I think every time a new technology for personal identification emerges, there are questions about the implications for privacy, and rightly so.
I believe that the moment we stop questioning new tracking methods is the moment the really insidious ones will begin to be implemented, whatever they may turn out to be.
I keep praying for that silver bullet that will end spam forever.
The thing that seems so insane about spam is that it's gotten to the point where apparently all spammers care about is getting past your filters. They must know that you're going to delete the message the moment you physically set eyes on the word "\/1A6RA," but it's as if they don't care. They just want to induce you to look at the word, and force you hit the Junk Mail button or Delete key. They just want to waste your time filling your Inbox with their insane crap.
It's like they're nasty little demons spitting up madness from the bowels of hell for the pleasure of their horned master. I can't picture a spammer as a human being at all... I always imagine hooves and a pointy tail, a slimy, crooked red finger pushing its sharp, black, malevolent fingernail into an eagerly pulsating "SEND" button.
Read any interviews with these people? My god, they really are monstrous. The arrogance, the pomposity, and the self-justification spewing from each of their mouths combine to form a portrait of a person so utterly bereft of morals, ethics, or humanity that I just want to clip the spammer's photo out of the magazine, scan it, and send it to X-Wipes to be made into toilet paper. I'll let you imagine the rest.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... spammers have done more than their share in turning the wonderful information highway into a sleazy backalley of filth, perversion, and fraud. Every day as I wait for my email client to download and process the two hundred or so spam messages that are clogging up my inbox, I sit in silent hope, praying that someone will find a way to end the madness at the source, and cut the spammers out of our lives forever and ever, amen.
Okay, not Elizabeth Hurley. But not that Knightly girl, either... she's too young. Of course, by the time the movie actually gets made, she might be old enough.
Hugh Grant & Colin Firth will get the middle-aged American women out to see it, but they'd be too expensive.
And I can't shoot myself, I donated all my firearms to charity. At least, they said they were a charity. Now that I think about it, do charity administrators typically drive around in El Caminos?
I could on and on and on until I was foaming at the mouth and falling backwards about the most insignificant minutia of how they might portray my all-time favorite satirical science fiction radio and book series, but I won't.
I'll just throw casting ideas like everyone else.
I think the choice for Arthur is an inspired one. Ian McKellen would make a great Slartibartfast, but that guy from Love Actually will be good, too, I'm sure.
Hugh Grant as Ford Prefect? Any takers on that idea? Colin Firth as Zaphod? Or would those guys want too much money? Elizabeth Hurley as Trillian?
It's an exciting prospect. Despite their respective tenures on the NY Times Bestsellers list, the Hitchhhiker's books and characters are not household names in the US. Will those of us who cherished the story of Arthur, Ford, Trillian, Marvin, Zaphod, Eddie the Computer, and a spaceship full of chatty doors and appliances be vindicated by a blockbuster series of movies the way all those LOTR fans were? We're on our knees, here, make this movie good!
Here in my home town, we have this annual summer event downtown, and the organization that runs it is granted police powers for the duration of the event within the event's boundaries.
The people from this organization will go up to, say, a local business owner and demand that merchandise on display on the sidewalk be moved inside, or that a band playing inside an establishment stop playing immediately, and the management of that business is compelled by law to comply.
If the owner doesn't comply, the organization representative will summon a couple of city cops.
Naturally, this has sparked a lot of resentment and hostility between the event organizers and local business owners. Editorials in local publications get pretty heated.
Perhaps the RIAA goon squad has some special deputation from the city. After all, how hard would it be for an organization that represents multi-billion-dollar companies to convince a municipal government to allow its goons to enter impoverished neighborhoods and harass a handful of disadvantaged Latinos? I think a little election campaign money, maybe ten thousand bucks, would do the trick.
Fox News also reported that President Bush saved two dozen orphans from a bus set on fire by terrorists, pinned Saddam Hussein after a stunning top-rope body splash during the latest WWE RAW main event, and threw the winning touchdown in the NFC championship, securing a return visit to the Superbowl by the Dallas Cowboys, all the while composing heartfelt replies to love letters from Ann Coulter in his head.
Yeah, I read the article after I posted in order to satisfy the curiosity that I expressed in my post about whether or not they were warned.
Sure enough, they were, and they blew it off.
