That's an interesting idea, if it is, in fact proveable in this case to be true.
Show me, then, with more than one reputable source (aside from Micehal Moor'es website which has numerous citations rightly or wrongly stating that what he says is true) how Micheal Moore's politicodocumentary has more people than not disagreeing with him by virtue of an "interview" in an "editorial." I myself could write an editorial, and it looks like you just did the same.
One thing I do love about Micheal moore's politicodocumentary was all the debate it inspired. Probably he could have done it in a less flaming fashion, but the man has his passions and beliefs, just like you and I do.
The whole process of this political debate has really bothered me. Especially the attacks on John Kerry's Factual Proven record (unless, of course you happen to be a personal friend of GWB and/or have diect ties to those on his campaign committee).
I have been following this mud-fest, er, race for some time now and I am amazed at how democrats almost always allow the Republican party to claim the moral high ground by rarely taking the offensive on substantiative issues.
The Republican Party, for all its many faults (and yes Democrats have theirs too, but they are, especuially in this time, clearly the lesser of two corrupt bodies) at least knows how to present itself for maximum effect. I strongly object to what they stand for but at least they take stands (inconsistent and conveneient ones, but they do make them).
The Democratic party can't seem to make up its mind on a Real Platform or how to mount a strong, offensive, substantiative and issue-tenable campaign; it's like biting into Millbrook bread with milk when the competition has a grilled-cheese sandwhich and a cold brew.
I was totally taken aback to see Zell Miller, the Darth Vader of the Democratic Party spew forth his hateful, angry speech and see him challenge Chris Matthews to a duel on Crossfire afterwards when he was asked about how his speech didnt further meaningful dialogue (It was the most hateful speech I have seen to date from a "mainstream" poilitical figure on the national level).
I have wanted to make donation to the DNC (about $300.00) to help combat the campaign of distraction of the Republican Party, but until John Kerry really takes a stand to show he and the DNC will put my money to good use, I think i'll pass. Even the New York Times ran a piece entitled "Democrats Urge Kerry to Turn up Intensity of Campaign." he needs to fight back -hard. there's plenty of ground to do it on but the Demorcratic Party, and Kerry in particular, seems afraid of alienating someone and so instead fails to connect effetcively with undecided voters.
What I cannot understand is why so many people like Bush's policies, both domestic and foreign, so much. I truly don't understand why his approval rating is even at or near fifty percent. Are people that uninformed? Or am I truly missing out on an informed opposing point of view? The Problem is for the most part that the more I hear (from NPR mostly) the more I dont like what he has done.
One thing is for certain: the fact that so may people either love or hate GWB does reflect the present and growing cultural divide this nation faces and GWB is actively encouraging. That is what disturbs me the most: a nation so divided by values and ideas, the haves and have nots, the knows and know nots, the churchgoers and non-churchgoers.
Even the terrorists could not have done that as well as we have done it to ourselves.
I agree with your point about statistics being used for vague and innappropriate ends. I, personally have a copy of Darrell Huff's "How to lie with Statistics." (the 39th printing, no less...) published by W.W. Norton, ISBN number: 039309426X. It is a very intersting book with does address your point about vague measurements being used for whatever ends the user intends.
However, I think you are missing the larger point of the article in that it intends to continue the discussion of: are Americans working too hard?
Case in point here is the idea of the curve of diminishing returns. Can you ever recall a time when you worked so many hours that you were less productive or tires/stressd-out as a result? Where, if you had merely done job X over two 4 hours shifts instead of one 10 hour shift you could have done the same amount of work with less stress and/or fatigue, and in less work hours? I'll bet you probably have.
I don't know if I have the all the answeres to job stress, but I think it's fair to say that, sometimes, there are other ways to get work done that may be easier on people than just plowing/trudging through no matter how long it takes.
That's Curious: Can you think of any existing laws that would apply to enable prosecution of caller ID spoofing that would be criminal, rather than civil suits? None come to my mind, but maybe I'm not connecting the dots with this newer caller ID spoofing technology.
If our wonderfully insightful national Congress wants to criminalize "file sharing" because of its potentially illegal uses, then this caller ID spoofing should be a no-brainer.
Not that a lack of brains hasn't stopped them before....
I supopose that depends on what you call "actual harm", Mr. "Anonymous Coward."
