Add a cellphone and Salling Clicker to that, and you've got both a "complete" solution, as well as one that's small and always available; and no "2-3 seconds" for "establishing control".
In a way they are just bitching about the problem, if something really needs to be done by a lot of people it needs to be automatic...
Just use procmail to catch the incoming unwanted e-mailattachments; automatically, and instantly, getting an e-mail stating that why the attachment is bad (focus on viruses, filesizes etc; don't talk too much about the monopolistic behaviors of Microsoft, or managertypes won't take your seriously in most cases) is a lot more effectiv than if you hrs or days later send a reply.
That's just bs... All you have to do is buy a cellphone that isn't locked to a certain carrier, and that handles the GSM-band of the countries you're planing on visiting, and then either roam or buy a local SIM-card.
I've been roaming within europe since mid 90's, and I've used tri-band phone in europe and the us since late 90's; no problems at all.
I also use it on some sites to prevent deeplinking, not to mention people linking directly to certain files (images etc)... but I do allow some sites to do deeplinking.
I do this simply because I want to control what a person has read before visiting certain information, like forcing them to read a warning/explanatory text before viewing statistics about something. Without that explanatory text it might be possible that people are going to misinterpret the data; but I don't have to force them to read my warning if I know that the site doing the deeplinking are good at explaining the data to the reader...
I've already set such things up on some sites which might get/.:ed; basically it means that all people surfing to these sites from a page at/. will get a static snapshot of the contents... it's the same contents, just up to 30 minutes old and without it killing the databases etc. =)
The to me the interesting thing is that if it's a real chance of leaving something living behind, then what does that tell us about life in the universe?
Basically it _could_ mean that every single time a lifeform visits a planet for the first time there's a chance that he'll leave something behind, which has the chance of evolving...
The first spacefaring race will then be responsible for spreading life throughout the galaxy (and beyond, depending on the laws of physics and their creativity etc).
Every now and then a planet will "die", something will happen that destroys most lifeforms living there; and if it happens quickly enough (maybe nanotech gone awry) it might even be possible that all lifeforms die. If the spacefaring race of that planet isn't advanced enough they'll die, or instead of moving to a nearby planet they might have to leave that system.
Left behind in that system there'd be one dead (or almost dead) planet, and there'd be the "bugs" that that race left on other planets and moons.
Those "bugs" might evolve to a spacefaring race, which would then find that they're living in a system just like our solarsystem...
Yes, it's HUGE, when you're adding it to the software you've written yourself; and it's seriously overkill if you only want people to control a few things inside you're own program.
No, it is NOT huge. 300 MB is huge, 2-3 MB is peanuts. The loss of efficiency to my brain having to learn a new language is much greater than the loss of efficiency to my computer having to use a couple more megs of RAM. Stop punishing your users.
It isn't 2-3 MB, it's more like a cpl of 100 MB once people start adding perl to everything; and luckily for most people their brains can handle learning more than just one language, esp. considering that such a "included language" either is very simple, or you'd still have to learn a lot of new stuff even if it is perl... Not to mention that some people will include perl, some will include ruby, some will include javascript; so instead of having to learn enough to control that program, you'd have to learn the basics of a whole new language before you can get anything done.
Fighting spammers' a war that's impossible to win if we attack them directly; creating laws that will force the spammers to waste more time on hiding is a good thing, but the only way to fight spammers and actually win, that is to educate the public so that the spammers don't make any money out of spamming people.
I got 56k+ spam last year, and I don't do business with any of those companies; it doesn't take that long to send 56k e-mails, but if a 1'000 people like me do the same that means 56'000'000 e-mails without it earing the spammers a single cent.
If a million people would get that many spam without doing business with any of the companies involved, that would mean 56'000'000'000 e-mails sent without the spammers making a cent.
56'000'000'000 e-mails if you can send out 1'000 e-mails per second means: 56'000'000'000 / 1'000 = 56'000'000 seconds
Including a little downtime (very quick changes of ISPs etc) that comes to about 2 years of spamming without making any money.
I'm not saying that these numbers in any way represent what's actually going on, I'm just showing that if no one actually did business with the spammers they could no longer afford to be spammers.
