The best way to close the technological gap between the rich and the poor would be to liberate Palestine. Eventually, it would be better for everyone because it would likely boost not only the economy in that reigon, but also boost morale.
Somewhat unsubstantiated claim you make there... Palestinians have demonstrated a remarkable ability to excel in the industries of poverty, rebellion, and terrorism. Israel made a democratic oasis in the desert and continues to be driven, against all odds, to improve itself and its way of life. Palestinians have sought to leech on to this success and drain the lifeblood away, hopefully in the process eliminating the Jewish state of Israel. The only way in which unconditionally "liberating Palestine" will close any technological or social gaps is by bringing everybody down to the same low level the rest of the repressed and backward region is on. No thanks.
Whiplash for PS2 (I think also for XBox?) just came out, and is an excellent game. The characters and story are hilariously written, with enough odd references to amuse kids and adults alike. The gameplay is fast paced and exciting, and the worlds are rich and huge to explore. Good mix of platformy/puzzley/combat.
do you accept a government who wants to arrest you for 'illegally viewing' television?
Most important is being aware of the penalties for your actions ahead of time.
If I know exactly the penalty for something along with the likelihood of getting caught, I can decide to do it or not. These "open source" contracts between citizens and governance are an acceptable part of our society that allows large scale organization. (For example, we may sadly all need to surrender the sovereignty over our freezers and submit to periodic random freezer inspections in order to minimize risk of a catsrophic biological release).
It is only when laws and consequences are opaque, unknown, or nondeterministic that they become problematic. This is what was interesting about this particular case: the people who bought the boxes were told (incorrectly) that they were legal.
I agree. TechTV (channel #294 on Comcat Digital in San Francisco) is really an outstanding channel.
As you mentioned, "X-Play" (video game reviews), "Screen Savers" (kind of like the TV version of Slashdot), and "Unscrewed" (wacky tech stuff with sexual edge and a ridiculously hot co-host) are all great shows.
Other good shows are "Big Thinkers" (profiles on big people in tech), "Future Fighting Machines" (aircraft carriers, battlefield tech, etc.), and more. The occasional Robot Wars (generally minus the obnoxious audio) provides nice background video.
Overall, it's great and generally stimulating TV. That being said, this is different from the subject of this article, which is more of a CSPAN-esque channel, kind of like being at a tech conference without having to smell all the dirty nerds (you know who you are, just take a shower in the morning for crying out loud, you can still be smart for the rest of the day, and smell smart too).
I don't think storing the light and then converting to required power is going to be that much more effcient than converting to power and storing in batteries.
Chemical storage in batteries is not the most efficient thing, so if that step could be bypassed or replaced with something it would be a boon.
A lot of people who don't read places like slashdot would be equally concerned if they knew what was going on. They need to be educated, its why democracy works, and why it fails when it doesn't occur.
Democracy works fine without education. The problem is mob-rule where the whims and impulses of social consciousness determine policies that are often short-sighted and dangerous.
This is one reason why we (U.S.A.) have a representative democracy (as opposed to direct democracy). A filtering layer of responsibility prevents horrible things from happening.
I actually think our democracy would work better if people were uneducated. Our education system now is broken, serving to indoctrinate political and cultural agendas far more than impart any useful knowledge.
At least if we acknolwedged this fact and focused our efforts on useful propoganda for our youth rather than bickering with school boards and burned out teachers and still having no consensus on morality, ethics, history, or even current events, then we might have a chance of generating good voters.
As it stands now, kids in school learn mostly how to fight and how to memorize trivia for short periods of time. If our country was a giant game show with a fighting round followed by a quiz round, then we'd be all set.
LOS ANGELES - A Los Angeles man was sentenced and jailed without trial for violating the File Acquisition Grant System (FAGS) when he downloaded a ten year old Kid Rock song without submitting the required payment of 2 Euros.
"My cat was sitting on my desk, and I guess his paw was on the Num Lock key or something, right when the transaction was happening. I didn't intend to violate the EULA at all," said the incarcerated netizen, whose belonging have been seized and sold on EBay.
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm, and Media (ATFM) agent Phucyo Fridomup successfully lobbied the automated court system (running a patched version of MS Justice 2007) to get another three consecutive life sentences added on after hearing the comment about the cat, since this may give other criminals information to use to bypass the payment system and is a further violation of DMCA.