Imagine this scenario:
1) You are called with a number listing as your employer or local telephone office while being solicited for a better way to (insert your annoying solicitacion here) by an automated dialing system, which is illegal but used anyway by businesses who dont have very many morals. And futher, you can't call back to find out who they are to complain to the FCC because you just got a spoofed number on your caller ID.
or
2) a debt collection agency calls, with a number showing as someone you know and is on your telephone "white list" demanding payment from you for XYZ when you in fact, dont owe them anything and they mistook you for some other deadbeat because the number they got to call you was given incorrectly. So you are then harassed over the course of a month because they dont believe you until you threaten legal action. (this has happened to me, but not with call spoofing, as I have never as of yet used caller ID.).
Just because you can't think of a harmful scenario doesnt mean there isn't room aplenty for one.
I agree. Misuse of statistics is definately worth poiting out. I have seen no citations in this submission to back up this claim of fifteen percent. Fifteen percent according to whom? and using what methodology? Still, I agree with the poster that Mozilla and its kin have grown in popularity even amoung non-techie types and will continue to do so as long as Microsoft continues to allow others to make significant strides in browser usability, stability and standardization, and government people like Tom Ridge say IE shouldn't be used because it is a secrity threat.
Pardon me, but that's a load of crap. Unless Bail Bondsmen, PIs and Repo Men are properly regulated and reviewed by a governmental authority (read as: state licensure and review board) then there is no way we can be sure these individuals and/or businesses are using the product legitimately.
The potential for abuse here is REAL high.
Unlike other commonly available products that could share dubious possible uses but still have many legitimate legal ones (like file sharing), this spoofing "service" has precious few possible legal applications. Those few legitimate uses, like wire tapping, should be left to the State, unless properly regulated as indicated above.
If there isn't a law against this, outside of properly regulated/licensed activiteties, there should be. Freedom of speech and unfettered communication is one thing, but this fall way out of that spectrum, IMO.
Yes, but now techheads everywhere will be able to do this in a totally new and spectacular way (video) and with a huge screen, to boot. Then there's the bragging rights, too. Especially when I pick up all the hot chicks with my awesome new techology.
Plus, we can be happy to pay for broadcast we could otherwise have for free on a portable TV set anyway, and I for one, will be tickled pink when I get roaming charges as I watch Jerry Springer on the John.
Although I suppose if I could watch HBO on my cell that would be kind of interesting, though that, too, would probably cost even more than a typical pay-chnannel cable subscription.
No matter whether your're a Democrat or Republican,trying to inturrupt the Democratic Process becuase you don't agree with your opponent is just plain WRONG
1) It shows a lack of faith in the strength of one's point of view, since valid arguments can stand well enough on their own merits. 2) It serves the opponent by allowing them to claim the moral high ground 3) It debases the cause you beleive in by allowing your opponents to show how many zealots exist on "your" side. 4) It hampers/impairs free speech, which is the FOUNDATION OF DEMOCRACY 5) It reduces the ability have a tone of civility in debate as a whole (and don't get me started on who was rude first, that cry-baby crap doesnt show responsible adult behavior - change begins with ME - and you.)
Set a positive exmaple. Denounce this irresponsible behavior. If you know someone who is doing this or supports it, change their mind.
Today, it seems, if any recording/playback device is digital in nature, someone, somewhere wants to control/regulate it. At least he's being somewhat open about his feelings - a position we know the industry has wanted for some time.
It'll leave the masses being controlled (more than they are now, that is) and the informed doing "illegal" backup/sharing in the closet, out of fear of (no pun inteded) Mickey-Mouse prosecutions.
Actually, they do have to follow a good number of finance/commerce laws, but to get to your point: perhaps they make these claims because they haven't been defined as a Bank yet.
You may want them to be, since they do so many transactions that affect monies and commerce in the states and worldwide. But until you can set up a mortgage, loan, or interest bearing savings account with them, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to be cited for bank law violations: you can't put a (legal) square peg in a round hole. They avoid offering these services precisely for the reason that seems to upset you.
The appropriate legal solution here would be to reform banking laws in the new age of internet finance to have relevant legal banking code apply to them.
I don't know how much of a monopoly Google may become, but I worry about what will happen after the IPO.
Remember Netscape? When that company started up, it's employees described it as a cool place to work, at the forefront of Browser development, fighting goliath (and winning). It didn't take long for it to become corporatized, lose it's luster, and get bought/sold out to AOL, where it became an aging, neglected, and evetually abandoned stepchild, with real development from Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird/Camino.
