I read a number of your posts earlier. You seem to be a whacko who regularly contradicts what you have said yourself, or what the articles you cite happen to say. Sorry, following the rest of your posts just isn't worth the time.
Soon after, you say " the country's energy is far *lower* than before the war? I can get you graphs if you want. It's especially bad right now."
In the article that you yourself cited, we find:
Electricity remains a sore spot with Iraqis in Baghdad. Though CPA officials say average Iraqi electricity production is now higher than it was before the war, the residents of Baghdad - home to a third of Iraq's 27 million people - are getting about 12 hours of electricity a day, down from 18-20 hours. The CPA decided to redistribute power to towns less favored by Hussein's regime, which had little or no power before the war. Most residents of Baghdad don't know this, and are simply angry. "America was right to replace Saddam,'' says Isam Ali al-Beldawi, a Baghdad doctor. "But we're in the dark half the time."
There are only two other cities in Iraq that have less power today than before the war: Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and Fallujah, both favored by the former strongman and now hotbeds of insurgency.
I was opposed to the war in Iraq. I considered it unnecessary, and not the best tactic available. I still believe it to be a mistake. However, once that mistake has been made, there is no "undo" to take it back - you must simply move on and deal with it as best as possible.
I'd like to thank you for doing your job in Iraq. It's unsafe, under-appreciated, and tends to have people upset at you for things that are not under your control. (You didn't decide "lets invade Iraq", you followed orders and did your job well, like a marine should, but many people seem to miss that.)
No I mean if they meet the regulations them emailing you commercially is free speach, in the same way a commerical mailing in your mailbox is free speach.
And, as I said before, you are wrong. Free speech doesn't mean that you can shove as many ads into my email box as you want - that's just what the spammers want people to think. (And it's spelled free speech by everyone but spammers. You spell it the spammer way.)
Free speech means you have the right to say essentially whatever you want. It does not give you the right to force people to listen. It does not give you the right to force other people to pay for your advertising. Telemarketers tried to argue that their "right" to call people is free speech, and therefore that it could not be regulated. They lost that argument. Fax spammers have also tried and lost.
They can have their speech by advertising via legitimate means. (TV, radio, newspapers, etc.) They can post whatever they want to a website. But if they are spamming, they are stealing other peoples bandwidth, forcing their advertising costs onto unwilling recipients. Your "legitimate spammers" can still ruin email as a communications medium, regardless of whether whatever crap they want to see is fraudulent or not.
You'll never understand this, though, so I'm wasting my time.
I doubt you'll care what judges have said, either, but lets look at what courts have ruled.
Chief Justice Berger, U.S. Supreme Court:
Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even good ideas on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every persons domain.
U.S. Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin:
[Spammers] have come to court not because their freedom of speech is threatened but because their profits are; to dress up their complaints in First Amendment garb demeans the principles for which the First Amendment stands.
they probably look up your e-mail address from your website or Blog or whatever, guess where you are from and use that information to target the bank you're likely to be from.
They probably don't do that much targeting. Set up the phishing site, send the spam to every address they can come up with, and hope for a few suckers, more likely.
RadioShack I think was the worst about this -- up until a short time ago they asked for your phone number among other things upon checkout.
They've stopped now, or so I've read. I never gave them my info, and just told them "I don't want to have my info sold to a bunch of mailing lists, so I don't give it out".
But I did, one time, tell them my last name. (That's all he had asked, and I gave it, though I hadn't planned to give them a phone number and address and such.) He didn't ask any more information, though. When I got my receipt, it had the name, phone number, and address of someone else with the same last name.
The Albersons where I live (near Dallas) asks you if you have the card or not. If you have one they'll swipe yours. If you don't they'll swipe one that they have at each checkout lane.
They are probably trying to avoid having people like me tell them what they think about their stupid "savings card" crap. I've done it, on the few occassions I've shopped at Albertsons. (And yes, they did put it on another card. I dunno if it's the stores card, or if the employee is just using thier own. I dunno if it's store policy, or just a clerk who doesn't want to listen to the complaints.)