The cat has since been ritually slaughtered and offered up as sacrifice pursuant to 2008 Patriot Act Adjunct Subsection 8.4.
Not sure if you are trolling hard or really believe what you are saying...
The patent system most definitely DOES generate innovation. Coming up with new drugs can cost billions of dollars, and that's not likely to happen out of the goodness of mankind. There is absolutely no logical connection to justification of slavery as you describe. If you are going to invoke racism and classism and moral relativism, at least be clear in your argument.
I thought the whole point of building a government the right way was so that one day you could reap technelogical benefits for the greater good. But now, after we've made the cake, China gets to eat it too. Something is dreadfully wrong when a country like China is given a go-card to get 50 years of technology for nothing and continue in its old ways.
This is pattern of history. Competing tribes/chiefdoms/states integrate advanced technology, because advances in the first place come from a) expanding the social brain to new people and ideas and b) opening up economically to new markets.
Every group that has tried to stop this from happening (as many invariably do) has failed, succumbed to stronger competitors (who often utilize the same new technology), and crumbled into history's dustbin. It is the long-term human cultural evolution that benefits, not the individual societies.
The U.S.A. in the last decade has become overwhelmingly influenced by corporations, big money, and religious superstition. It has embarked on a path that is ignorant of this historical precedent. 1) Erosion of key principles of freedom (e.g. abolition of first amendment right to free speech by DMCA, police state mentality granted by Patriot Act), 2) attempts at rigid control and preservation of existing industries (e.g. media, energy, health), and 3) blocks on research (e.g. "drugs", encryption/decryption, stem cells) all combine to stifle freedom, progress, communication, and democracy.
The result of this is that competitors (e.g. China) who are shifting in the other direction (experimenting with capitalism and new technologies) have a much higher chance of prevailing and dominating. China has taken the cautious approach for quite some time and has done well by it. That they are now seizing western innovation and integrating it into their own system should come as no surprise.
Should the U.S.A. continue on the same path it is on now, it will soon find itself spread thin, highly corrupt, suffering from brain drain (smarties leaving the country), broke, unable to borrow money from the rest of the world, generally disliked, and stuck in one or two simple roles in the world stage while the rest of the world pushes on around it.
You raise a good point, but we're not talking about going back in time and filming his actual exploits (which were no doubt more mundane than the stories recalling them). I don't think that establishing a SINGLE Billy the Kid will take away from the mythology that has evolved around his legacy, it will just screw one of those two towns out of some US$10k annual or so in tourists ordering coffee at their local diner and buying "I Pissed on Billy The Kid's Grave" t-shirts. Not zero-sum by any means, but the *real* grave site will probably get more attention as a result of this.
To move forward, the rider activates a trigger on the left handlebar. The landing gear retracts when the speed reaches 20 km/h. To turn, the rider leans in the desired direction. The brake is activated by a trigger on the right handlebar.
It's somewhat interesting that the two main axes of control (hand motion and leaning) are conceptually reversed as compared to the Segway. On Segway, the hand turns and the body controls forward/backward. Here, the hand controls forward/backward and the body turns.
I rode a Segway for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was pretty intuitive to move around, though the hand turning took a bit to get used to.
I get the sense that turning by leaning might be more intuitive, but also much more error-prone and dangerous. For example, if I accidentally lean forward on Segway I'll go a little faster, but accidentally lean on this thing and you might turn into a wall at 20 mph.
So, my long-winded conclusion is that our systems do not need DRM, they need to get out and date.
Heh, well said. Sex is definitely a proven method of shuffling defenses that allows genetic patterns to propogate -- by staying ahead of the competition in a competitive system.
You named two faces of the future: "total and utter chaos, continuous warfare" and "a balanced system obeying natural laws". You call them "the same thing, two points of view." I agree with that observation, but there is more to the picture.
What I am describing (as when I discussed our "divine powers" due to our "ability to alter the fabric of i-space") is a framework in which "the competition" is 100% controlled.
It is the ability to introspect and self-mofidy that facilitates major paradigm shifts. (An excellent book on this and other topics is Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas R. Hofstadter.)
In this case, the messy businesses of mutations and recombinations would be useful for generating new and interesting ideas and art much more so than for the survival of stakeholders within a mostly disordered system.
This controlled future may feel more like an abstract thought experiment, but I believe it is our destiny within several generations to manifest this Incomprehensible Revolution of Ascension.