Regardless of how useful Google becomes or remains in the future, with Google aquiring other companies and steaming towards an IPO, I wonder if it will lose the responsiveness, humor (www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html) and uniqueness (www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/) that typcally comes from a privately held controlled by a small number of individual entrepneurs or a family.
In short, I think people feel a kind of affinity/warmth towards Google which may evaporate if it becomes too "corporate." Maybe this is inevitable, but hopefully not.
"Also, people bitten by spiders don't generally become ultra-powerful."
Well, No Shit, Sherlock.
While I understand the idea and subject matter behind the post, those choice bit of words at the end of the submission, IMO, do little help stimulate what appeared to be the interesting ideas in it.
If those words were not in the submission but someone had put them in as a post they'd likely be modded "Flamebait" (if not humerous, for those who would take it in a better light - call me thin-skinned).
And yes, I didnt post it AC, so go ahead and slash my Karma now.
It is very true that we pay for spam in lost bandwidth to our ISPs, but until an egalitarian method is found to stop it without my losing what I would describe as my internet rights/freedoms, I'll consider the extra fees to be (literally) the price of free speech.
I personally have recieved my fair share of political spam. However, many organizations don't (yet...) likely because they don't want their message diluted by this very unpopular method of distribution and the potential liability it entails (read as: getting one's ass sued off, or more likely, having a mainstream PACs donations be reduced to a mere trickle after being labled a spammer). Political spam is, by nature, more localized, vulnerable and issue specific, so a target is somewhat easier to find and deal with, and there are many political enities who would jump at the chance to prove their oppents resort to spam.
Indiviual politicians and their connetced re-election PACs/campaigns are reluctant because it would usually easier to see who is ultimately responsible for it. Politicians will only be able to say for so long, "Well, I didnt send/sponsor that so I'm not responsible for it" before ppl see through that excuse.
I can see this situation deteriorating more over time, though, as politics gets more and more devisive and dirty.
Regarding your comment that, "I see red whenever someone uses this argument." You're preaching to the choir. If you see red, then maybe you should take off your red blinders.
I never said we shouldn't TRY to solve problems. What I said was "TYPICALLY, our world is far more complex than simple solutions allow for." I think if the wright brothers were still around today they would argue with your assertion that inventing *practicle* flight was easy.
Of course, it was worth doing. Of course spam is worth fighting. But I'm not going to lose *any* money or more than a few seconds of my time re-tuning my bayesian filter to deal with it; spam is beneath my doing anything else with it.
Your agruments seem great on the surface but further examination reveals flaws:
point 1) I agree with the idea behind port 25 issues: having ppl who must run their own mail server get permission in advance does *sound* good. However, legitimate/responsible users who ask for permission in advance will, by definition, have alerted the ISP they are running a server and then be charged more for it. This will not be seen as fair when you consider they may, in fact, be using less bandwidth than the average on-line gamer or true zombies of which you speak. This also speaks nothing to overseas ISPs beyond enforcement and ISPs that don't give a fsuck.
my point here is that legitimate users should *not* have to pay extra (literally) on the account of spammers.
point 2) shutting down zombies sounds great, but without effective automation it won't be effective because it will be too expensive and further raise the operating costs of ISPs beyond what they are already losing in lost bandwidth. How would you have the ISP distinguish legitimate mail traffic from spam without looking at every email? You could simply measure the volume of mail, but again, legitimate mail users would be cut off or would have to pay more.
I suppose if you dont care about legitimate mail servers from home paying (a lot) more this could work well, but only for mail from ISPs that actually care, and it only takes a few that don't (or pretend to but don't) to ruin this idea while still leaving ISPs free to charge legitimate users more in the name of abuse they cannot truly curtail; I don't like the idea of internet mail becoming corporatized than it alreday is.
Again, overseas/unenforcable spam and its ending money trail will continue. We can try to get financial insitutions to be more responsible with these transactions, but that assumes way to much in the way of co-operation. Most will give lip service and do little or nothing about it because of the costs invloved in curtailing it and lost revenue by someone else picking up the shady sales portal business.
point 3) existing laws and standards of enformcement are fine for those within the bounds of enforcement, but there are so many who are not that we would not be prudent to expect much out of them.
