of anything that involves "Nu-Ku-Lar" or "RADIATION!!!!!" I didn't say that some fear wasn't ok, but a lot of people take it to insane lengths. NASA was designing a nuclear drive (actually two) back in the 1960's, but we have chosen to be stuck with chemical propellants.
Modern rockets already get something approaching 80-90% of the energy they can possibly get out of chemical reactions, so unless we switch to something else, we are going nowhere very slowly. Antimatter is centuries off, fusion has been 20 years away for the last 50 years, and no living thing can withstand the acceleration of a railgun-type launch scheme. So that leaves us with a fission rocket for now. Google for "NERVA" or "Project Orion."
"Stealing" implies that I have deprived you of something. if I steal your car, I have deprived you of your car.
However, computers and the internet have rendered this unnecessary. I can make an exact copy of your car, and you were deprived of nothing. For the most part, I *choose* to have a merely reasonably accurate replica for the sake of bandwidth which can then be further duplicated.
Because there is no scarcity (Even though the RIAA is doing it's best to force artificial scarcity upon us), there is no value. You will have to produce a good enough product that people wish to pay you to make more, because with no scarcity you cannot force people to pay you.
If I might continue with the car analogy, my decision to drive a Toyta Camry instead of a Porche or Corvette is due to scarcity: It takes far more labor to produce a Porche or 'Vette, so they cost far more than I can afford. Therefore, others make cars which use cheaper, lower-performing parts which fit my budget.
Enter the duplicator. It can promptly make an exact copy of anything you feed into it, down to the subatomic level if you want to wait a bit longer. There is no longer any scarcity of cars; I can simply borrow my neighbor's luxury vehicle and copy it. As the price for all cars is now effectively zero, the only ones who can continue making cars are those who can produce a product of the quality that will convince you to willingly pay for it.
Similarly, the advent of music sharing means that there is no scarcity, so the only ones who should make music are those who can produce music of such quality that you want to pay them to continue making it. Unfortunately, this direct relationship between the band and their audience leaves no space for the pinheads running the RIAA corporate members to take a share and the buggy makers will be damned if they give up without a fight.
"Relax, doc... All we need is a little plutonium."
"Oh, well I'm sure that in 1985 you can buy plutonium in every corner drug store, but in 1955 it's very hard to come by!"
Slashdot Mirror
The sad point of all of this is that I'm going to (sort of) defend the cocaine dealers and point out that they are responding to basic economic forces that we all respond to at one level or another. As long as coke dealers can take in more money than it costs them, they will continue to sell cocaine. This is "rational" behavior in the economic sense.
The sad point of all of this is that I'm going to (sort of) defend the child pornographers and point out that they are responding to basic economic forces that we all respond to at one level or another. As long as child pornographers can take in more money than it costs them, they will continue to rape children. This is "rational" behavior in the economic sense.
The fact is, engaging in kiddie porn, drug dealing, and spamming requires more than a profit incentive; It also requires a complete lack of any moral compass whatsoever, which we all agree that the three groups above do.
I am quite frankly amazed that no one has shot Richter or Ralsky in the head with a large-caliber shotgun yet. Once THAT happens, the tide of spam will turn.
At any rate, I could argue that they are NOT responding to basic market forces; Before spam inundated our inboxes, did any one want to be carpet bombed with offers to "3n14rge yur ===) and (.)?" NO. At a point in the not so distant past, the ratio of gullible morons on the internet reached a high enough value that it became profitable to defraud them en masse. When everyone but the aforementioned candidates for "You Are A Fucking Moron 9" (google for it) took offense, the spammers did the same thing America did in Vietnam: Step up the carpet bombing; You've got to hit one eventually, regardless of the number of innocents you hit in the process.
Because a key requirement for a molecule to be the base of life is it's ability to polymerize - ie form long-chain molecules. Carbon is very good at this at earthlike temperatures, which is why it became the basis of life on Earth. Silicon, I hear, can be convinced to do so at high temperatures, which means it could concievably give rise to some sort of life.
"... spend about 10 seconds solving a complex math problem and attaching proof of the effort to a message."
Already discussed:
[X] Will break mailing lists
[X] Will be forged by spammers
You know what happens when the government gets an inch; They take a foot.
Personally, I would much rather let an organization like ARIN handle things: If too many people complain that any site is fraudlent, their IP space is deallocated, period.
However, regardless of any other solution, I can't imagine anything worse than exposing internet registries to highly concentrated Administratium.
Amen... I don't even use an inkjet anymore. I bought a Panasonic KX-P2023 at a swap meet for $4 (no loss even if it didn't work :), and I've never looked back.
To me, it wasn't so much getting shafted for ink as that the inkjet Wouldn't Stop CLOGGING. As often as I used it (not very), I would try to print something and every time spend an hour desperately trying to get all the colors to come out correctly. Oh, yeah... I went through like 3 of them in 2 years. On the other hand, the KX-P has never had any ink problems (besides the cartridge it came with being 10 years old, and even that worked). It accepts tractor-fed paper. And most importantly (for someone into retrocomputing), it will print ASCII directly from my Tandy M100.