They represent the nasty side of the biology of the Net: the fact that any simulated or real ecosystem produces more parasites than non-parasites, and that non-parasites have to spend a significant amount of energy fighting off the bugs.
The difference here is that we, as people, have an almost unlimited power, as compared to our physical biological ecosystem(s).
Our ability to alter the fabric of i-space (dynamic network reconfigurations, recompilable open-source megastructures,...) provides somewhat divine powers over the ecosystem.
So rather than spending "a significant amount of energy fighting off the bugs", we will instead construct a system that is self-maintaining and actually utilizes the parasitic nature available for good (think of the "good" bacteria in your stomach).
I believe that the concept of Digital Rights is the key that will allow us to lock order into this future.
I also believe that several human generations will pass before we are able to sieze the reigns of DRM from corporate "dinosaurs" and propel ourselves as individuals into this new age.
This will be a world-wide revolution of a nature that cannot even be comprehended.
Thank you for addressing my post. Let me respond to your points.
1) While I did feel a tiny bit bad about it, I called the poster a douchebag not because I don't agree with him, but because he is spreading harmful information that has the potential to negatively effect all of our ability to access this site for free and via the high bandwidth connection it uses (off-topic in a discussion about a Linux kernel back-door, by the way). I'm all for open discussions without name-calling, but this went beyond creationism/evolutionism to something more akin to "how to avoid speed traps near schools" which are in place to make the world a safer/better place.
2) First of all, saying "people don't actually LOOK at banners" is just plain ridiculous. Some people do, and some people don't. With TV, some people watch commercials, and some go make popcorn and take a leak off their roof. Text ads may generate more click-through, but they are more insidious in that they begin to merge with the content, something a clearly demarcated graphic ad does not do. Your evidence does nothing to support your claim that abolition of graphical banner ads would be of mutual benefit to anybody, not that you've even defined "benefit", and if you consider the issue I just raised about text ads, I can't imagine how you could make that claim.
3) I never made the claim that banner ads and Slashdot are in some kind of eternal embrace that we can't shatter. I pointed out that "the ads are tastefully executed on this site" and that you shouldn't publicly try to "subvert the system that's effectively in place to give you something you like for free."
P.S. I am posting this without Karma Bonus because I don't need to further publicize this (nor encourage wasting of mod points). I just wanted to leave a response to your issues attached to this thread.
You're such a douchebag. A single banner ad that is a) an image, b) fixed size, and c) fixed placement on the top of the page is one of the most UNobtrusive ways of advertising possible. How'd you like popups, popunders, expanding "CLICK TO CLOSE" ads, ads with sounds, ads that try to install Gator on your PC, ads with JavaScript errors in them, etc...
How do you think/. doesn't get/.ed? Because it runs lots of hardware and bandwidth that's supported (partly at least) by money from those ads. How'd you like to pay for access? No? Then shut up and be appreciative that the ads are tastefully executed on this site, rather than trying to subvert the system that's effectively in place to give you something you like for free.
Why don't develop a program to send fake data to the server that gator is connecting to? If the data is credible (=random but correct), they have a mountain of crap data about users...
I am definitely in support of this approach. I feel that people and companies that abuse public systems and trust (like Gator and friends, SPAMmers, etc.) are best put down by negating their expected benefits.
More than a program to fight Gator, I think we need a framework to defend people against this entire class of assault. Gator/Claria/Cuddles/C00lNetToolz/whatever defense could just be a plugin that a user might download.
SPAM as well can be fought essentially by overwhelming SPAMmers with responses. They want to get people interested in their product, and with the cheapness of email, (I've read) around 1/10000 response rate is profitable. SO give them 50000000/10000 response rate (spam the response addresses) and see how much longer they can operate.
I have started a project to arm the masses and allow us to take back what should rightfully be ours: our computers, our bandwidth, and our time. The human brain does not defend against invading microorganisms -- lots of individual white blood cells do.
Is anybody else working on anything like this?
I have to say, your post made me laugh. Overall it wasn't very funny -- just a bunch of somewhat obscene and lame gay references, but here were the funny parts:
1. The subject "Surprised by cock". Heh. That's good. It made me click on it. It has a poetic (iambic) sound to it and could be the opening to an excellent piece of literature.
2. The part about your program "COCKSAY". Post a link, please, I'd love to make use of that. It sounds great
Yeah, and the rest of it wasn't that funny, just offtopic and obscene. You should try to focus on and expand the good parts and re-post it on another subsequent article in which it has no relevance.