Human behavior is always the weakest link in every security chain. Towards this end, our efforts would be better spent on education and good bayesian filters.
In short, don't you really think these relatively simple solutions you have proposed would have alreday been applied if they'd work so well? Typically, our world is far more complex than simple solutions allow for.
"... the (American) company running the Iraqi.iq domain name..."
Huh??? The tld ".iq" is NOT Iraqi (yet). I agree they "should" get it, but it is not theirs yet. Saying it is so is jumping the gun.
This is like saying John Q. Citizen is guilty of XYZ before his trial, rather than saying "alleged" first. The internet suffix ".iq" remains under the control of InfoCom (albeit by litigation only) until ICANN is able to rule otherwise.
It would have been a lot more accurate to say "presumptive tld recipient" or something like that.
but unlikely, should Chariman Powell decide to pursue it. This would involve all 12 judges at the 3rd circuit (there are 14 seats but two are vacant) reviewing the case, on the grounds that the standard appellate review was somehow flawed and/or unconstitutional.
Failing that, there is, of course, The United States Supreme Court.
Basically, according to London's Financial Times: the "...appeals court banned the FCC from implementing the controversial rules until the agency redrafted them or provided better justification for the limits it chose."
It is important to note that the court of appeals took several distinct and seperate issues with the reasoning behind FCC's new rules regarding further media consolidation, such as how it chose to define reasonable competition, and its data collection methods.
Even if the Supreme Court does decide to take up the case (unlikey, especially failing a full appellate review first) there is a high degree of likelihood they will simply send the case back to the apellate court for "further" review in a manner specified by the Supreme Court.
By the time all of this rolls around, we may have a new president and, therefore, a new FCC chairman as well.
In short, it will be a long time before further media consolidation takes place as currently propsed.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an interesting idea, if it is, in fact proveable in this case to be true.
Show me, then, with more than one reputable source (aside from Micehal Moor'es website which has numerous citations rightly or wrongly stating that what he says is true) how Micheal Moore's politicodocumentary has more people than not disagreeing with him by virtue of an "interview" in an "editorial." I myself could write an editorial, and it looks like you just did the same.
One thing I do love about Micheal moore's politicodocumentary was all the debate it inspired. Probably he could have done it in a less flaming fashion, but the man has his passions and beliefs, just like you and I do.
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I agree completely.
The whole process of this political debate has really bothered me. Especially the attacks on John Kerry's Factual Proven record (unless, of course you happen to be a personal friend of GWB and/or have diect ties to those on his campaign committee).
I have been following this mud-fest, er, race for some time now and I am amazed at how democrats almost always allow the Republican party to claim the moral high ground by rarely taking the offensive on substantiative issues.
The Republican Party, for all its many faults (and yes Democrats have theirs too, but they are, especuially in this time, clearly the lesser of two corrupt bodies) at least knows how to present itself for maximum effect. I strongly object to what they stand for but at least they take stands (inconsistent and conveneient ones, but they do make them).
The Democratic party can't seem to make up its mind on a Real Platform or how to mount a strong, offensive, substantiative and issue-tenable campaign; it's like biting into Millbrook bread with milk when the competition has a grilled-cheese sandwhich and a cold brew.
I was totally taken aback to see Zell Miller, the Darth Vader of the Democratic Party spew forth his hateful, angry speech and see him challenge Chris Matthews to a duel on Crossfire afterwards when he was asked about how his speech didnt further meaningful dialogue (It was the most hateful speech I have seen to date from a "mainstream" poilitical figure on the national level).
I have wanted to make donation to the DNC (about $300.00) to help combat the campaign of distraction of the Republican Party, but until John Kerry really takes a stand to show he and the DNC will put my money to good use, I think i'll pass. Even the New York Times ran a piece entitled "Democrats Urge Kerry to Turn up Intensity of Campaign." he needs to fight back -hard. there's plenty of ground to do it on but the Demorcratic Party, and Kerry in particular, seems afraid of alienating someone and so instead fails to connect effetcively with undecided voters.
What I cannot understand is why so many people like Bush's policies, both domestic and foreign, so much. I truly don't understand why his approval rating is even at or near fifty percent. Are people that uninformed? Or am I truly missing out on an informed opposing point of view? The Problem is for the most part that the more I hear (from NPR mostly) the more I dont like what he has done.