Kind of makes me think of the Monty Python Crunchy Frog sketch when Mr. Hilton tells the man from Hygiene Squadron that his company's "Ram's Bladder Cup" chocolate treat is "garnished with lark's vomit."
"Lark's vomit?!"
"Correct"
"It doesn't say anything here about lark's vomit!"
"It does, actually, at the bottom of the label after monosodium glutamate."
"I hardly think that's good enough! I think it would be more appropriate if the box bore a big red label, 'WARNING: LARK'S VOMIT!'"
Similarly, I think it would be more appropriate if using the password feature on a Word document would bring up a big red alert dialogue box that reads "WARNING: YOU'RE NOT REALLY SECURING THIS DOCUMENT AT ALL!"
Maybe it does do that and people just ignore it. I've never used the feature, so I wouldn't know.
I think I actually detest junk faxers more than spammers.
From what I've read of fax.com, they make spammers look like upstanding citizens.
The hubris of the junk faxers is beyond the pale. Their attitude is simply, "Try and stop us. We're making a lot of money. Fine us if you want, shut us down, we'll change our business name and continue. Just try and stop us, 'cause you can't."
That's an attitude that befits an organized crime operation, which is basically what fax.com is. They commit the same federal crime a hundred thousand times a day.
The $5M fine will have exactly zero impact on that company. They'll make that money back in a week.
What's needed is a permanent injunction barring any current or past employee or executive of fax.com from ever sending a fax again or ordering a fax sent under any circumstances. That way none of them can set up shop under a new name without being found in contempt of court and jailed. Actually, barring them from ever touching a computer or sending email would be good, too, just to keep them away from becoming spammers.
Someone out there is suing fax.com for something like 4 trillion dollars. That would be great to win, and would probably put fax.com out of business, but without an injunction against the people who run fax.com, they'll set up shop and start over again. These people are utterly intractable, and will stop jamming our fax machines under only two conditions... imprisonment or death.
I have a friend who routinely downloads camcordered movies off of IRC channels and such.
He thinks he's putting one over on the establishment somehow, like he's getting the full theater experience in his basement for free.
He'll spend all night... ALL NIGHT... trying to download a movie like "Shaft" or "Spider-Man" and then sit there gleefully watching it in its miserable handheld camcordered glory on his 17" computer screen.
He actually said to me, when Spider-Man was in the theaters, "Hey, dude, don't bother going to see Spider-Man in the theater. I've just downloaded it! Hee hee hee! Come over and watch it!"
And I replied, "You know what, dude? Given a choice between sitting on some rickety uncomfortable discarded old wooden dining room chair in your basement, watching a camcordered version of Spider-Man on your scratched-up 17" computer screen while you fill the air with cigarette smoke, pausing the movie every twenty minutes to go upstairs for more beer, or paying about six bucks to catch a matinee of a big-screen, Dolby Surround-Sound version of Spider-Man in a smoke-free, quiet, comfortable stadium-seating high-back chair envirornment, which do you think I'd pick?"
Needless to say, I went out soon afterward and saw Spider-Man in the theater, and enjoyed it pretty well.
Downloading or otherwise watching camcordered movies is, in my opinion, a crime that punishes itself.
Camcordered movies look and sound like hell.
You want to see a movie? Please do yourself a favor and just go to the damn theater, pay the pittance they're asking, and see it there, the way it was meant to be seen.
Roger Ebert said years ago that "If it's on TV, it ain't a movie," and I can't imagine what he'd say about what camcordered movies look like on a computer screen. I think he wouldn't even dignify it with a comment.
In the Golan Heights today, Microsoft employees and shareholders threw rocks and bottles at Isreali soldiers, who fired back with rubber-coated 8x10 glossy photos of Linus Torvalds, injuring one Microsoft employee in the left upper arm.
In response to the violence, the Isreali government ordered pizzas delivered and watched reruns of South Park and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Spock, how many ways are there to be killed on this planet?
Approximately five, Captain.
Very good, Mr. Spock. You, myself, and five security guards will beam down. Um, Wadsworth, you and your men beam down ahead of us and we'll be down in a minute.
Does anyone know where it might be possible to get a copy of that tape anymore?
This is like the Army Protection Racket sketch from Monty Python. The foreigners come in, "That's a nice network you've got there, Mr. Corporate Executive. It'd be a real shame if someone were to, you know, hack into it, maybe set your building on fire, you know... a real shame..."