Yes, it's HUGE, when you're adding it to the software you've written yourself; and it's seriously overkill if you only want people to control a few things inside you're own program.
Take a look at AppleScript, a beautifully simple way to control GUI-apps on a Mac.
Do like I do, use a cpl of sure signs that an e-mail is spam and make the filter train on it as it arrives; that way you're filter will automatically learn the new tricks.
I've taken that nuclear - I have my filter save every spam I ever get so I can train a new filter if I like. I have 10,000+.;) Usually, the first three spams to try a new trick get through, I get to work, I tell Mozilla it's spam, then that trick never works again.
I meant that the process is automatic, I don't have to retrain it... using things like spamtraps the bayesian filter is always getting the new tricks without having to guess if it's spam or ham.
In other words, nothing will change because nothing CAN change. As long as people want to work on Linux, they will. The Internet and the minds of its members are not property of SCO. So too bad for them.
The "movement" will slow down, become more "underground", and some of the people will aim their work at other OSes rather than have to deal with a potentially nightmare(ish) legal process.
The ones already making a lot of money out of the use of linux (routers, basestations, pvrs etc) will pay for a license, and then it's business as usual.
A few people will start working on something that is open, free and capable of replacing Linux; the process will be slow, and initially there will be a lot of politics stoping any real work from getting done.
At a time when M$ has started losing ground simply based on "momentum" a serious problem with Linux will be a HUGE problem for the free/open source-community; and the only company that will truly benefit from it is M$.
Open source as an option for businesses/governments could be set back anywhere from 3-10 years.
Things CAN change, things CAN get a lot worse than it is today...
I'm running Mozilla, and in the last 8 months (roughly) I've gotten 10,000 spams - modest, but a great library for catching spams. I catch about 97% or more of them. And I can tell when they come out with a new trick - my catch rate will drop to say 80% for a day, after which my filter catches up to the new trick. In fact, when they don't have new tricks, my catch rate is about 99+%. Most of what gets through is new tricks.
Do like I do, use a cpl of sure signs that an e-mail is spam and make the filter train on it as it arrives; that way you're filter will automatically learn the new tricks.
Mostly I just use e-mailaddresses that are pure spamtraps for the automatic training; but I've got a whole set of procmailfiles/programs that do nothing but find the easier to catch spam/ham before my e-mail is sent on to the bayesian filter...
My catch rate is always 99+%, and no more than maybe 1 FP per 3 months.
lets assume we're not going to validate URLs before commencing the highest click thru rate of all time and then pretend we have an argument.
If I spend at least 10 hours every day infront of the computer, and all my daily spam arrives spread out during those 10 hours, I would get a new spam to verify every 4-5 minutes. Figuring out if the spammer is responsible for the site that it is linked to will most likely, on average, take at least that long; much longer if someone has already started attacking that site.
This means that to validate the URLs before attacking them I would have to spend more time doing that than working fulltime (not to mention that I'd have to do this on weekends also); and while doing that I would generate money for the spammers on all the sites I visit where I find the site itself not to be spammer-owned.
If spammers can DDoS sites the nasty ways by corrupting packets, I don't think clicking on a link sent to me in an e-mail excessivly is going to raise any eyebrows.
Just read that a cpl of times and think about it; basically you're claiming that since spammers can do something that's against the law you can legally do the same thing as long as you're doing it differently... NO, you can't do that; you can't bring down someone's site just because you feel like it, no matter what tools you're using.
And "clicking on a link [...] excessivly" won't work, so you'd have to use some kind of program to do that; a program meant to hurt websites that you're using with the intent of hurting websites...
The only thing different between you and the DOS:ing spammers would be that your tool is way way way less effective, and that since you're not trying to hide yourself you'll get caught a lot more easily.
If a spam message has a link to an image, let it go through and view it lots and lots of times. It's trivial to make a simple browser app that you feed URLs and it repeatly grabs the data from that URL. Most spammers use affiliate programs so if you want to be really mean you can call the affiliated link a few million times so that they get paid nothing (or even kicked off the program for cheating) or you bankrupt the affiliate company if they don't have rules against such things. (pay per click and not pay per sale). 1 million click thrus times a few pennies per click really adds up.