Your attempt to grasp some minor element of fame in the distant future is pathetic. How about posting something productive and contributing to the discussion instead of acting like one of those morons who wave in the background of television news reports?
By the way, if you are reading this in 10 years, then check it: 2003 r0x0rZ YO b1atch3s 2013 wish you were h3re futur3 h4ckrz b@$taRdZ! w0rD!
I want to open up a discussion on legislation. Obviously some sort of law making unsolicited advertisements illegal would be a big help in thwarting the SPAM problem in many arenas (email, blogs, phones, faxes, etc.). But legilation also feels like we, as technologists, are giving up and admitting that we can't solve this problem. What do people think about this? Should we be true Americans and let the legal system sort this out?
No, you're completely missing the point of the grandparent post, and in fact trolling pretty hard, though perhaps accidentally.
You just spewed a typical set of "dependence on oil is bad" arguments followed by an irrelevent reference to mass extinctions and self-interest.
The point is that those dead plants aren't being used for anything else, so it's not a convincing rational argument to invoke the number of them that went into producing the oil.
If anything, it serves to stimulate that instinctive tree-hugging feeling many of us feel, but if you think about it, it's an interesting statistic, but doesn't matter.
If you feel that it does matter, feel free to contribute your reasoning and make for a good discussion, but don't insult our intelligence with deceptive logic techniques.
Slashdot Mirror
Whiplash for PS2 (I think also for XBox?) just came out, and is an excellent game. The characters and story are hilariously written, with enough odd references to amuse kids and adults alike. The gameplay is fast paced and exciting, and the worlds are rich and huge to explore. Good mix of platformy/puzzley/combat.
If I know exactly the penalty for something along with the likelihood of getting caught, I can decide to do it or not. These "open source" contracts between citizens and governance are an acceptable part of our society that allows large scale organization. (For example, we may sadly all need to surrender the sovereignty over our freezers and submit to periodic random freezer inspections in order to minimize risk of a catsrophic biological release).
It is only when laws and consequences are opaque, unknown, or nondeterministic that they become problematic. This is what was interesting about this particular case: the people who bought the boxes were told (incorrectly) that they were legal.
I agree. TechTV (channel #294 on Comcat Digital in San Francisco) is really an outstanding channel.
As you mentioned, "X-Play" (video game reviews), "Screen Savers" (kind of like the TV version of Slashdot), and "Unscrewed" (wacky tech stuff with sexual edge and a ridiculously hot co-host) are all great shows.
Other good shows are "Big Thinkers" (profiles on big people in tech), "Future Fighting Machines" (aircraft carriers, battlefield tech, etc.), and more. The occasional Robot Wars (generally minus the obnoxious audio) provides nice background video.
Overall, it's great and generally stimulating TV. That being said, this is different from the subject of this article, which is more of a CSPAN-esque channel, kind of like being at a tech conference without having to smell all the dirty nerds (you know who you are, just take a shower in the morning for crying out loud, you can still be smart for the rest of the day, and smell smart too).
This is one reason why we (U.S.A.) have a representative democracy (as opposed to direct democracy). A filtering layer of responsibility prevents horrible things from happening.
I actually think our democracy would work better if people were uneducated. Our education system now is broken, serving to indoctrinate political and cultural agendas far more than impart any useful knowledge.
At least if we acknolwedged this fact and focused our efforts on useful propoganda for our youth rather than bickering with school boards and burned out teachers and still having no consensus on morality, ethics, history, or even current events, then we might have a chance of generating good voters.
As it stands now, kids in school learn mostly how to fight and how to memorize trivia for short periods of time. If our country was a giant game show with a fighting round followed by a quiz round, then we'd be all set.
From the archives, 2012:
LOS ANGELES - A Los Angeles man was sentenced and jailed without trial for violating the File Acquisition Grant System (FAGS) when he downloaded a ten year old Kid Rock song without submitting the required payment of 2 Euros.
"My cat was sitting on my desk, and I guess his paw was on the Num Lock key or something, right when the transaction was happening. I didn't intend to violate the EULA at all," said the incarcerated netizen, whose belonging have been seized and sold on EBay.
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm, and Media (ATFM) agent Phucyo Fridomup successfully lobbied the automated court system (running a patched version of MS Justice 2007) to get another three consecutive life sentences added on after hearing the comment about the cat, since this may give other criminals information to use to bypass the payment system and is a further violation of DMCA.