I still find it a pretty dispicable practice, and there is a Wal Mart grocery store near my home, so I do my shopping there. They don't treat their customers that way, and their regular prices are as good (maybe better) as Albertsons "Preferred Customer Since You Are Willing To Sell Your Privacy" prices.
Assume that the only known prime numbers are 2, 3, 5.
The product of all primes would be 30. Add 1 to the product, you have 31.
According to the basic "proof" (it's not really a proof, as written) then 31 would be either a new (previously unknown) prime, or a product of primes that are not yet known.
From the "proof": THEREFORE, it is either a prime number which is not a known prime or a product of primes that are not in the set of all known primes
In my example, 31, we have found a prime number. In order to prove that the new number is prime, you would have to factor it.
In all cases, the number you end up with is going to either be prime, or if not prime, then factoring that number should teach you about a prime number you hadn't previously known about.
Following our example, we now know about 2, 3, 5, and 31. Those are our "known primes". We run the test again. 2 * 3 * 4 * 31 = 930, and then we add 1 to the product of all known primes. So either 931 is a prime number, or it can be factored by a prime number which isn't in our list of known primes.
In this case 931 isn't prime. When you try to factor it to prove that it is prime, you are going to find a factor which is a prime number, and is not in our set of known prime numbers. Thus the set of known prime numbers grows, either way. And so, we've proven that there must be an infinite number of prime numbers.
A few days ago, I ran into an old friend of mine. He's a mathemetician, and taught me a lot about programming when I was learning. We chatted for a few minutes, and as we were parting ways, he called "Have a Merry Christmas!". I told him "You're jumping the gun - tomorrow is Halloween."
He replied "I always get those mixed up, because OCT 31 = DEC 25."
The actual proof that there are infinite primes is more complex. But here's a simplified version which I stole word for word from from Harald Tveit Alvestrand.
ASSUME that the number of primes is finite.
THEN IN THEORY, one could list them all, forming "the set of all primes". Then, we can multiply them together, and add 1 to the result.
The resulting number is obviously (by rules of mathematics):
- Not any of the known primes, since it is larger than them all
- Not divisible by any of the known primes, since it is 1 larger than their product
THEREFORE, it is either a prime number which is not a known prime or a product of primes that are not in the set of all known primes.
This is inconsistent with our assumption, which we started with.
THEREFORE, we have proved a negative: The statement "The number of primes is finite" is false.
You sound like a patent lawywer who gets rich off the current system and hates the idea that rules such as "non obvious" and "novel" should be applied. Your entire argument was based around "You didn't use the correct legal term" or "The term you used has a different legal meaning" or somesuch.
I also hope they will eventually realize that while software patents have helped a number of companies dominate market share, it's impeded much of the industry from adding value to the industry and the economy as a whole.
If software patents had been allowed then, either we would be running Visicalc and Wordstar, or every company making word processors and spreadsheets would have to license the "idea" from those companies.
I'm not big on our patent system in general, but I've never seen a software patent that makes sense. Copyright, yes - you own the code and should have those rights. But having a patent that says nobody else should be able to write a similar program just shuts down development, and attempting to develop in that environment just lines the pockets of the lawyers, judges, and politicians.
Businesses will lose millions more than patents will bring in. When that happens, patents will disappear quicker than a lobbyist can count to $100,000.
Except the laws are made by lawyers, and the money that the businesses spend arguing about all of this goes, in large part, to lawyers. The lawyers don't care if the businesses are losing millions over it - as long as the lawywers are getting a good cut of that.
If a computer is just simulating something that's been done for 100's of years, then the idea hardly seems to qualify as "nonobvious", which is a requirement for a patent. Sticking "Use a computer to" in front of something shouldn't be an automatic green light.
How long do we wait before fighting back against terrorists? If we don't bring them to justice do you really think they will stop trying to attack us?
Iraq was not related to 9/11. They didn't attack us. They couldn't hardly attack anyone - the sanctions and close scrutiny they had been under for quite some time, the war they lost after invading Kuwait, etc had taken everything they had.