A 25KB image sent to 25 million people takes around 667GB of transfer. So if lots of people just sacrifice a few hundred megs of transfer, the spammer's servers will choak and die or the bandwidth costs will put them out of business.
And there's nothing illegal about it.
WRONG; you can't legally DOS spammers just by switching tools you're doing it with.
You will very often not actually hit/hurt the spammer, so most of the time you'd hurt innocent servers/companies; and everyone knowing you're using this tool could send you e-mails making you DOS any site they want to.
The spammer won't be kicked off the program for cheating, you'll get arrested for abusing their system by automatically downloading the same thing automatically over and over again, intending to hurt their systems and/or their users/clients.
You say that this is simple, but it is not. In order to have an authoritative source for the data, one must have a named, vulnerable location to dispense it from. P2P networks function because everyone trusts everyone else, and if you download the latest Audioslave video, and it turns out to be Brittany and Modonna making out, well then c'est la vie. If you download the latest blacklist, and it ends up shutting off legitimate email, then mon dieu!
Bittorrents, for example, must have a seed site out there somewhere. This site can be taken out, and any other "offical" site that mirrors it. If the data is signed, then the offical sources of such signed data are vulnerable (if you need to revoke the key). The general problem of anonomizing traffic, while being able to trust the data on it at the same time, is Hard.
(I hate how everyone's starting to talk about bittorrents every time a distributed system is wanted, bittorrent isn't a miracle solution.)
You're right that such a system isn't easily created, but it isn't as hard as you seem to think either; correctly set up the one in charge of the system could insert the signed updated data anywhere.
The public key could be downloaded from the same website as most updates are downloaded from, but once that website is attacked the one responsible for that website uses his dialup/adsl to release the new data into the P2P-networks available to him.
The website might be gone, but the "service" wouldn't die with it.
Seriously... what would happen if everyone here went rogue, said "fuck it", and just actively blew away spammers (online, mind you, we don't need any gun-toting geeks for the love of god)?
We could do it without saying "fuck it"...
Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to write a virus/worm that take advantage of the latest virus/worm-problem, patches the local system, spends 30 minutes attacking spammers and spreading to other infected systems, after which it just erases itself.
_ONE_ person is enough for such a thing, and sooner or later someone will do it.
Sadly the bad guys can DDOS the good guys, but the good guys can't (easily) DDOS the bad guys... at least not without either using the tactics of the bad guys, or getting caught... =(
350 MB is enough for very good quality episodes of your favorite "1 hour" series
No. For watching on a crappy TV, 350MB would give you a result that you might not consider unbearable (and that assumes it uses MPEG-4 compression, not an entirely safe assumption when DVDs still use MPEG-2 (or even 1) for virtually all content). For watching on a PC, or a nice widescreen TV, you want at least 10MB per minute, so a full CD will give tolerable results on a one hour episode (which only contains 48 minutes of actual show).
That's only about 37% more, but maybe pushing it a little bit when using ADSL; _I_ still find that acceptable (as long as you get it at full speed).
When it comes to the filesize we must remember that we're not talking about ripping something from neither the TV nor from a DVD, they've got excellent quality material; and both the time and money to get the best possible result out of the best encoders.
I'd gladly pay 5 USD per episode
You might, but most people would not - $5 per episode would cost slightly more than the current system of distributing one season on a few DVDs for $30-$50. And you'd pay that for a lower quality version?
Yes, I would (not that I would mind downloading episodes that are.5-2GB each) and I would do that simply because I don't want to wait months, or ever years, before I can get access to that episode.
I wouldn't be paying for just the episode, I wouldn't be paying for getting it asap; I'd be paying for all that and the option to pay for just one episode, and for being able to buy that episode the same day that I want to watch it.
If the episode is at 350 MB most ADSL-users could watch it streaming, after less than an hour of precaching; while people with "real" broadband could watch 500+ MB episodes with theoretically no precaching at all.
Hey, they want to nail the early adopters? Fine, perhaps keep the current prices for the initial release, then drop it after three months.