The cat has since been ritually slaughtered and offered up as sacrifice pursuant to 2008 Patriot Act Adjunct Subsection 8.4.
Not sure if you are trolling hard or really believe what you are saying...
The patent system most definitely DOES generate innovation. Coming up with new drugs can cost billions of dollars, and that's not likely to happen out of the goodness of mankind. There is absolutely no logical connection to justification of slavery as you describe. If you are going to invoke racism and classism and moral relativism, at least be clear in your argument.
Every group that has tried to stop this from happening (as many invariably do) has failed, succumbed to stronger competitors (who often utilize the same new technology), and crumbled into history's dustbin. It is the long-term human cultural evolution that benefits, not the individual societies.
The U.S.A. in the last decade has become overwhelmingly influenced by corporations, big money, and religious superstition. It has embarked on a path that is ignorant of this historical precedent. 1) Erosion of key principles of freedom (e.g. abolition of first amendment right to free speech by DMCA, police state mentality granted by Patriot Act), 2) attempts at rigid control and preservation of existing industries (e.g. media, energy, health), and 3) blocks on research (e.g. "drugs", encryption/decryption, stem cells) all combine to stifle freedom, progress, communication, and democracy.
The result of this is that competitors (e.g. China) who are shifting in the other direction (experimenting with capitalism and new technologies) have a much higher chance of prevailing and dominating. China has taken the cautious approach for quite some time and has done well by it. That they are now seizing western innovation and integrating it into their own system should come as no surprise.
Should the U.S.A. continue on the same path it is on now, it will soon find itself spread thin, highly corrupt, suffering from brain drain (smarties leaving the country), broke, unable to borrow money from the rest of the world, generally disliked, and stuck in one or two simple roles in the world stage while the rest of the world pushes on around it.
Hey, it was a good 200 year run, though.
You raise a good point, but we're not talking about going back in time and filming his actual exploits (which were no doubt more mundane than the stories recalling them). I don't think that establishing a SINGLE Billy the Kid will take away from the mythology that has evolved around his legacy, it will just screw one of those two towns out of some US$10k annual or so in tourists ordering coffee at their local diner and buying "I Pissed on Billy The Kid's Grave" t-shirts. Not zero-sum by any means, but the *real* grave site will probably get more attention as a result of this.
It's somewhat interesting that the two main axes of control (hand motion and leaning) are conceptually reversed as compared to the Segway. On Segway, the hand turns and the body controls forward/backward. Here, the hand controls forward/backward and the body turns.
I rode a Segway for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was pretty intuitive to move around, though the hand turning took a bit to get used to.
I get the sense that turning by leaning might be more intuitive, but also much more error-prone and dangerous. For example, if I accidentally lean forward on Segway I'll go a little faster, but accidentally lean on this thing and you might turn into a wall at 20 mph.
You named two faces of the future: "total and utter chaos, continuous warfare" and "a balanced system obeying natural laws". You call them "the same thing, two points of view." I agree with that observation, but there is more to the picture.
What I am describing (as when I discussed our "divine powers" due to our "ability to alter the fabric of i-space") is a framework in which "the competition" is 100% controlled. It is the ability to introspect and self-mofidy that facilitates major paradigm shifts. (An excellent book on this and other topics is Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.)
In this case, the messy businesses of mutations and recombinations would be useful for generating new and interesting ideas and art much more so than for the survival of stakeholders within a mostly disordered system.
This controlled future may feel more like an abstract thought experiment, but I believe it is our destiny within several generations to manifest this Incomprehensible Revolution of Ascension.
Our ability to alter the fabric of i-space (dynamic network reconfigurations, recompilable open-source megastructures,
So rather than spending "a significant amount of energy fighting off the bugs", we will instead construct a system that is self-maintaining and actually utilizes the parasitic nature available for good (think of the "good" bacteria in your stomach).
I believe that the concept of Digital Rights is the key that will allow us to lock order into this future.
I also believe that several human generations will pass before we are able to sieze the reigns of DRM from corporate "dinosaurs" and propel ourselves as individuals into this new age.
This will be a world-wide revolution of a nature that cannot even be comprehended.
$50 says this post gets modded Funny then Overrated.
Thank you for addressing my post. Let me respond to your points.
