is there any substantial evidence that Spam is truly a threat larger than just being a general annoyance?
I think email is unlikely to be killed by spam. It's too important to too many people. Spam countermeasures will be continue to be developed. However, the processing power, storage and bandwidth consumed by spam (and filtering it) add up to a considerable cost to ISPs and businesses. Not to mention the irritation that it causes to the recipients.
I think you are trivializing the problem by calling it a general annoyance. It raises the cost to everyone while only benefiting dubious companies, which may explain why so many people on/. have such a visceral hatred of spammers.
You are right, of course, but I think it is a reasonable assumption that anyone using Netscape 4.x as a browser is running it under a pre-W2k version of Windows.
Good questions. According to an article by G. Prem Premkumar in the September, 2003 Communications of the ACM, (not available online without an expensive subscription, alas) the retail costs (including markup) amount to 35% of the final price. Distribution and manufacturing amount to 12%. So do the math. This adds up to 47% of, say, $15. Online distribution is not free, as it involves servers, bandwidth and personnel, but it is certainly cheaper than physical distribution, which requires warehouses, trucks, machinery to create the disks, etc. So roughly speaking, online distribution should cut at least 40% of the existing cost structure.
If you compare that to the cost of a CD on iTunes, you will see that the profit margin to the RIAA and its members is actually greater online. This probably does qualify it for product of the year from the corporate perspective. ITunes is certainly the best commercial offering to date in terms of UI and DRM. However, it is still way too expensive.
The World Summit on the Information Society is not a security conference. It is concerned with much broader issues of society and technology. You can find more info here
Well, last month's cumulative update for IE6 broke the normal behavior of clicking in a scroll bar to page down. AFAIK, Microsoft has not issued an updated patch. After backing out the offending patch (which affected more than just IE), I switched to Firebird, and have been happy with it.
Automatic updates are really convenient for home users, but there is no easy way to stay one release behind. Some patches are standalone, others are bundled. Some cannot be uninstalled. Some require the presence of previous patches. It has become such a burden to stay current that it is not surprising that even people who should know better don't bother.
UCITA applies only in Virginia and Maryland. In August of this year, NCCUSL, the primary driver of the legislation, abandoned its efforts to get it enacted in other states. Further information here (Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions) if you interested.
Great summary of the issues. Unfortunately, this bill is in keeping with the general tenor of the Bush administration, namely, protecting special interests at the expense of the general public. If they come up with a Child Protection Act, you better hide your kids.
Mind you, I think that new technology is likely to be more effective in halting spam than new legislation. Nevertheless, it is shameful that this law undermines the efforts of people like you who have tried to do something about the problem and states like California that have done the same.
Right. If I will the lottery jackpot it will be a huge win for me. I probably won't win, but I will only be out a buck. SCO will be out of business if it loses.
As I understand it, one of the criteria for fair use is that it not have an effect on the market for the copyrighted material. That suggests that your scheme would only be legal if it were such a pain in the ass that few people would bother. Back to the old drawing board...
RIAA is filing 41 new lawsuits and sending 90 lawsuit-notification letters this week
I would guess that somebody is willing to go into court and challenge the RIAA's evidence, yet I have not seen any report of a court date being set. Anybody know when we might see how the RIAA's evidence holds up to scrutiny in court?
Yes, and that's probably going to become more of a problem in the future. Changing phone numbers was a big disincentive for changing carriers. With that no longer an issue, the carriers will probably come up with large cancellation of service fees as a new disincentive. This might take a while to become commonplace, so now is probably the time make the switch if you have been considering one.
If spyware was included in the machine that Dell shipped, then the issue is really: why did they include this software in the first place? If they are including spyware on new machines, then they deserve death by a thousand paper cuts. On the other hand, if someone ends up with Gator-or whatever alias they came up with lately-because they installed Kazaa, then it seems to be reasonable that Dell would not want to get involved in the risks of removing scumware from their machines.
Flame me if you like, but I have had pretty good experiences with Dell's tech support on the few occasions I have needed it. Mind you, I only go to them for hardware issues. I don't see that they have any obligation to provide support for stupid things that I might do with my own software.
You are right that copyright infringement is a civil matter. That's outside the scope of this case, however. In this case SBC sued the RIAA claiming that the subpoena they received from the RIAA was unconstitutional. Constitutional matters are resolved in federal court. If the RIAA prevails, then SBC will be forced to identify a number of its customers who the RIAA thinks were offering music on P2P nets. It will then be up to the RIAA to take action against SBC's customers, not against SBC.
Hmmm...seems like in the very worst case Google might have to purchase 10000 licenses and pay some legal expenses. Total cost, probably less than $10M. Considering the likely value of a Google IPO, this is very small change. Or am I missing something?
Back in the 80s there was a huge difference in price between clones and any recognized brand name. Most of the people I knew then bought one of these as their first machine. 8086, 768K RAM, 10 MB hard disk, two 5 1/4" floppies and a green monitor. Seemed like heaven at the time.
Aside from the well-known difficulties of enforcing legal measures against spammers, this bill has a number of problems. It trumps existing state laws, such as the stonger California law. Consent is determined on an opt-out basis, not opt-in (as in the California law). In the best of cases, then, every spammer can legally send you at least one email. You can then opt-out, which will work if you are lucky and confirm your email address as valid if you are not. As in the no-call list, exemptions are granted for charities and political action groups.