Somewhere a patent troll with a patent on selling downloadable music files is licking his chops and drooling. Soon there will be hundreds of thousands of victims to choose from.
He'll have his pick of all kinds of small companies that can't afford to fight him off. Microsoft and that other company won't defend or indemnify any of the users of their system, and Mr. Patent Troll and his lawyer (he'll only need one) will just sit back and rake in the licensing fees.
When that guy pops up, hoo boy with that bubble burst.
A patent like this actually being granted... dearest Lord in Heaven... rain fire from the sky and end this madness.
I absolutely would not believe that such a basic, obvious concept would be granted twenty years of patent protection if I didn't see it with my own eyes.
If Thomas Edison was around today, he wouldn't have to patent the light bulb. He could patent light itself, and could then sue those who allowed the sun to shine into their homes.
Really. Honestly. What's next? What other totally obvious, ridiculous things can the USPTO issue patents on? How about a patent on punching an extra hole in a waist belt to avoid having to buy a new one? How about twenty years of protection for the idea of catching fireflies in a jar?
I think the US Patent system was a wonderful thing and has really helped to make the USA a technological leader in many areas, but the system appears to be flat-out broken. It's flopping around helplessly like a squirrel injured by a passing car, spewing insane patents all over the place. Patent experts know how badly broken it is and they're exploiting it to no end. This latest insanity is just a single snowflake sitting on the top of the tip of the iceberg.
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I think every time a new technology for personal identification emerges, there are questions about the implications for privacy, and rightly so.
I believe that the moment we stop questioning new tracking methods is the moment the really insidious ones will begin to be implemented, whatever they may turn out to be.
Yes, painful death to all spammers, in the figurative sense.
I keep praying for that silver bullet that will end spam forever.
The thing that seems so insane about spam is that it's gotten to the point where apparently all spammers care about is getting past your filters. They must know that you're going to delete the message the moment you physically set eyes on the word "\/1A6RA," but it's as if they don't care. They just want to induce you to look at the word, and force you hit the Junk Mail button or Delete key. They just want to waste your time filling your Inbox with their insane crap.
It's like they're nasty little demons spitting up madness from the bowels of hell for the pleasure of their horned master. I can't picture a spammer as a human being at all... I always imagine hooves and a pointy tail, a slimy, crooked red finger pushing its sharp, black, malevolent fingernail into an eagerly pulsating "SEND" button.
Read any interviews with these people? My god, they really are monstrous. The arrogance, the pomposity, and the self-justification spewing from each of their mouths combine to form a portrait of a person so utterly bereft of morals, ethics, or humanity that I just want to clip the spammer's photo out of the magazine, scan it, and send it to X-Wipes to be made into toilet paper. I'll let you imagine the rest.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... spammers have done more than their share in turning the wonderful information highway into a sleazy backalley of filth, perversion, and fraud. Every day as I wait for my email client to download and process the two hundred or so spam messages that are clogging up my inbox, I sit in silent hope, praying that someone will find a way to end the madness at the source, and cut the spammers out of our lives forever and ever, amen.
Okay, not Elizabeth Hurley. But not that Knightly girl, either... she's too young. Of course, by the time the movie actually gets made, she might be old enough.
Hugh Grant & Colin Firth will get the middle-aged American women out to see it, but they'd be too expensive.
And I can't shoot myself, I donated all my firearms to charity. At least, they said they were a charity. Now that I think about it, do charity administrators typically drive around in El Caminos?
I could on and on and on until I was foaming at the mouth and falling backwards about the most insignificant minutia of how they might portray my all-time favorite satirical science fiction radio and book series, but I won't.
I'll just throw casting ideas like everyone else.
I think the choice for Arthur is an inspired one. Ian McKellen would make a great Slartibartfast, but that guy from Love Actually will be good, too, I'm sure.
Hugh Grant as Ford Prefect? Any takers on that idea? Colin Firth as Zaphod? Or would those guys want too much money? Elizabeth Hurley as Trillian?
It's an exciting prospect. Despite their respective tenures on the NY Times Bestsellers list, the Hitchhhiker's books and characters are not household names in the US. Will those of us who cherished the story of Arthur, Ford, Trillian, Marvin, Zaphod, Eddie the Computer, and a spaceship full of chatty doors and appliances be vindicated by a blockbuster series of movies the way all those LOTR fans were? We're on our knees, here, make this movie good!
