That sounds right. I responded without thinking it over. But then, that being the case, maybe design documents are an exercise in futility, since the first (and often second and third) design ideas are usually proven unworkable in practice. The original post seems to support that, as the developers had to keep maintaining the design document as they coded.
Maybe it's better to have someone (not the coders, but a programmer) write the design document after the code is written and tested; documenting the design as it was done.
As you can see, I'm a stranger to these concepts, being more of the "lone coder" type and never having coded in a corporate structure, and never with a "team" larger than 2 members. So I'll get out at this point since I'm obviously in over my head.
I don't know, but then, I've never seen one of these rumored documents, so I can't say for sure.
Sure, you have. RFCs are my idea of what makes a good design document: tell me what I have to do to make this software interoperable with the rest of the world, what you want this software to accomplish (including sample gozintas and gozoutas), and that's it. Short and sweet. Now get out of the way and let me code.:^)
yeah, but it helps governments and churches make money and keeps people confused, guilty, and scared. good for business! you might like Daniel Quinn's books, a lot of good insights along those lines...
Yes, it's FUD, but worse than that, by criticizing companies twice or thrice removed from the IRS and the Fed, it's indirectly legitimizing the latter two agencies. None of this crap existed before a bunch of old men went duck hunting on Jekyll Island. Then it kept branching out: H & R Block. Intuit. Every step designed to take another bite out of your paycheck. But this old-boy network has been around for a while; have you taken a Tour or a Taxi lately?
I just got this in my email last night: http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2666529. It's a short movie (about a half hour long) inspired by Daniel Quinn's books, and it's fucking great. And free (helps to have broadband though...)
That's OK, mod me offtopic... I did try submitting this as a story but don't have much hope...
Can't remember for sure, but think he identified himself as Fred or Frank or something like that. He only gave a first name, and he may not have used his real name at that. It was a long time ago, and I've lost a lot of brain cells since then... if he wasn't really from SPEWS, then it's just coincidental that the block was removed within a few hours of the conversation.
When Al Albarracin cofounded a dedicated servers business with me back in 1998 (Dialtone Internet, now part of Interland), I was somewhat clued-in on data comm and some other tech areas but blissfully ignorant of the professional SPAM network and the RBLers who fought them. One day it just seemed to drop in my lap: tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands, can't remember now) of IP addresses were blocked by some group I'd never heard of, called SPEWS. When I read their site, which offers NO contact info whatsoever (don't call us, we'll call you) I couldn't help but be amazed that major ISPs risked blackout of so much email by subscribing to such a list.
Well, over the next few harrowing days with little or no sleep, I got a crash course in how serious anti-spam people think and work. I was able to get into contact with the SPEWS folks through the more approachable founder of another SPAM blacklist, and got a call, I think at 1 AM, regarding the block.
It turns out I had ignored a bunch of email warnings which had looked to me like poorly worded form letters, and hadn't been handling SPAM complaints with the same dedication I was giving to routing updates, process automation, and other job duties. I had believed Dean Westbury, one of our first customers, over some complainers because he had impressed me early on with the way he dealt with one of his spamming customers. I didn't know, at the time, that he was one of the world's most notorious SPAM kings.
Anyway, he (the SPEWS guy) had me by the balls and he knew it. I told him I'd get on the stick, and accordingly he tentatively lifted the ban on our IP blocks. We made one of our tech guys a mostly-full-time SPAM cop, we continually fine-tuned our AUP to exclude any indirect use of our network for use by spammers, and we started keeping up with the alt.net-abuse.* newsgroups. In short, we became pro-active instead of reactive.
These guys are fanatics. If you're letting any of your customers spam, you are making money off that activity, which makes you complicit. That's the way they think, and when I thought it over myself, I agreed. If these guys at ORBS, MAPS, and SPEWS weren't fighting spam, I think it's likely the problem would be orders of magnitude worse.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to align yourself with these yahoos (some of them will continue to hate you forever, for not doing so from the start, but that's life) and make sure you keep up with all the spamhouses and don't let the big spammers onto your network. If you already have some of them, clamp down on them by modifying your AUP until you can kick them off. There are plenty of ways to make money on the net without income from these thieves.
The RBLs don't force anyone to use them. They provide a service (many are free, even) and ISPs use them to cut down on the huge bandwidth and storage costs of unlimited spamming. If you want to keep yourself off them, you need to keep your network clean. The larger you are, the more resources you'll need to devote to that. And if you're just a customer of a hosting facility, you need to get them similarly clued-in or find another facility. It may not be "right" but it's The Way Things Are (TM).