Your questions are valid : But you seem to believe they lead to "Iraq deserved it, we should have nuked the bastards". Attacking Iraq because someone *else* attacked us doesn't help us fight terrorism. Bin Laden is still running around, for instance. He *IS* the bastard that attacked us. I'd much rather have every one of our soldiers that are wasting time in Iraq out chasing him down. But people like you that think "We Have To Attack Someone Anyone" fucked that plan up a long time ago.
Can it really be called a trend, with only one company?
This article is about one company. Google for "SpyWiper", and you'll find another "anti-spyware" company that doesn't have any problem using spam and spyware to do their marketing.
Two supposed anti-spyware companies showing their dishonesty is why he asks if (not states that) it is a trend.
This is just another advertising campaign. Hormel isn't trying to get rid of the term spam as applied to email - it would be a hopeless task. They are just advertising their product, SPAM.
Their lawsuit against SpamArrest is the only time that they've done anything that even looks like they might be trying to get rid of the name. And considering they targetted one of many companies that use the name, I think it's more likely their own version of fighting against email spam. SpamArrest, prior to that lawsuit, had been caught sending email spam.
Slashdot Mirror
I read a number of your posts earlier. You seem to be a whacko who regularly contradicts what you have said yourself, or what the articles you cite happen to say. Sorry, following the rest of your posts just isn't worth the time.
I don't trust polls in general, and I don't trust this one any more than the others. But since you asked...
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/ 17/2247244
Soon after, you say " the country's energy is far *lower* than before the war? I can get you graphs if you want. It's especially bad right now."
In the article that you yourself cited, we find :
How are you any different than any other annonymous asshole?
I'd like to thank you for doing your job in Iraq. It's unsafe, under-appreciated, and tends to have people upset at you for things that are not under your control. (You didn't decide "lets invade Iraq", you followed orders and did your job well, like a marine should, but many people seem to miss that.)
Thank you. Semper Fi.
And, as I said before, you are wrong. Free speech doesn't mean that you can shove as many ads into my email box as you want - that's just what the spammers want people to think. (And it's spelled free speech by everyone but spammers. You spell it the spammer way.)
Free speech means you have the right to say essentially whatever you want. It does not give you the right to force people to listen. It does not give you the right to force other people to pay for your advertising. Telemarketers tried to argue that their "right" to call people is free speech, and therefore that it could not be regulated. They lost that argument. Fax spammers have also tried and lost.
They can have their speech by advertising via legitimate means. (TV, radio, newspapers, etc.) They can post whatever they want to a website. But if they are spamming, they are stealing other peoples bandwidth, forcing their advertising costs onto unwilling recipients. Your "legitimate spammers" can still ruin email as a communications medium, regardless of whether whatever crap they want to see is fraudulent or not.
You'll never understand this, though, so I'm wasting my time.
I doubt you'll care what judges have said, either, but lets look at what courts have ruled.
Chief Justice Berger, U.S. Supreme Court:
U.S. Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin:
You like living in Denmark because murder is only a minor offense there?
The courts disagree. Spammers want to claim that spam is just "free speech", but it isn't.
This site, an article about new computerized grocery carts (costing $2,000 - $3,000 each!) says that the old fashioned ones are about $100 each.
And FTP, and HTTP, and TCP/IP, and DNS and TraceRoute, and everything else, apparently.
I'll bet that Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee don't believe this any more than I do.
They probably don't do that much targeting. Set up the phishing site, send the spam to every address they can come up with, and hope for a few suckers, more likely.
They've stopped now, or so I've read. I never gave them my info, and just told them "I don't want to have my info sold to a bunch of mailing lists, so I don't give it out".
But I did, one time, tell them my last name. (That's all he had asked, and I gave it, though I hadn't planned to give them a phone number and address and such.) He didn't ask any more information, though. When I got my receipt, it had the name, phone number, and address of someone else with the same last name.
They are probably trying to avoid having people like me tell them what they think about their stupid "savings card" crap. I've done it, on the few occassions I've shopped at Albertsons. (And yes, they did put it on another card. I dunno if it's the stores card, or if the employee is just using thier own. I dunno if it's store policy, or just a clerk who doesn't want to listen to the complaints.)