Exactly, we're talking about early adopters paying premium fees for getting the episodes early; don't forget that we're talking about a service currently not available at all, and I'm sure that they'd get users even if it cost 10 USD, or more, per episode. They wouldn't get a lot of users, but they'd get some; and given enough time those prices would drop to the level where the number of users and the amount paid stabilizes at the maximum profit for them.
Wait some more and there'll be more and more companies offering the same service, resulting in even lower prices; BUT if there's no such service at all, then there won't be any competing companies with lower prices... so even high prices is a good thing for us, as that will start that market.
First, "themself" is not even close to a real word. If you're trying to do a cockney accent, don't.
I forgot that only those that speak/write perfect english are allowed to post to slashdot; poor you having to read what an imperfect human wrote, I understand that it must have been a very painful experience for you.
Do you prefer am. or br. spelling? I just want to know what I should spend the next 2-3 years studying before posting again, so that you don't have to be insulted by my bad english ever again.
Fear monger. God. Why the fuck would they bother doing that? They could just as easily walk around a city and DUMP the shit on people.
I know that this is just a troll trying to get some attention, but I want to show why he's wrong...
When walking around dumping "the shit" on people they would reveal themselfs, whatever it is they're "dumping" they would get it themselfs and it would be limited to a singel event.
Such a thing would be great if they want to target a certain group of people, let's say hitting a stockmarket, but it'd just be a one time event that wouldn't scare Average Joe enough to disturb his normal life.
Attacking people via ebay etc OTOH would make a lot of people all over the world scared, it would ruin businesses no longer daring to buy things online, and it would ruin businesses which no longer can sell things online.
By using a slower method like that they could also use something which doesn't kill the target more or less instantly, meaning that they could continue doing it for much longer before the world finds out; and when the people does find out the terrorists could be long gone.
So... using ebay instead of "dumping" it on people would result in more deaths, would scare average joes a lot more (since they're the target), would be more or less global and they wouldn't die/be caught as easily; they wouldn't even have to be on the same continent as the country they're targeting... a french operative could focus on the US, someone in the US england, someone in england france and so on...
I pay about 2,5 USD an hour to sit at a computer and use the Internet, if they can charge that for access to a physical computer they can charge even less for WLAN-access...
I really want to see certain episodes from the last 2 seasons of DS9 again
Well, that means that you're living in an area where you could see them at least once... I don't, and that means that I'm willing to pay a lot more for getting access to the new episodes.
The first cpl of months it might cost $5 per episode, then it'll drop more and more as more and more have seen those episodes... so you could watch them again later on a lot cheaper...
Slashdot Mirror
Add a cellphone and Salling Clicker to that, and you've got both a "complete" solution, as well as one that's small and always available; and no "2-3 seconds" for "establishing control".
Great 3D-gaming on my ol' Palm Vx.
. ht m
http://www.sunsetwestpi.com/palmorama/dreadling
In a way they are just bitching about the problem, if something really needs to be done by a lot of people it needs to be automatic...
Just use procmail to catch the incoming unwanted e-mailattachments; automatically, and instantly, getting an e-mail stating that why the attachment is bad (focus on viruses, filesizes etc; don't talk too much about the monopolistic behaviors of Microsoft, or managertypes won't take your seriously in most cases) is a lot more effectiv than if you hrs or days later send a reply.
That's just bs... All you have to do is buy a cellphone that isn't locked to a certain carrier, and that handles the GSM-band of the countries you're planing on visiting, and then either roam or buy a local SIM-card.
I've been roaming within europe since mid 90's, and I've used tri-band phone in europe and the us since late 90's; no problems at all.
I also use it on some sites to prevent deeplinking, not to mention people linking directly to certain files (images etc)... but I do allow some sites to do deeplinking.
I do this simply because I want to control what a person has read before visiting certain information, like forcing them to read a warning/explanatory text before viewing statistics about something. Without that explanatory text it might be possible that people are going to misinterpret the data; but I don't have to force them to read my warning if I know that the site doing the deeplinking are good at explaining the data to the reader...
I've already set such things up on some sites which might get /.:ed; basically it means that all people surfing to these sites from a page at /. will get a static snapshot of the contents... it's the same contents, just up to 30 minutes old and without it killing the databases etc. =)
The to me the interesting thing is that if it's a real chance of leaving something living behind, then what does that tell us about life in the universe?