I did think of that. The local cable company (northern Baja California) requires me to purchase a TV channel package in order to get their broadband internet. So it works out just as expensive as phone+dsl.
The par utility can be used to make.pdb files "owned by" arbitrary applications, which don't have to exist at all. For example, a test I was trying:
par c test.pdb test.html strm html ad.html
That was an error, obviously -- "html" is not a valid application -- and yet I could load it onto my Clié with
pilot-xfer -p net: -i test.pdb
.
You might also want to check out installing Linux on your Palm. That page links to other such efforts, not sure how far advanced any of them are... not very far last time I checked.
Well, that's something like what I was thinking. I'd never heard of 'Google Scholar' and might never have, had ACS not sued. So they may have shot themselves in the foot, like people who protest a movie and thus bring it more into the public eye.
But then again, I'm not ACS's target market, who probably would have heard of Google's beta. It could be an interesting battle; I notice Google still has Orkut running despite the lawsuit(s) on that, so I don't expect anything to happen real soon.
In general, "countries" can't ignore patent law. Brazil can, under certain circumstances, and browbeats big corporations into lowering prices, but it uses that power sparingly. There are too many financial interdependencies between these power blocs, and they usually avoid stepping on too many toes at once.
Individuals, on the other hand, especially those without financial assets, can blithely ignore patents. To me, they don't exist. If I see a good idea, I'll use it. The big guys don't worry about scumbags like me, as long as the majority of Good People do things their way. I'm not about to write books, like Harry Browne did, and get myself targeted.
Now if I am able to afford paying the patent owner something, and I am aware of the patent, I might pay. Or not. The issue hasn't arisen yet because I prefer to invent my own stuff; if I violate a patent it will probably be inadvertent.
Just after the linuxjournal article is a reasonable response by Christopher Fowler, one of the participants. Basically he says that the GOCC is just a small part of open source use within government, that it's all volunteer, and that it has its own niche. Well, better see what he had to say, I'm probably mangling it beyond recognition. I get the picture that it's a positive but slow step in the right direction.
Great links, thank you! I will add them to http://unternet.net/ shortly. This is one game the monopolies cannot win; too many of us have the same vision and the resources to make it happen.
"BigPond's Middleton said the ISP made the complaint to the ABA so as to 'leave no stone unturned' in a bid to cover its ass^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H protect the interests of Australian teenagers."
I've thought for years about how to implement something similar for world travel. One or more large airships stay in low-earth orbit, and smaller craft ferry passengers to and from them as they pass overhead. There may even be a way to run a rail up a few miles to where passengers can transfer from the rail to the airship. It would be hairy, but I think the technical details could be worked out. Since a disproportionate amount of fuel is spent on takeoff and landing, this would save energy and cause less air pollution. Refueling and even some servicing could be done in-flight as well, so they might be able to stay up weeks or even months without landing.
This isn't my area of expertise, so go ahead and clue me in if I'm too far "out there".
I agree, and I don't think this question was necessarily flame bait, even though by not pre-countering the obvious challenges it was bound to be interpreted as such.
To a conspiratorialist, anonymity was already lost, years ago. Think about it. If someone really wanted to know how you voted, wouldn't the hidden cameras be in place? Wouldn't there be a way of indetectably marking the paper ballots and matching their secret numbers to names as they are handed out, unbeknownst even to the volunteers at the polling place? I'm not saying this is happening, I'm just saying it's possible. I don't think anybody really gives a shit how you vote.
An anonymous vote is a lost vote. By insisting on the shadow of anonymity, those in power are able to maintain it forever. Even if you could identify your own vote with a 4-digit number of your choosing as one slashdotter suggested, the votes of thousands of imaginary voters could be added to the system and you'd never know it. The only way I can think of -- and I've thought about it a lot -- to ensure an accurate vote count is for everybody to see how everybody voted.
Yes, this will bring threats of retribution, and real retribution in the sense of lost jobs, family disputes, bar brawls. As for real retribution, I'm pretty sure that will only happen because those in power will finance it, in order to make sure the people demand anonymous votes again.
So, pick your poison. A nice sport we play once a year or so, can place bets on, and breaks the daily routine a little, or a real vote with real consequences that we'll have to defend with our lives. I have a pretty good guess what will win out. That's why I'm opting out of the whole system. I don't care for spectator sports.
Remember that there are a lot of automated tools, worms, and virii that turn home computers into "zombie" boxes under remote control. If you do decide to send out anything, it's probably best to assume the apparent source of the problem may be masking the real source.
Did you notice Sal's apparently back posting in that forum again? And some of his old buddies are not exactly welcoming him back with open arms. Thanks for the link!