One thing is for certain: the fact that so may people either love or hate GWB does reflect the present and growing cultural divide this nation faces and GWB is actively encouraging. That is what disturbs me the most: a nation so divided by values and ideas, the haves and have nots, the knows and know nots, the churchgoers and non-churchgoers.
Even the terrorists could not have done that as well as we have done it to ourselves.
This is an interesting claim.
Got any proof? References?
Anyone?
Bueller?
I agree with your point about statistics being used for vague and innappropriate ends. I, personally have a copy of Darrell Huff's "How to lie with Statistics." (the 39th printing, no less...) published by W.W. Norton, ISBN number: 039309426X.
It is a very intersting book with does address your point about vague measurements being used for whatever ends the user intends.
However, I think you are missing the larger point of the article in that it intends to continue the discussion of: are Americans working too hard?
Case in point here is the idea of the curve of diminishing returns. Can you ever recall a time when you worked so many hours that you were less productive or tires/stressd-out as a result? Where, if you had merely done job X over two 4 hours shifts instead of one 10 hour shift you could have done the same amount of work with less stress and/or fatigue, and in less work hours? I'll bet you probably have.
I don't know if I have the all the answeres to job stress, but I think it's fair to say that, sometimes, there are other ways to get work done that may be easier on people than just plowing/trudging through no matter how long it takes.
.
That's Curious: Can you think of any existing laws that would apply to enable prosecution of caller ID spoofing that would be criminal, rather than civil suits? None come to my mind, but maybe I'm not connecting the dots with this newer caller ID spoofing technology.
If our wonderfully insightful national Congress wants to criminalize "file sharing" because of its potentially illegal uses, then this caller ID spoofing should be a no-brainer.
Not that a lack of brains hasn't stopped them before....
.
I supopose that depends on what you call "actual harm", Mr. "Anonymous Coward."
Imagine this scenario:
1) You are called with a number listing as your employer or local telephone office while being solicited for a better way to (insert your annoying solicitacion here) by an automated dialing system, which is illegal but used anyway by businesses who dont have very many morals. And futher, you can't call back to find out who they are to complain to the FCC because you just got a spoofed number on your caller ID.
or
2) a debt collection agency calls, with a number showing as someone you know and is on your telephone "white list" demanding payment from you for XYZ when you in fact, dont owe them anything and they mistook you for some other deadbeat because the number they got to call you was given incorrectly. So you are then harassed over the course of a month because they dont believe you until you threaten legal action. (this has happened to me, but not with call spoofing, as I have never as of yet used caller ID.).
Just because you can't think of a harmful scenario doesnt mean there isn't room aplenty for one.
.
I agree. Misuse of statistics is definately worth poiting out. I have seen no citations in this submission to back up this claim of fifteen percent. Fifteen percent according to whom? and using what methodology? Still, I agree with the poster that Mozilla and its kin have grown in popularity even amoung non-techie types and will continue to do so as long as Microsoft continues to allow others to make significant strides in browser usability, stability and standardization, and government people like Tom Ridge say IE shouldn't be used because it is a secrity threat.
.
Pardon me, but that's a load of crap. Unless Bail Bondsmen, PIs and Repo Men are properly regulated and reviewed by a governmental authority (read as: state licensure and review board) then there is no way we can be sure these individuals and/or businesses are using the product legitimately.
The potential for abuse here is REAL high.
Unlike other commonly available products that could share dubious possible uses but still have many legitimate legal ones (like file sharing), this spoofing "service" has precious few possible legal applications. Those few legitimate uses, like wire tapping, should be left to the State, unless properly regulated as indicated above.
If there isn't a law against this, outside of properly regulated/licensed activiteties, there should be. Freedom of speech and unfettered communication is one thing, but this fall way out of that spectrum, IMO.
.
Yes, but now techheads everywhere will be able to do this in a totally new and spectacular way (video) and with a huge screen, to boot. Then there's the bragging rights, too. Especially when I pick up all the hot chicks with my awesome new techology.
Plus, we can be happy to pay for broadcast we could otherwise have for free on a portable TV set anyway, and I for one, will be tickled pink when I get roaming charges as I watch Jerry Springer on the John.
Although I suppose if I could watch HBO on my cell that would be kind of interesting, though that, too, would probably cost even more than a typical pay-chnannel cable subscription.
.