1) While I did feel a tiny bit bad about it, I called the poster a douchebag not because I don't agree with him, but because he is spreading harmful information that has the potential to negatively effect all of our ability to access this site for free and via the high bandwidth connection it uses (off-topic in a discussion about a Linux kernel back-door, by the way). I'm all for open discussions without name-calling, but this went beyond creationism/evolutionism to something more akin to "how to avoid speed traps near schools" which are in place to make the world a safer/better place.
2) First of all, saying "people don't actually LOOK at banners" is just plain ridiculous. Some people do, and some people don't. With TV, some people watch commercials, and some go make popcorn and take a leak off their roof. Text ads may generate more click-through, but they are more insidious in that they begin to merge with the content, something a clearly demarcated graphic ad does not do. Your evidence does nothing to support your claim that abolition of graphical banner ads would be of mutual benefit to anybody, not that you've even defined "benefit", and if you consider the issue I just raised about text ads, I can't imagine how you could make that claim.
3) I never made the claim that banner ads and Slashdot are in some kind of eternal embrace that we can't shatter. I pointed out that "the ads are tastefully executed on this site" and that you shouldn't publicly try to "subvert the system that's effectively in place to give you something you like for free."
P.S. I am posting this without Karma Bonus because I don't need to further publicize this (nor encourage wasting of mod points). I just wanted to leave a response to your issues attached to this thread.
You're such a douchebag. A single banner ad that is a) an image, b) fixed size, and c) fixed placement on the top of the page is one of the most UNobtrusive ways of advertising possible. How'd you like popups, popunders, expanding "CLICK TO CLOSE" ads, ads with sounds, ads that try to install Gator on your PC, ads with JavaScript errors in them, etc...
/. doesn't get /.ed? Because it runs lots of hardware and bandwidth that's supported (partly at least) by money from those ads. How'd you like to pay for access? No? Then shut up and be appreciative that the ads are tastefully executed on this site, rather than trying to subvert the system that's effectively in place to give you something you like for free.
How do you think
More than a program to fight Gator, I think we need a framework to defend people against this entire class of assault. Gator/Claria/Cuddles/C00lNetToolz/whatever defense could just be a plugin that a user might download.
SPAM as well can be fought essentially by overwhelming SPAMmers with responses. They want to get people interested in their product, and with the cheapness of email, (I've read) around 1/10000 response rate is profitable. SO give them 50000000/10000 response rate (spam the response addresses) and see how much longer they can operate.
I have started a project to arm the masses and allow us to take back what should rightfully be ours: our computers, our bandwidth, and our time. The human brain does not defend against invading microorganisms -- lots of individual white blood cells do. Is anybody else working on anything like this?
I have to say, your post made me laugh. Overall it wasn't very funny -- just a bunch of somewhat obscene and lame gay references, but here were the funny parts:
1. The subject "Surprised by cock". Heh. That's good. It made me click on it. It has a poetic (iambic) sound to it and could be the opening to an excellent piece of literature.
2. The part about your program "COCKSAY". Post a link, please, I'd love to make use of that. It sounds great
Yeah, and the rest of it wasn't that funny, just offtopic and obscene. You should try to focus on and expand the good parts and re-post it on another subsequent article in which it has no relevance.
Your attempt to grasp some minor element of fame in the distant future is pathetic. How about posting something productive and contributing to the discussion instead of acting like one of those morons who wave in the background of television news reports?
By the way, if you are reading this in 10 years, then check it: 2003 r0x0rZ YO b1atch3s 2013 wish you were h3re futur3 h4ckrz b@$taRdZ! w0rD!
I want to open up a discussion on legislation. Obviously some sort of law making unsolicited advertisements illegal would be a big help in thwarting the SPAM problem in many arenas (email, blogs, phones, faxes, etc.). But legilation also feels like we, as technologists, are giving up and admitting that we can't solve this problem. What do people think about this? Should we be true Americans and let the legal system sort this out?
No, you're completely missing the point of the grandparent post, and in fact trolling pretty hard, though perhaps accidentally.
You just spewed a typical set of "dependence on oil is bad" arguments followed by an irrelevent reference to mass extinctions and self-interest.
The point is that those dead plants aren't being used for anything else, so it's not a convincing rational argument to invoke the number of them that went into producing the oil. If anything, it serves to stimulate that instinctive tree-hugging feeling many of us feel, but if you think about it, it's an interesting statistic, but doesn't matter.
If you feel that it does matter, feel free to contribute your reasoning and make for a good discussion, but don't insult our intelligence with deceptive logic techniques.