It's nice to get all philosophical and speculate. I don't know if Sal is real, or if he's a poorly-written AI program running on an ancient PDP-10 in MIT's basement... but I lost $405 real dollars to him, her, or it. I have no first-hand knowledge of Justin's or anybody else's stories, but I bought a coin on eBay I never received.
I can't say I blame you. If I weren't involved
in it first-hand I'd probably feel the same way.
As I posted on Justin's online forum a couple days ago,
the stranger this gets, the more I feel like
this whole story is in a Robert Anton Wilson
novel, and I'm just one of the minor
characters...
Sal has really outdone himself now... his own webpage both admits some of the charges of interstate fraud and fingers his former partner as a Mafioso who directed his and other peoples' scams.
Yeah we don't know what it's for, just thought it might be relevant... who knows what other crap he's been doing. We found a bunch of cases with his name, different addresses, in a search of civil court records but nothing in criminal court (yet).
Anyway if Sal, ebay userid needforspeed97, is the same as Robyn (needforspeed), then he's been scamming since 98 at least. And I thought I had some evidence back to 97 but can't find it now. Maybe I just extrapolated from his userid.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's better to have someone (not the coders, but a programmer) write the design document after the code is written and tested; documenting the design as it was done.
As you can see, I'm a stranger to these concepts, being more of the "lone coder" type and never having coded in a corporate structure, and never with a "team" larger than 2 members. So I'll get out at this point since I'm obviously in over my head.
yeah, but it helps governments and churches make money and keeps people confused, guilty, and scared. good for business! you might like Daniel Quinn's books, a lot of good insights along those lines...
Yes, it's FUD, but worse than that, by criticizing companies twice or thrice removed from the IRS and the Fed, it's indirectly legitimizing the latter two agencies. None of this crap existed before a bunch of old men went duck hunting on Jekyll Island. Then it kept branching out: H & R Block. Intuit. Every step designed to take another bite out of your paycheck. But this old-boy network has been around for a while; have you taken a Tour or a Taxi lately?
That's OK, mod me offtopic... I did try submitting this as a story but don't have much hope...
Can't remember for sure, but think he identified himself as Fred or Frank or something like that. He only gave a first name, and he may not have used his real name at that. It was a long time ago, and I've lost a lot of brain cells since then... if he wasn't really from SPEWS, then it's just coincidental that the block was removed within a few hours of the conversation.
Well, over the next few harrowing days with little or no sleep, I got a crash course in how serious anti-spam people think and work. I was able to get into contact with the SPEWS folks through the more approachable founder of another SPAM blacklist, and got a call, I think at 1 AM, regarding the block.
It turns out I had ignored a bunch of email warnings which had looked to me like poorly worded form letters, and hadn't been handling SPAM complaints with the same dedication I was giving to routing updates, process automation, and other job duties. I had believed Dean Westbury, one of our first customers, over some complainers because he had impressed me early on with the way he dealt with one of his spamming customers. I didn't know, at the time, that he was one of the world's most notorious SPAM kings.
Anyway, he (the SPEWS guy) had me by the balls and he knew it. I told him I'd get on the stick, and accordingly he tentatively lifted the ban on our IP blocks. We made one of our tech guys a mostly-full-time SPAM cop, we continually fine-tuned our AUP to exclude any indirect use of our network for use by spammers, and we started keeping up with the alt.net-abuse.* newsgroups. In short, we became pro-active instead of reactive.
These guys are fanatics. If you're letting any of your customers spam, you are making money off that activity, which makes you complicit. That's the way they think, and when I thought it over myself, I agreed. If these guys at ORBS, MAPS, and SPEWS weren't fighting spam, I think it's likely the problem would be orders of magnitude worse. The best thing you can do for yourself is to align yourself with these yahoos (some of them will continue to hate you forever, for not doing so from the start, but that's life) and make sure you keep up with all the spamhouses and don't let the big spammers onto your network. If you already have some of them, clamp down on them by modifying your AUP until you can kick them off. There are plenty of ways to make money on the net without income from these thieves.
The RBLs don't force anyone to use them. They provide a service (many are free, even) and ISPs use them to cut down on the huge bandwidth and storage costs of unlimited spamming. If you want to keep yourself off them, you need to keep your network clean. The larger you are, the more resources you'll need to devote to that. And if you're just a customer of a hosting facility, you need to get them similarly clued-in or find another facility. It may not be "right" but it's The Way Things Are (TM).
What's to stop us from creating our own cheap/free broadband? See http://unternet.net/ for a start.
I did think of that. The local cable company (northern Baja California) requires me to purchase a TV channel package in order to get their broadband internet. So it works out just as expensive as phone+dsl.