We need to think hard about the consequences of becoming a litigation based society. One can imagine a day in which the US does not produce anything at all but merely sues the shit out of everyone who does. I guess there will be a few techies left--only those with 15 years experience supporting law firms need apply. Everything else will be outsourced off-shore. The only jobs left will be for lawyers, para-legals and judges. If we get lucky, we might be called upon to serve on juries once in a while.
I used to be cynical, but reality has overtaken me.
I can't agree with you. That's like saying that we should be grateful to criminals for exposing our vulnerabilities. It would be preferrable to have fewer criminals.
And so the arms race will continue. Advertisers will devise new means to annoy us and we will devise new defenses against them. There are a number of free utilities to block popups in IE that work well, but AFAIK, none can block Flash animations. Since I need Flash to use certain sites I like, I have to put up with it. It's not the end of the world. As you observed, next year's threats will be different.
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I think email is unlikely to be killed by spam. It's too important to too many people. Spam countermeasures will be continue to be developed. However, the processing power, storage and bandwidth consumed by spam (and filtering it) add up to a considerable cost to ISPs and businesses. Not to mention the irritation that it causes to the recipients.
I think you are trivializing the problem by calling it a general annoyance. It raises the cost to everyone while only benefiting dubious companies, which may explain why so many people on /. have such a visceral hatred of spammers.
You are right, of course, but I think it is a reasonable assumption that anyone using Netscape 4.x as a browser is running it under a pre-W2k version of Windows.
If you compare that to the cost of a CD on iTunes, you will see that the profit margin to the RIAA and its members is actually greater online. This probably does qualify it for product of the year from the corporate perspective. ITunes is certainly the best commercial offering to date in terms of UI and DRM. However, it is still way too expensive.
The World Summit on the Information Society is not a security conference. It is concerned with much broader issues of society and technology. You can find more info here
Good grief. I hope you're not losing any sleep about this possibility.
Automatic updates are really convenient for home users, but there is no easy way to stay one release behind. Some patches are standalone, others are bundled. Some cannot be uninstalled. Some require the presence of previous patches. It has become such a burden to stay current that it is not surprising that even people who should know better don't bother.
UCITA applies only in Virginia and Maryland. In August of this year, NCCUSL, the primary driver of the legislation, abandoned its efforts to get it enacted in other states. Further information here (Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions) if you interested.
Mind you, I think that new technology is likely to be more effective in halting spam than new legislation. Nevertheless, it is shameful that this law undermines the efforts of people like you who have tried to do something about the problem and states like California that have done the same.
Right. If I will the lottery jackpot it will be a huge win for me. I probably won't win, but I will only be out a buck. SCO will be out of business if it loses.
As I understand it, one of the criteria for fair use is that it not have an effect on the market for the copyrighted material. That suggests that your scheme would only be legal if it were such a pain in the ass that few people would bother. Back to the old drawing board...
I would guess that somebody is willing to go into court and challenge the RIAA's evidence, yet I have not seen any report of a court date being set. Anybody know when we might see how the RIAA's evidence holds up to scrutiny in court?
Yes, and that's probably going to become more of a problem in the future. Changing phone numbers was a big disincentive for changing carriers. With that no longer an issue, the carriers will probably come up with large cancellation of service fees as a new disincentive. This might take a while to become commonplace, so now is probably the time make the switch if you have been considering one.
Flame me if you like, but I have had pretty good experiences with Dell's tech support on the few occasions I have needed it. Mind you, I only go to them for hardware issues. I don't see that they have any obligation to provide support for stupid things that I might do with my own software.
You are right that copyright infringement is a civil matter. That's outside the scope of this case, however. In this case SBC sued the RIAA claiming that the subpoena they received from the RIAA was unconstitutional. Constitutional matters are resolved in federal court. If the RIAA prevails, then SBC will be forced to identify a number of its customers who the RIAA thinks were offering music on P2P nets. It will then be up to the RIAA to take action against SBC's customers, not against SBC.
Hmmm...seems like in the very worst case Google might have to purchase 10000 licenses and pay some legal expenses. Total cost, probably less than $10M. Considering the likely value of a Google IPO, this is very small change. Or am I missing something?
Yeah, right. And Microsoft is going to make Windows secure.
The only thing lacking would be some autonomous agents to post critical comments about all of the above to /.
Yep, and they are just going to roll their eyes. Deal with it.
Right, it was an 8088. The 8086 was used in the original PC. I think the AT used an 80286, however.
Back in the 80s there was a huge difference in price between clones and any recognized brand name. Most of the people I knew then bought one of these as their first machine. 8086, 768K RAM, 10 MB hard disk, two 5 1/4" floppies and a green monitor. Seemed like heaven at the time.
Aside from the well-known difficulties of enforcing legal measures against spammers, this bill has a number of problems. It trumps existing state laws, such as the stonger California law. Consent is determined on an opt-out basis, not opt-in (as in the California law). In the best of cases, then, every spammer can legally send you at least one email. You can then opt-out, which will work if you are lucky and confirm your email address as valid if you are not. As in the no-call list, exemptions are granted for charities and political action groups.
I wrote the above comment. Mod it troll or offtopic if you like, but it was not meant to be funny.
I used to be cynical, but reality has overtaken me.
I can't agree with you. That's like saying that we should be grateful to criminals for exposing our vulnerabilities. It would be preferrable to have fewer criminals.
And so the arms race will continue. Advertisers will devise new means to annoy us and we will devise new defenses against them. There are a number of free utilities to block popups in IE that work well, but AFAIK, none can block Flash animations. Since I need Flash to use certain sites I like, I have to put up with it. It's not the end of the world. As you observed, next year's threats will be different.