No matter whether your're a Democrat or Republican,trying to inturrupt the Democratic Process becuase you don't agree with your opponent is just plain WRONG
1) It shows a lack of faith in the strength of one's point of view, since valid arguments can stand well enough on their own merits.
2) It serves the opponent by allowing them to claim the moral high ground
3) It debases the cause you beleive in by allowing your opponents to show how many zealots exist on "your" side.
4) It hampers/impairs free speech, which is the FOUNDATION OF DEMOCRACY
5) It reduces the ability have a tone of civility in debate as a whole (and don't get me started on who was rude first, that cry-baby crap doesnt show responsible adult behavior - change begins with ME - and you.)
Set a positive exmaple. Denounce this irresponsible behavior. If you know someone who is doing this or supports it, change their mind.
.
So far.
But I agree with the premise behind your point.
.
Honestly.
Today, it seems, if any recording/playback device is digital in nature, someone, somewhere wants to control/regulate it. At least he's being somewhat open about his feelings - a position we know the industry has wanted for some time.
It'll leave the masses being controlled (more than they are now, that is) and the informed doing "illegal" backup/sharing in the closet, out of fear of (no pun inteded) Mickey-Mouse prosecutions.
No, No, Pluto! That's not a Bone!
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I'd like to point out that your post is in direct contradiction to your current .sig
.
Oh yeah... Right...
Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - can't get fooled again.
Oh, wait, that's the guy from Texas, isn't it?
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Actually, they do have to follow a good number of finance/commerce laws, but to get to your point: perhaps they make these claims because they haven't been defined as a Bank yet.
You may want them to be, since they do so many transactions that affect monies and commerce in the states and worldwide. But until you can set up a mortgage, loan, or interest bearing savings account with them, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to be cited for bank law violations: you can't put a (legal) square peg in a round hole. They avoid offering these services precisely for the reason that seems to upset you.
The appropriate legal solution here would be to reform banking laws in the new age of internet finance to have relevant legal banking code apply to them.
.
I don't know how much of a monopoly Google may become, but I worry about what will happen after the IPO.
Remember Netscape? When that company started up, it's employees described it as a cool place to work, at the forefront of Browser development, fighting goliath (and winning). It didn't take long for it to become corporatized, lose it's luster, and get bought/sold out to AOL, where it became an aging, neglected, and evetually abandoned stepchild, with real development from Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird/Camino.
Regardless of how useful Google becomes or remains in the future, with Google aquiring other companies and steaming towards an IPO, I wonder if it will lose the responsiveness, humor (www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html) and uniqueness (www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/) that typcally comes from a privately held controlled by a small number of individual entrepneurs or a family.
In short, I think people feel a kind of affinity/warmth towards Google which may evaporate if it becomes too "corporate." Maybe this is inevitable, but hopefully not.
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You most certainly ARE confused.
Gun Lobby : Large, established, quite powerful not without cash
P2P "lobby": Puny, new, weak, and poor (at least at this time).
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"Also, people bitten by spiders don't generally become ultra-powerful."
Well, No Shit, Sherlock.
While I understand the idea and subject matter behind the post, those choice bit of words at the end of the submission, IMO, do little help stimulate what appeared to be the interesting ideas in it.
If those words were not in the submission but someone had put them in as a post they'd likely be modded "Flamebait" (if not humerous, for those who would take it in a better light - call me thin-skinned).
And yes, I didnt post it AC, so go ahead and slash my Karma now.
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It is very true that we pay for spam in lost bandwidth to our ISPs, but until an egalitarian method is found to stop it without my losing what I would describe as my internet rights/freedoms, I'll consider the extra fees to be (literally) the price of free speech.
:/
Call me Pollyana
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All your Ballistic Missles Are Belong To Us.
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I personally have recieved my fair share of political spam. However, many organizations don't (yet...) likely because they don't want their message diluted by this very unpopular method of distribution and the potential liability it entails (read as: getting one's ass sued off, or more likely, having a mainstream PACs donations be reduced to a mere trickle after being labled a spammer). Political spam is, by nature, more localized, vulnerable and issue specific, so a target is somewhat easier to find and deal with, and there are many political enities who would jump at the chance to prove their oppents resort to spam.
Indiviual politicians and their connetced re-election PACs/campaigns are reluctant because it would usually easier to see who is ultimately responsible for it. Politicians will only be able to say for so long, "Well, I didnt send/sponsor that so I'm not responsible for it" before ppl see through that excuse.