I still find it a pretty dispicable practice, and there is a Wal Mart grocery store near my home, so I do my shopping there. They don't treat their customers that way, and their regular prices are as good (maybe better) as Albertsons "Preferred Customer Since You Are Willing To Sell Your Privacy" prices.
The product of all primes would be 30. Add 1 to the product, you have 31.
According to the basic "proof" (it's not really a proof, as written) then 31 would be either a new (previously unknown) prime, or a product of primes that are not yet known.
From the "proof":
THEREFORE, it is either a prime number which is not a known prime or a product of primes that are not in the set of all known primes
In my example, 31, we have found a prime number. In order to prove that the new number is prime, you would have to factor it.
In all cases, the number you end up with is going to either be prime, or if not prime, then factoring that number should teach you about a prime number you hadn't previously known about.
Following our example, we now know about 2, 3, 5, and 31. Those are our "known primes". We run the test again. 2 * 3 * 4 * 31 = 930, and then we add 1 to the product of all known primes. So either 931 is a prime number, or it can be factored by a prime number which isn't in our list of known primes.
In this case 931 isn't prime. When you try to factor it to prove that it is prime, you are going to find a factor which is a prime number, and is not in our set of known prime numbers. Thus the set of known prime numbers grows, either way. And so, we've proven that there must be an infinite number of prime numbers.
A few days ago, I ran into an old friend of mine. He's a mathemetician, and taught me a lot about programming when I was learning. We chatted for a few minutes, and as we were parting ways, he called "Have a Merry Christmas!". I told him "You're jumping the gun - tomorrow is Halloween."
He replied "I always get those mixed up, because OCT 31 = DEC 25."
Hold on a sec... So we're rooting for the lawyers?
If it was filed a year before August, then Amazon, CDNow.com, and many other sites have prior art.
You sound like a patent lawywer who gets rich off the current system and hates the idea that rules such as "non obvious" and "novel" should be applied. Your entire argument was based around "You didn't use the correct legal term" or "The term you used has a different legal meaning" or somesuch.
If software patents had been allowed then, either we would be running Visicalc and Wordstar, or every company making word processors and spreadsheets would have to license the "idea" from those companies.
I'm not big on our patent system in general, but I've never seen a software patent that makes sense. Copyright, yes - you own the code and should have those rights. But having a patent that says nobody else should be able to write a similar program just shuts down development, and attempting to develop in that environment just lines the pockets of the lawyers, judges, and politicians.
Businesses will lose millions more than patents will bring in. When that happens, patents will disappear quicker than a lobbyist can count to $100,000.
Except the laws are made by lawyers, and the money that the businesses spend arguing about all of this goes, in large part, to lawyers. The lawyers don't care if the businesses are losing millions over it - as long as the lawywers are getting a good cut of that.
If a computer is just simulating something that's been done for 100's of years, then the idea hardly seems to qualify as "nonobvious", which is a requirement for a patent. Sticking "Use a computer to" in front of something shouldn't be an automatic green light.
Iraq was not related to 9/11. They didn't attack us. They couldn't hardly attack anyone - the sanctions and close scrutiny they had been under for quite some time, the war they lost after invading Kuwait, etc had taken everything they had.
Your questions are valid : But you seem to believe they lead to "Iraq deserved it, we should have nuked the bastards". Attacking Iraq because someone *else* attacked us doesn't help us fight terrorism. Bin Laden is still running around, for instance. He *IS* the bastard that attacked us. I'd much rather have every one of our soldiers that are wasting time in Iraq out chasing him down. But people like you that think "We Have To Attack Someone Anyone" fucked that plan up a long time ago.
This article is about one company. Google for "SpyWiper", and you'll find another "anti-spyware" company that doesn't have any problem using spam and spyware to do their marketing.
Two supposed anti-spyware companies showing their dishonesty is why he asks if (not states that) it is a trend.
Their lawsuit against SpamArrest is the only time that they've done anything that even looks like they might be trying to get rid of the name. And considering they targetted one of many companies that use the name, I think it's more likely their own version of fighting against email spam. SpamArrest, prior to that lawsuit, had been caught sending email spam.