Basically it _could_ mean that every single time a lifeform visits a planet for the first time there's a chance that he'll leave something behind, which has the chance of evolving...
The first spacefaring race will then be responsible for spreading life throughout the galaxy (and beyond, depending on the laws of physics and their creativity etc).
Every now and then a planet will "die", something will happen that destroys most lifeforms living there; and if it happens quickly enough (maybe nanotech gone awry) it might even be possible that all lifeforms die.
If the spacefaring race of that planet isn't advanced enough they'll die, or instead of moving to a nearby planet they might have to leave that system.
Left behind in that system there'd be one dead (or almost dead) planet, and there'd be the "bugs" that that race left on other planets and moons.
Those "bugs" might evolve to a spacefaring race, which would then find that they're living in a system just like our solarsystem...
It isn't 2-3 MB, it's more like a cpl of 100 MB once people start adding perl to everything; and luckily for most people their brains can handle learning more than just one language, esp. considering that such a "included language" either is very simple, or you'd still have to learn a lot of new stuff even if it is perl... Not to mention that some people will include perl, some will include ruby, some will include javascript; so instead of having to learn enough to control that program, you'd have to learn the basics of a whole new language before you can get anything done.
Fighting spammers' a war that's impossible to win if we attack them directly; creating laws that will force the spammers to waste more time on hiding is a good thing, but the only way to fight spammers and actually win, that is to educate the public so that the spammers don't make any money out of spamming people.
I got 56k+ spam last year, and I don't do business with any of those companies; it doesn't take that long to send 56k e-mails, but if a 1'000 people like me do the same that means 56'000'000 e-mails without it earing the spammers a single cent.
If a million people would get that many spam without doing business with any of the companies involved, that would mean 56'000'000'000 e-mails sent without the spammers making a cent.
56'000'000'000 e-mails if you can send out 1'000 e-mails per second means:
56'000'000'000 / 1'000 = 56'000'000 seconds
Including a little downtime (very quick changes of ISPs etc) that comes to about 2 years of spamming without making any money.
I'm not saying that these numbers in any way represent what's actually going on, I'm just showing that if no one actually did business with the spammers they could no longer afford to be spammers.
Yes, it's HUGE, when you're adding it to the software you've written yourself; and it's seriously overkill if you only want people to control a few things inside you're own program.
Take a look at AppleScript, a beautifully simple way to control GUI-apps on a Mac.
I meant that the process is automatic, I don't have to retrain it... using things like spamtraps the bayesian filter is always getting the new tricks without having to guess if it's spam or ham.
The "movement" will slow down, become more "underground", and some of the people will aim their work at other OSes rather than have to deal with a potentially nightmare(ish) legal process.
The ones already making a lot of money out of the use of linux (routers, basestations, pvrs etc) will pay for a license, and then it's business as usual.
A few people will start working on something that is open, free and capable of replacing Linux; the process will be slow, and initially there will be a lot of politics stoping any real work from getting done.
At a time when M$ has started losing ground simply based on "momentum" a serious problem with Linux will be a HUGE problem for the free/open source-community; and the only company that will truly benefit from it is M$.
Open source as an option for businesses/governments could be set back anywhere from 3-10 years.
Things CAN change, things CAN get a lot worse than it is today...
Do like I do, use a cpl of sure signs that an e-mail is spam and make the filter train on it as it arrives; that way you're filter will automatically learn the new tricks.
Mostly I just use e-mailaddresses that are pure spamtraps for the automatic training; but I've got a whole set of procmailfiles/programs that do nothing but find the easier to catch spam/ham before my e-mail is sent on to the bayesian filter...
My catch rate is always 99+%, and no more than maybe 1 FP per 3 months.
If I spend at least 10 hours every day infront of the computer, and all my daily spam arrives spread out during those 10 hours, I would get a new spam to verify every 4-5 minutes.
Figuring out if the spammer is responsible for the site that it is linked to will most likely, on average, take at least that long; much longer if someone has already started attacking that site.
This means that to validate the URLs before attacking them I would have to spend more time doing that than working fulltime (not to mention that I'd have to do this on weekends also); and while doing that I would generate money for the spammers on all the sites I visit where I find the site itself not to be spammer-owned.