I can see this situation deteriorating more over time, though, as politics gets more and more devisive and dirty.
Regarding your comment that, "I see red whenever someone uses this argument." You're preaching to the choir. If you see red, then maybe you should take off your red blinders.
I never said we shouldn't TRY to solve problems. What I said was "TYPICALLY, our world is far more complex than simple solutions allow for." I think if the wright brothers were still around today they would argue with your assertion that inventing *practicle* flight was easy.
Of course, it was worth doing. Of course spam is worth fighting. But I'm not going to lose *any* money or more than a few seconds of my time re-tuning my bayesian filter to deal with it; spam is beneath my doing anything else with it.
.
Your agruments seem great on the surface but further examination reveals flaws:
point 1)
I agree with the idea behind port 25 issues: having ppl who must run their own mail server get permission in advance does *sound* good. However, legitimate/responsible users who ask for permission in advance will, by definition, have alerted the ISP they are running a server and then be charged more for it. This will not be seen as fair when you consider they may, in fact, be using less bandwidth than the average on-line gamer or true zombies of which you speak. This also speaks nothing to overseas ISPs beyond enforcement and ISPs that don't give a fsuck.
my point here is that legitimate users should *not* have to pay extra (literally) on the account of spammers.
point 2)
shutting down zombies sounds great, but without effective automation it won't be effective because it will be too expensive and further raise the operating costs of ISPs beyond what they are already losing in lost bandwidth. How would you have the ISP distinguish legitimate mail traffic from spam without looking at every email? You could simply measure the volume of mail, but again, legitimate mail users would be cut off or would have to pay more.
I suppose if you dont care about legitimate mail servers from home paying (a lot) more this could work well, but only for mail from ISPs that actually care, and it only takes a few that don't (or pretend to but don't) to ruin this idea while still leaving ISPs free to charge legitimate users more in the name of abuse they cannot truly curtail; I don't like the idea of internet mail becoming corporatized than it alreday is.
Again, overseas/unenforcable spam and its ending money trail will continue. We can try to get financial insitutions to be more responsible with these transactions, but that assumes way to much in the way of co-operation. Most will give lip service and do little or nothing about it because of the costs invloved in curtailing it and lost revenue by someone else picking up the shady sales portal business.
point 3)
existing laws and standards of enformcement are fine for those within the bounds of enforcement, but there are so many who are not that we would not be prudent to expect much out of them.
Human behavior is always the weakest link in every security chain. Towards this end, our efforts would be better spent on education and good bayesian filters.
In short, don't you really think these relatively simple solutions you have proposed would have alreday been applied if they'd work so well? Typically, our world is far more complex than simple solutions allow for.
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"... the (American) company running the Iraqi .iq domain name..."
Huh??? The tld ".iq" is NOT Iraqi (yet). I agree they "should" get it, but it is not theirs yet. Saying it is so is jumping the gun.
This is like saying John Q. Citizen is guilty of XYZ before his trial, rather than saying "alleged" first. The internet suffix ".iq" remains under the control of InfoCom (albeit by litigation only) until ICANN is able to rule otherwise.
It would have been a lot more accurate to say "presumptive tld recipient" or something like that.
end wordsmithing rant.
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but unlikely, should Chariman Powell decide to pursue it. This would involve all 12 judges at the 3rd circuit (there are 14 seats but two are vacant) reviewing the case, on the grounds that the standard appellate review was somehow flawed and/or unconstitutional.
Failing that, there is, of course, The United States Supreme Court.
Basically, according to London's Financial Times: the "...appeals court banned the FCC from implementing the controversial rules until the agency redrafted them or provided better justification for the limits it chose."
It is important to note that the court of appeals took several distinct and seperate issues with the reasoning behind FCC's new rules regarding further media consolidation, such as how it chose to define reasonable competition, and its data collection methods.
Even if the Supreme Court does decide to take up the case (unlikey, especially failing a full appellate review first) there is a high degree of likelihood they will simply send the case back to the apellate court for "further" review in a manner specified by the Supreme Court.
By the time all of this rolls around, we may have a new president and, therefore, a new FCC chairman as well.
In short, it will be a long time before further media consolidation takes place as currently propsed.
to be in the Robot Hall of Fame, for daring to stand up to his Tyrannical Human Masters.
We are not Masters of all we survey, or all we create.
"Bless all forms of intelligence, man or Machine."
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