That's U2 aritmetic: uno, dos, tres, catorce!
You might also want to check out installing Linux on your Palm. That page links to other such efforts, not sure how far advanced any of them are... not very far last time I checked.
But then again, I'm not ACS's target market, who probably would have heard of Google's beta. It could be an interesting battle; I notice Google still has Orkut running despite the lawsuit(s) on that, so I don't expect anything to happen real soon.
Individuals, on the other hand, especially those without financial assets, can blithely ignore patents. To me, they don't exist. If I see a good idea, I'll use it. The big guys don't worry about scumbags like me, as long as the majority of Good People do things their way. I'm not about to write books, like Harry Browne did, and get myself targeted.
Now if I am able to afford paying the patent owner something, and I am aware of the patent, I might pay. Or not. The issue hasn't arisen yet because I prefer to invent my own stuff; if I violate a patent it will probably be inadvertent.
Just after the linuxjournal article is a reasonable response by Christopher Fowler, one of the participants. Basically he says that the GOCC is just a small part of open source use within government, that it's all volunteer, and that it has its own niche. Well, better see what he had to say, I'm probably mangling it beyond recognition. I get the picture that it's a positive but slow step in the right direction.
Great links, thank you! I will add them to http://unternet.net/ shortly. This is one game the monopolies cannot win; too many of us have the same vision and the resources to make it happen.
"BigPond's Middleton said the ISP made the complaint to the ABA so as to 'leave no stone unturned' in a bid to cover its ass^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H protect the interests of Australian teenagers."
I've thought for years about how to implement something similar for world travel. One or more large airships stay in low-earth orbit, and smaller craft ferry passengers to and from them as they pass overhead. There may even be a way to run a rail up a few miles to where passengers can transfer from the rail to the airship. It would be hairy, but I think the technical details could be worked out. Since a disproportionate amount of fuel is spent on takeoff and landing, this would save energy and cause less air pollution. Refueling and even some servicing could be done in-flight as well, so they might be able to stay up weeks or even months without landing. This isn't my area of expertise, so go ahead and clue me in if I'm too far "out there".
To a conspiratorialist, anonymity was already lost, years ago. Think about it. If someone really wanted to know how you voted, wouldn't the hidden cameras be in place? Wouldn't there be a way of indetectably marking the paper ballots and matching their secret numbers to names as they are handed out, unbeknownst even to the volunteers at the polling place? I'm not saying this is happening, I'm just saying it's possible. I don't think anybody really gives a shit how you vote.
An anonymous vote is a lost vote. By insisting on the shadow of anonymity, those in power are able to maintain it forever. Even if you could identify your own vote with a 4-digit number of your choosing as one slashdotter suggested, the votes of thousands of imaginary voters could be added to the system and you'd never know it. The only way I can think of -- and I've thought about it a lot -- to ensure an accurate vote count is for everybody to see how everybody voted.
Yes, this will bring threats of retribution, and real retribution in the sense of lost jobs, family disputes, bar brawls. As for real retribution, I'm pretty sure that will only happen because those in power will finance it, in order to make sure the people demand anonymous votes again.
So, pick your poison. A nice sport we play once a year or so, can place bets on, and breaks the daily routine a little, or a real vote with real consequences that we'll have to defend with our lives. I have a pretty good guess what will win out. That's why I'm opting out of the whole system. I don't care for spectator sports.
Remember that there are a lot of automated tools, worms, and virii that turn home computers into "zombie" boxes under remote control. If you do decide to send out anything, it's probably best to assume the apparent source of the problem may be masking the real source.
Did you notice Sal's apparently back posting in that forum again? And some of his old buddies are not exactly welcoming him back with open arms. Thanks for the link!
It's nice to get all philosophical and speculate. I don't know if Sal is real, or if he's a poorly-written AI program running on an ancient PDP-10 in MIT's basement... but I lost $405 real dollars to him, her, or it. I have no first-hand knowledge of Justin's or anybody else's stories, but I bought a coin on eBay I never received.
I can't say I blame you. If I weren't involved in it first-hand I'd probably feel the same way. As I posted on Justin's online forum a couple days ago, the stranger this gets, the more I feel like this whole story is in a Robert Anton Wilson novel, and I'm just one of the minor characters...
I think his wife's notification to the Lexus Owner's Club may have been more prophetic than pathetic.
You're right. In my case I was just careless. I didn't notice he didn't accept paypal until I had already won the item.
Anyway if Sal, ebay userid needforspeed97, is the same as Robyn (needforspeed), then he's been scamming since 98 at least. And I thought I had some evidence back to 97 but can't find it now. Maybe I just extrapolated from his userid.