Seems to me that if it's not clear that this is a useful bill then it's either poorly written or not useful, or both.
Is that not justification to be opposed?
Strunk & White is a great book that has helped me in all of my writing. The book's authors' persuasive argument for the value of "simple declarative sentences" is probably what got me to read & edit what I write more analytically. It's a game I play to re-read with an eye towards spotting the trash.
Most of my writing is in response to software support questions. Conciseness (but not too much) is helpful in this sort of writing as it is for code. This process of weeding out fluff uproots inconsistencies, ambiguities and down-right errors as well. Although it takes me longer to write a paragraph, I write fewer paragraphs and fewer followups.
Regarding item 1 above: The early AR15s that Gene Stoner was demonstrating did in fact fire the 223 round. After the Army's preliminary tests there were contracts let to beef up the weapon's reliability, durability and suitability for non-temperate climes, etc. By the time the revised model was named the M16, its round was the 5.56.
There is also "American Scientist," a bi-monthly of a more academic ilk, but well edited in my view. It's not totally devoid of politics, but usually quite tolerable.
Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (insightful[sic] reading) describes Philadelphia's streets as unpaved and without street lights in the mid 18th century. Typefaces for the printing presses had to be imported from England. Doesn't sound rich to me. On the other hand, a couple of generations later the situation was much improved.
The idea of raising the costs to the spammers appeals to me as a natural way to thwart current volumes, but there are some drawbacks.
If I want to send an e-mail to someone who checks for stamps, I need a new mail client. How long will it take to outfit the world with new readers or plugins for Pegasus, Outlook, Eudora, Mosilla, etc?
Some reputable outfits such as Thawte, US Postal Service , Deutsche Bundespost, etc. need to set up facilities so my e-mail can get stamped, and I can get billed.
We need both mail readers and mail hosts that can verify the stamp's validity.
To be at all acceptable there has to be a whitelist mechanism a recipient can invoke, again at the server and desktop.
On the other hand, until these systems are in place, we are no worse off than now.
But it seems to me that if someone has a foolproof new protocol, that would be just as big a job to implement, and would have the benefit of not triggering all the squeaks about "free e-mail."
On the other hand, I have not seen a description of such a foolproof system that I understood and had confidence in.
I like the certificate idea, although I think it should be done a bit differently.
As an advertising method, spam's hit rate is very low, so for a spammer to make any money, they need to send tens of thousands of e-mails and can not afford anything that adds significantly to the cost per e-mail. I should think $.01 per e-mail would be significant.
Suppose the certificate was not an unlimited license, but rather a per-email deal. If I could set my reader to accept only certified mail or mail from my whitelist, then I would get little spam. If I want to send e-mail to someone, it would cost me a penny or so.
Various national post offices could be configured as certifiers - the fees could offset their subsidies (Ha!). For my chargeable e-mails I could buy, say, $1 worth of "stamps" which could be used to validate messages (including the "To:" line) so the recipient could verifiy that a price had been paid. You can already do that in the US to print "real" stamps.
It would still be possible to send free e-mails, but in time, as folk adopt the new system, the spammers would find fewer and fewer hits, and they would not be able to afford the stamps to counteract the trend.
List maintainers need not be concerned about paying since the recpients would whitelist them.
Drawbacks? New mail readers need to be installed. The crypto stuff for certificates needs to be figured out. Postoffices (or whomever) need to develop sites for selling stamps. Not an overnight fix for the spam problem.
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Seems to me that if it's not clear that this is a useful bill then it's either poorly written or not useful, or both. Is that not justification to be opposed?
I had heard that just a bit North of you the two seasons were Winter and Last Winter.
And another with a different viewpoint: http://gizmodo.com/393119/scientist-creates-cold-fusion-for-the-first-time-in-decades
Strunk & White is a great book that has helped me in all of my writing. The book's authors' persuasive argument for the value of "simple declarative sentences" is probably what got me to read & edit what I write more analytically. It's a game I play to re-read with an eye towards spotting the trash.
Most of my writing is in response to software support questions. Conciseness (but not too much) is helpful in this sort of writing as it is for code. This process of weeding out fluff uproots inconsistencies, ambiguities and down-right errors as well. Although it takes me longer to write a paragraph, I write fewer paragraphs and fewer followups.
Regarding item 1 above: The early AR15s that Gene Stoner was demonstrating did in fact fire the 223 round. After the Army's preliminary tests there were contracts let to beef up the weapon's reliability, durability and suitability for non-temperate climes, etc. By the time the revised model was named the M16, its round was the 5.56.
There is also "American Scientist," a bi-monthly of a more academic ilk, but well edited in my view. It's not totally devoid of politics, but usually quite tolerable.
Shame they cut you off at the knees like that. I very much enjoyed that bit. Thanks for the link.
Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (insightful[sic] reading) describes Philadelphia's streets as unpaved and without street lights in the mid 18th century. Typefaces for the printing presses had to be imported from England. Doesn't sound rich to me. On the other hand, a couple of generations later the situation was much improved.
I found that when used with Venkman running, it made several chunks of javascript fail.
Actually she was kept in quarantine for 26 or 28 days.
The idea of raising the costs to the spammers appeals to me as a natural way to thwart current volumes, but there are some drawbacks.
If I want to send an e-mail to someone who checks for stamps, I need a new mail client. How long will it take to outfit the world with new readers or plugins for Pegasus, Outlook, Eudora, Mosilla, etc?
Some reputable outfits such as Thawte, US Postal Service , Deutsche Bundespost, etc. need to set up facilities so my e-mail can get stamped, and I can get billed.
We need both mail readers and mail hosts that can verify the stamp's validity.
To be at all acceptable there has to be a whitelist mechanism a recipient can invoke, again at the server and desktop.
On the other hand, until these systems are in place, we are no worse off than now.
But it seems to me that if someone has a foolproof new protocol, that would be just as big a job to implement, and would have the benefit of not triggering all the squeaks about "free e-mail."
On the other hand, I have not seen a description of such a foolproof system that I understood and had confidence in.
I like the certificate idea, although I think it should be done a bit differently.
As an advertising method, spam's hit rate is very low, so for a spammer to make any money, they need to send tens of thousands of e-mails and can not afford anything that adds significantly to the cost per e-mail. I should think $.01 per e-mail would be significant.
Suppose the certificate was not an unlimited license, but rather a per-email deal. If I could set my reader to accept only certified mail or mail from my whitelist, then I would get little spam. If I want to send e-mail to someone, it would cost me a penny or so.
Various national post offices could be configured as certifiers - the fees could offset their subsidies (Ha!). For my chargeable e-mails I could buy, say, $1 worth of "stamps" which could be used to validate messages (including the "To:" line) so the recipient could verifiy that a price had been paid. You can already do that in the US to print "real" stamps.
It would still be possible to send free e-mails, but in time, as folk adopt the new system, the spammers would find fewer and fewer hits, and they would not be able to afford the stamps to counteract the trend.
List maintainers need not be concerned about paying since the recpients would whitelist them.
Drawbacks? New mail readers need to be installed. The crypto stuff for certificates needs to be figured out. Postoffices (or whomever) need to develop sites for selling stamps. Not an overnight fix for the spam problem.