Just read that a cpl of times and think about it; basically you're claiming that since spammers can do something that's against the law you can legally do the same thing as long as you're doing it differently... NO, you can't do that; you can't bring down someone's site just because you feel like it, no matter what tools you're using.
And "clicking on a link [...] excessivly" won't work, so you'd have to use some kind of program to do that; a program meant to hurt websites that you're using with the intent of hurting websites...
The only thing different between you and the DOS:ing spammers would be that your tool is way way way less effective, and that since you're not trying to hide yourself you'll get caught a lot more easily.
WRONG; you can't legally DOS spammers just by switching tools you're doing it with.
You will very often not actually hit/hurt the spammer, so most of the time you'd hurt innocent servers/companies; and everyone knowing you're using this tool could send you e-mails making you DOS any site they want to.
The spammer won't be kicked off the program for cheating, you'll get arrested for abusing their system by automatically downloading the same thing automatically over and over again, intending to hurt their systems and/or their users/clients.
(I hate how everyone's starting to talk about bittorrents every time a distributed system is wanted, bittorrent isn't a miracle solution.)
You're right that such a system isn't easily created, but it isn't as hard as you seem to think either; correctly set up the one in charge of the system could insert the signed updated data anywhere.
The public key could be downloaded from the same website as most updates are downloaded from, but once that website is attacked the one responsible for that website uses his dialup/adsl to release the new data into the P2P-networks available to him.
The website might be gone, but the "service" wouldn't die with it.
We could do it without saying "fuck it"...
Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to write a virus/worm that take advantage of the latest virus/worm-problem, patches the local system, spends 30 minutes attacking spammers and spreading to other infected systems, after which it just erases itself.
_ONE_ person is enough for such a thing, and sooner or later someone will do it.
Sadly the bad guys can DDOS the good guys, but the good guys can't (easily) DDOS the bad guys... at least not without either using the tactics of the bad guys, or getting caught... =(
His blog's up though. =)
;-)
But not for long.
That's only about 37% more, but maybe pushing it a little bit when using ADSL; _I_ still find that acceptable (as long as you get it at full speed).
When it comes to the filesize we must remember that we're not talking about ripping something from neither the TV nor from a DVD, they've got excellent quality material; and both the time and money to get the best possible result out of the best encoders.
I forgot that only those that speak/write perfect english are allowed to post to slashdot; poor you having to read what an imperfect human wrote, I understand that it must have been a very painful experience for you.
Do you prefer am. or br. spelling? I just want to know what I should spend the next 2-3 years studying before posting again, so that you don't have to be insulted by my bad english ever again.
I know that this is just a troll trying to get some attention, but I want to show why he's wrong...
When walking around dumping "the shit" on people they would reveal themselfs, whatever it is they're "dumping" they would get it themselfs and it would be limited to a singel event.
Such a thing would be great if they want to target a certain group of people, let's say hitting a stockmarket, but it'd just be a one time event that wouldn't scare Average Joe enough to disturb his normal life.
Attacking people via ebay etc OTOH would make a lot of people all over the world scared, it would ruin businesses no longer daring to buy things online, and it would ruin businesses which no longer can sell things online.
By using a slower method like that they could also use something which doesn't kill the target more or less instantly, meaning that they could continue doing it for much longer before the world finds out; and when the people does find out the terrorists could be long gone.
So... using ebay instead of "dumping" it on people would result in more deaths, would scare average joes a lot more (since they're the target), would be more or less global and they wouldn't die/be caught as easily; they wouldn't even have to be on the same continent as the country they're targeting... a french operative could focus on the US, someone in the US england, someone in england france and so on...
I pay about 2,5 USD an hour to sit at a computer and use the Internet, if they can charge that for access to a physical computer they can charge even less for WLAN-access...
Well, that means that you're living in an area where you could see them at least once... I don't, and that means that I'm willing to pay a lot more for getting access to the new episodes.
The first cpl of months it might cost $5 per episode, then it'll drop more and more as more and more have seen those episodes... so you could watch them again later on a lot cheaper...
maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but I don't find it to be funny that a user gets a bad review for killing the buyers of his goods.