Unfortunately, I made a decision driven by the desire for instant gratification to get refill cartridges from an office supply store, and got screwed for ink: $20 for two carts. Never again...
The scientific answer would be that we can adapt to our surroundings. Robots may be designed to do one or many things well, but humans can do almost anything reasonably.
The philosophic answer would probably be that it's in our nature to wander off and explore, just like Columbus.
The political answer is that "no one ever threw a ticker tape parade for a robot."
That might be a good idea in *most* cases, but unfortunately, I don't think that a virus could both be small enough not to clog a network and complex enough to discriminate between valid/spam SMTP traffic with acceptable reliability (Which businesses often define as 100%).
Once all/most/many of the relays that they can use without *overtly* breaking the law close up, spammers will simply turn to *overtly* breaking the law, as in creating zombie networks. And as soon as those poorly maintained computers are cleaned up, they will simply use the same virus/worm/exploit to 0wn more poorly maintained computers (These computers will coincedently tend to be crawling with malware already).
Though any such move would doubtlessly be controversial, I suggest writing a "white hat" virus what would:
1) Check if a machine was unpatched/0wned (Probably meaning "it could infect it in the first place")
2) Once loading itself, download and run anti-spyware/-adware/-spamware/-malware applications to clean up the computer
3) Contact and infect other hosts, but NOT at such a rate as to bring down networks.
I omitted suggesting that it download the latest patches, because (as is oft pointed out) one reason many people and organizations DON'T download the latest patches for Windows is that they often break other things.
Although, again, this would be extremely controversial, I am suprised at never having seen it suggested before.
"WHY Should I care in the least about censorship in China ?"
Ask someone from Tiananmen Square that. Oh, wait... They're mostly either dead or in prison for the remaining term of their lives.
I haven't seen this idea thrown around here that I remember. I think that most of us will agree on the following points:
A) Spammers are too poor to afford the large network of computers needed to send their trash fast enough.
B) Because of this, they steal resources in the form of "zombie networks"
C) The "zombie networks" are composed of unpatched Windows computers that were 0wn3d 5 minutes after they were connected to the internet.
I think you can see that the weak point is the zombie network, without which spammers are left unable to pollute the internet with enough of thier trash to generate money. No zombies, No spam.
So, now we need to think of something that can replicate itself through a vast network of vunerable hosts before spammers can respond. A virus.
Fight fire with fire! Write a "virus" that will use one of the dizzying array of Windows remote security holes to install itself, and then (instead of doing something malicious) either
1) Inform the Luser to "Please get and run an up-to-date virus checker.", "Please have one of your tech-savvy friends examine your computer.", etc.
2) Automatically download, install, and run a variety of anti -spyware, -adware, -spamware applications.
The former assumes users with mental abilities excedding those of a cabbage (Eh...), the latter would be a bit more involved to implement.
However, this would effectively kick the spammer's feet out from under them by removing one of the means to spam effectively, no? It's not as if any of these bastards could actually afford to replace a zombie network with a server farm. And since they'd pretty much be forced to put it on THEIR internet connection, it'd be trivial to block (As opposed to hundreds, if not thousands of machines on hundreds, if not thousands of different IP blocks).
The obvious drawbacks are that the courts are unlikely to recognise white hat vs black hat hacking if the writer(s) get caught, and that the virus itself (regardless of the fact that it is NOT malicious) would probably not recieve a very warm welcoming. This can't be a silver bullet; nothing will be. Not all spammers rely on zombie networks. But I do think it could make a measureable dent in the amount of spam that clogs our inboxes. It will hopefully be one of the thousand paper cuts that bleed spammers to death. And if nothing else, it would eliminate a great deal of malware!
"640K 'ought to be enough for anyone."
"Tell me, does the Patent and Trademark Office ever deny a patent application?"
Considering they once granted a patent for *ahem* a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I think the answer is a firm no. They will grant you any ridiculous patent you want, and only revoke it if someone takes it to court.
"Microsoft is donating software to the third world." == "Here, your first hit of crack is free." Then you'll *buy* another, and another, and another...
Simply de-allocate the IP blocks of any ISP that continually harbors spammers, meaning it refuses to terminate them immediately? They can't spam if they can't connect to the internet!
And to "strongly discourage" any ISP that would consider flaunting this rule, they get zero compensation for that netblock they paid for and are denied from buying any new netblock for a time (possibly a week).
Because this would necissarly work on the level of ARIN and the root DNS servers, you can't avoid it, because those are known, reputable organizations who will have no choice to comply.
Can anyone think of a way you *could* avoid this?
Right now, I'd do anything just to GET the Nvidia drivers working at all. As it is, all their drivers have done is left me without any working OpenGL at all.