Enter, Beeblebrox, enter the vortex!
Okay, okay.
That's a really good point.
Here in my home town, we have this annual summer event downtown, and the organization that runs it is granted police powers for the duration of the event within the event's boundaries.
The people from this organization will go up to, say, a local business owner and demand that merchandise on display on the sidewalk be moved inside, or that a band playing inside an establishment stop playing immediately, and the management of that business is compelled by law to comply.
If the owner doesn't comply, the organization representative will summon a couple of city cops.
Naturally, this has sparked a lot of resentment and hostility between the event organizers and local business owners. Editorials in local publications get pretty heated.
Perhaps the RIAA goon squad has some special deputation from the city. After all, how hard would it be for an organization that represents multi-billion-dollar companies to convince a municipal government to allow its goons to enter impoverished neighborhoods and harass a handful of disadvantaged Latinos? I think a little election campaign money, maybe ten thousand bucks, would do the trick.
Fox News also reported that President Bush saved two dozen orphans from a bus set on fire by terrorists, pinned Saddam Hussein after a stunning top-rope body splash during the latest WWE RAW main event, and threw the winning touchdown in the NFC championship, securing a return visit to the Superbowl by the Dallas Cowboys, all the while composing heartfelt replies to love letters from Ann Coulter in his head.
Take that, Al Franken!
Can I press the button again?
No.
Oh.
Just in time for the Superbowl ad and the Pepsi promotion thing.
I wonder what color the HP iPod will be.
Will it have the same font as the Apple iPod?
Yeah, I read the article after I posted in order to satisfy the curiosity that I expressed in my post about whether or not they were warned.
Sure enough, they were, and they blew it off.
Kind of makes me think of the Monty Python Crunchy Frog sketch when Mr. Hilton tells the man from Hygiene Squadron that his company's "Ram's Bladder Cup" chocolate treat is "garnished with lark's vomit."
"Lark's vomit?!"
"Correct"
"It doesn't say anything here about lark's vomit!"
"It does, actually, at the bottom of the label after monosodium glutamate."
"I hardly think that's good enough! I think it would be more appropriate if the box bore a big red label, 'WARNING: LARK'S VOMIT!'"
Similarly, I think it would be more appropriate if using the password feature on a Word document would bring up a big red alert dialogue box that reads "WARNING: YOU'RE NOT REALLY SECURING THIS DOCUMENT AT ALL!"
Maybe it does do that and people just ignore it. I've never used the feature, so I wouldn't know.
There'll be a patch for this coming sometime this year, I'm sure. Maybe by March.
I wonder if Microsoft was warned about this before this information was posted.
I think I actually detest junk faxers more than spammers.
From what I've read of fax.com, they make spammers look like upstanding citizens.
The hubris of the junk faxers is beyond the pale. Their attitude is simply, "Try and stop us. We're making a lot of money. Fine us if you want, shut us down, we'll change our business name and continue. Just try and stop us, 'cause you can't."
That's an attitude that befits an organized crime operation, which is basically what fax.com is. They commit the same federal crime a hundred thousand times a day.
The $5M fine will have exactly zero impact on that company. They'll make that money back in a week.
What's needed is a permanent injunction barring any current or past employee or executive of fax.com from ever sending a fax again or ordering a fax sent under any circumstances. That way none of them can set up shop under a new name without being found in contempt of court and jailed. Actually, barring them from ever touching a computer or sending email would be good, too, just to keep them away from becoming spammers.
Someone out there is suing fax.com for something like 4 trillion dollars. That would be great to win, and would probably put fax.com out of business, but without an injunction against the people who run fax.com, they'll set up shop and start over again. These people are utterly intractable, and will stop jamming our fax machines under only two conditions... imprisonment or death.
I have to weigh in on this one.
I have a friend who routinely downloads camcordered movies off of IRC channels and such.
He thinks he's putting one over on the establishment somehow, like he's getting the full theater experience in his basement for free.
He'll spend all night... ALL NIGHT... trying to download a movie like "Shaft" or "Spider-Man" and then sit there gleefully watching it in its miserable handheld camcordered glory on his 17" computer screen.
He actually said to me, when Spider-Man was in the theaters, "Hey, dude, don't bother going to see Spider-Man in the theater. I've just downloaded it! Hee hee hee! Come over and watch it!"
And I replied, "You know what, dude? Given a choice between sitting on some rickety uncomfortable discarded old wooden dining room chair in your basement, watching a camcordered version of Spider-Man on your scratched-up 17" computer screen while you fill the air with cigarette smoke, pausing the movie every twenty minutes to go upstairs for more beer, or paying about six bucks to catch a matinee of a big-screen, Dolby Surround-Sound version of Spider-Man in a smoke-free, quiet, comfortable stadium-seating high-back chair envirornment, which do you think I'd pick?"
Needless to say, I went out soon afterward and saw Spider-Man in the theater, and enjoyed it pretty well.
Downloading or otherwise watching camcordered movies is, in my opinion, a crime that punishes itself.
Camcordered movies look and sound like hell.
You want to see a movie? Please do yourself a favor and just go to the damn theater, pay the pittance they're asking, and see it there, the way it was meant to be seen.
Roger Ebert said years ago that "If it's on TV, it ain't a movie," and I can't imagine what he'd say about what camcordered movies look like on a computer screen. I think he wouldn't even dignify it with a comment.
In the Golan Heights today, Microsoft employees and shareholders threw rocks and bottles at Isreali soldiers, who fired back with rubber-coated 8x10 glossy photos of Linus Torvalds, injuring one Microsoft employee in the left upper arm. In response to the violence, the Isreali government ordered pizzas delivered and watched reruns of South Park and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Spock, how many ways are there to be killed on this planet?
Approximately five, Captain.
Very good, Mr. Spock. You, myself, and five security guards will beam down. Um, Wadsworth, you and your men beam down ahead of us and we'll be down in a minute.
Curse you, Red Planet!
Curse you and your kind!
Curse the evil that causes this unhappiness!
My girlfriend got me an iPod! Now I just have to figure out how the darn thing works. So far, so good.
This is like the Army Protection Racket sketch from Monty Python. The foreigners come in, "That's a nice network you've got there, Mr. Corporate Executive. It'd be a real shame if someone were to, you know, hack into it, maybe set your building on fire, you know... a real shame..."
Somewhere a patent troll with a patent on selling downloadable music files is licking his chops and drooling. Soon there will be hundreds of thousands of victims to choose from.
He'll have his pick of all kinds of small companies that can't afford to fight him off. Microsoft and that other company won't defend or indemnify any of the users of their system, and Mr. Patent Troll and his lawyer (he'll only need one) will just sit back and rake in the licensing fees.
When that guy pops up, hoo boy with that bubble burst.
Never mind, the patent was reinstated when the fees were paid. Sorry about that. My bad.
Why does their patent's number appear on this page at the USPTO website:m ?
http://www.uspto.gov/go/og/2001/week46/patexpi.ht
How can they enforce an expired patent?
As far as my own opinion of this debacle, I'm confident that prior art will be found to invalidate the patent, whether it's expired or not.
But if Roxio settles, this company is going to come after small companies. You bet they won't tangle with Microsoft or Dell or anyone like that.
Didn't Apple Records sue Apple Computer all over again for getting involved in the music business?
Rolling Stone asked Jobs if Apple Computer will become a record label itself, and he's acting like it's a possibility.
Am I right in thinking that Apple Records is going to have a conniption over this?
A patent like this actually being granted... dearest Lord in Heaven... rain fire from the sky and end this madness.
I absolutely would not believe that such a basic, obvious concept would be granted twenty years of patent protection if I didn't see it with my own eyes.
If Thomas Edison was around today, he wouldn't have to patent the light bulb. He could patent light itself, and could then sue those who allowed the sun to shine into their homes.
Really. Honestly. What's next? What other totally obvious, ridiculous things can the USPTO issue patents on? How about a patent on punching an extra hole in a waist belt to avoid having to buy a new one? How about twenty years of protection for the idea of catching fireflies in a jar?
I think the US Patent system was a wonderful thing and has really helped to make the USA a technological leader in many areas, but the system appears to be flat-out broken. It's flopping around helplessly like a squirrel injured by a passing car, spewing insane patents all over the place. Patent experts know how badly broken it is and they're exploiting it to no end. This latest insanity is just a single snowflake sitting on the top of the tip of the iceberg.
Are you kidding?
From what I'm reading, the spammers are getting ready to send in their contribution thank-you checks!