I've repeatedly tried using their drivers, version 4496. The first time I did so and started X, it worked a little like Windows Airlines. Everything looked good, until I tried to open the menu bar and the system locked up completely. Absolutely nothing could back out of X or get control back. Taking a look at the logs, it said "Unable to find NVidia Xfree-86 driver."
So after a reboot, I uninstalled their drivers and put "nv" instead of "nvidia" back into XF86Config-4. Ok, my desktop works again, except I have no OpenGL server: "Failed to add GLX extension (NVIDIA XFree86 driver not found)" WTF, I just unistalled their drivers!
Alright, I tried it one more time and this time told it to compile it's own kernel interface. Ok, it makes it's own kernel interface, the Windows plane takes off, reaches crusing altitude, and then waits 20 seconds before exploding: This time I tried opening an application, and MELTDOWN.
I've tried just generating a new X configuration file with xf86config, and that doesn't help. At the moment, I'm using the kludge: Replace "nvidia" with "nv" and be happy that it works at all. What can I do to either A) Get the Nvidia drivers working or B) Restore my original drivers? I don't do much gaming, but I DO work with 3-d programs and WINE, neither of which can even start without GLX. Please, help this pathetic Mandrake user!
We make George Bush the judge. If nothing else, we know he loves the death penalty. Of course, that's AFTER the bastard is convicted, or IT will probably find a way to mess with Bush's mind.
They accelerated India up to relativistic speed :).
Holographic film has grains that are literally the size of a wavelength of light or smaller to record interference patterns. It's equivalent to 3000+ lines of resolution per millimeter horizontally and vertically, which is 9 "megapixels" per square millimeter. A square centimeter of holographic film has .9 gigapixels on it.
I know that most holograms are used in science, but there are people who take pictures of normal objects which are not scientific, so I think this counts.
Factory owners terrorizing workers who were unionizing in the early 20th century, or Al Capone. And I seem to remember that the Unions won, and that Capone went to jail.
However, you also have to remember that back then the common people actually had spines. They knew they were probably going to get raped; They didn't bend over and they sure as hell didn't relax and enjoy it.
It's like Marty says in BTTF 1: "If you don't stand up now, he'll walk all over you for the rest of your life!"
We aren't stuck with chemical propellants. It's just that people have an irrationally large fear of anything that involves "Nu-Ku-Lar" or "RADIATION!!!!!" I didn't say that some fear wasn't ok, but a lot of people take it to insane lengths. NASA was designing a nuclear drive (actually two) back in the 1960's, but we have chosen to be stuck with chemical propellants.
Modern rockets already get something approaching 80-90% of the energy they can possibly get out of chemical reactions, so unless we switch to something else, we are going nowhere very slowly. Antimatter is centuries off, fusion has been 20 years away for the last 50 years, and no living thing can withstand the acceleration of a railgun-type launch scheme. So that leaves us with a fission rocket for now. Google for "NERVA" or "Project Orion."
"They don't know anything about this stuff, remember?"
You see, we were learning how to remove prepositional phrases to make sentences easier to understand:
"They don't know anything, remember?"
If your music is of high enough quality, then people will pay you to make it. That is your new profit incentive: Try to make the best music possible.
"Stealing" implies that I have deprived you of something. if I steal your car, I have deprived you of your car.
However, computers and the internet have rendered this unnecessary. I can make an exact copy of your car, and you were deprived of nothing. For the most part, I *choose* to have a merely reasonably accurate replica for the sake of bandwidth which can then be further duplicated.
Because there is no scarcity (Even though the RIAA is doing it's best to force artificial scarcity upon us), there is no value. You will have to produce a good enough product that people wish to pay you to make more, because with no scarcity you cannot force people to pay you.
If I might continue with the car analogy, my decision to drive a Toyta Camry instead of a Porche or Corvette is due to scarcity: It takes far more labor to produce a Porche or 'Vette, so they cost far more than I can afford. Therefore, others make cars which use cheaper, lower-performing parts which fit my budget.
Enter the duplicator. It can promptly make an exact copy of anything you feed into it, down to the subatomic level if you want to wait a bit longer. There is no longer any scarcity of cars; I can simply borrow my neighbor's luxury vehicle and copy it. As the price for all cars is now effectively zero, the only ones who can continue making cars are those who can produce a product of the quality that will convince you to willingly pay for it.
Similarly, the advent of music sharing means that there is no scarcity, so the only ones who should make music are those who can produce music of such quality that you want to pay them to continue making it. Unfortunately, this direct relationship between the band and their audience leaves no space for the pinheads running the RIAA corporate members to take a share and the buggy makers will be damned if they give up without a fight.
"Relax, doc... All we need is a little plutonium."
"Oh, well I'm sure that in 1985 you can buy plutonium in every corner drug store, but in 1955 it's very hard to come by!"
"Microsoft is not evil, they're just greedy."
[WOPR] What's The Difference Dr. Falken? [/WOPR]