There are some problems with comparing this activity to the USAPATRIOT Act. The argument against the Patriot act is (broadly) that innocents can be harmed in the drive to punish the guilty. However in this case, by the definition of a botnet, shutting down a botnet cannot harm any innocents; there are no innocents in a botnet.
There's a small problem in your reasoning in this example. You're assuming that there exists a universal standard of what a programming language "should" do, and that happens here to be based on a C worldview.
It "should" do what the language specification says it should do. Part of knowing any language is knowing its scoping rules. You say "It looks like it should run 100 times," but the first thing that went through my mind when I read that was not "Assuming C's scoping rules, it should run 100 times," but rather "I don't know enough about javascript's scoping rules to say what that does."
It should be noted that while determining the truth of an arbitrary statement is not a decidable problem (a "recursive" problem), determining the whether or not a given proof (as a string in some suitable formalization language) proves a certain fact is decidable, and is in fact in P [1].
Determining a statement to be true requires finding a proof of it (within the limitations of Godel's incompleteness theorem). This is an automatable process and one possible algorithm is quite simple: check each possible string in the formalization language to see if it proves the statement. This will not halt if the statement is false, but will find the proof eventually if it is true. This class of problems is known as recursively enumerable. See also the Chomsky_heirarchy.
[1] Martin, John "Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation" Third Edition.
Here's what my friend postulated on the invite thing: if they go to a policy of many many invites to the point where normal people will never run out, but still keep it invite only, then keep track of the invite chain, they have an advantage over spammers. If an account is spamming you can suspend just it at first, but if one account keeps on inviting spammers, suspend the root of the spam tree.
My guess for the reason the spam goes down is because when the mail server is off, it is unreachable, so the spamming program must wait for TCP connection request packets to timeout. Simply bouncing gives an immediate response, and the spammer won't care. But if the spamming operation has to hold up for a few seconds trying to reach a down machine, that actually motivates the spammer to remove you.
Since a TCP session must be set up before the message is transmitted, you can't have your cake and eat it too. At least not as the parent suggests.
Python is not optimal for system administration, but that's because its focus has moved away from system administration (if it ever was there in the first place). Let Perl have it, or bash. I use it now not as much for system administration as for actual development of my projects, and for that I find it faster to develop than C(++) or Java.
And I don't want to start any flames, this is my opinion.
This opens a whole new world of possibilities. Could you hijack DNS lookups of people legitamately playing the game, and 0wn them ala the so many Windows boxes? Just think: a zombied gamecube sending spam...
There is a reason behind why neither popular vote nor the electoral college system works. In the Federalist Papers, Publius recognized that it's not possible for one person to represent an entire nation. We have a congress to do that. We have president to get things done after congress has debated and decided. That's why the president was originally an executive, not a legislator.
IMO, the reason things aren't working today is because the president has gained too much power. The concept in the constitution is that we have a bicamoral congress to make decisions and "lead", and the president just carried out what congress told him to do.
The electoral college system works if all the president would do is carry out policy instead of make it.
why don't they pool their marketing expertise and realise that when they do things like this, they make themselves look bad and in turn discourage people from buying from them - effectively inducing piracy.
Well then let's hope the INDUCE act passes, then we can nail them for inducing their own piracy!
Some might remember this from a while back. This feature's origins come from the Google Programming Contest. They said that the good entries might actually become google features if they had sufficient merit.
The winner from 2002 whipped up a prototype geographic search. I guess that this is the full-scale realization of that work.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, to be fair, I think it actually could get up to 60 mph quite easily if it were being pulled by an F-150 or similar.
Have you ever seen The Running Man ? It's a movie about just such a show...
Let's not forget Get Perpendicular
There are some problems with comparing this activity to the USAPATRIOT Act. The argument against the Patriot act is (broadly) that innocents can be harmed in the drive to punish the guilty. However in this case, by the definition of a botnet, shutting down a botnet cannot harm any innocents; there are no innocents in a botnet.
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day show a nice picture of this.
If you're interested in this stuff, bookmark http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html, which just points to the current picture of the day.
GCART@RIT for one =.(
See though, mugging someone is not as bad, because the studio still gets their money. So with the mugging, less harm is being done...
On the topic of indoor pot growing ops, I highly recommend people check out the 2000 movie "Saving Grace". Very good film.
And it's just a movie I liked and thought I'd mention it, sorry if I'm getting off topic (Oh no! Offtopic! Here comes the mod-y monster).
There's a small problem in your reasoning in this example. You're assuming that there exists a universal standard of what a programming language "should" do, and that happens here to be based on a C worldview.
It "should" do what the language specification says it should do. Part of knowing any language is knowing its scoping rules. You say "It looks like it should run 100 times," but the first thing that went through my mind when I read that was not "Assuming C's scoping rules, it should run 100 times," but rather "I don't know enough about javascript's scoping rules to say what that does."
Snopes Reference Page. This refers to the US Congress, but the same analysis applies.
Most of these say "arrested" or "accused", none say "convicted", the assault one only implies guilt. No names are given, nor a dates, nor references.
It should be noted that while determining the truth of an arbitrary statement is not a decidable problem (a "recursive" problem), determining the whether or not a given proof (as a string in some suitable formalization language) proves a certain fact is decidable, and is in fact in P [1].
Determining a statement to be true requires finding a proof of it (within the limitations of Godel's incompleteness theorem). This is an automatable process and one possible algorithm is quite simple: check each possible string in the formalization language to see if it proves the statement. This will not halt if the statement is false, but will find the proof eventually if it is true. This class of problems is known as recursively enumerable. See also the Chomsky_heirarchy.
[1] Martin, John "Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation" Third Edition.
Here's what my friend postulated on the invite thing: if they go to a policy of many many invites to the point where normal people will never run out, but still keep it invite only, then keep track of the invite chain, they have an advantage over spammers. If an account is spamming you can suspend just it at first, but if one account keeps on inviting spammers, suspend the root of the spam tree.
My guess for the reason the spam goes down is because when the mail server is off, it is unreachable, so the spamming program must wait for TCP connection request packets to timeout. Simply bouncing gives an immediate response, and the spammer won't care. But if the spamming operation has to hold up for a few seconds trying to reach a down machine, that actually motivates the spammer to remove you.
Since a TCP session must be set up before the message is transmitted, you can't have your cake and eat it too. At least not as the parent suggests.
Addmittedly yes...
Python is not optimal for system administration, but that's because its focus has moved away from system administration (if it ever was there in the first place). Let Perl have it, or bash. I use it now not as much for system administration as for actual development of my projects, and for that I find it faster to develop than C(++) or Java.
And I don't want to start any flames, this is my opinion.
This opens a whole new world of possibilities. Could you hijack DNS lookups of people legitamately playing the game, and 0wn them ala the so many Windows boxes? Just think: a zombied gamecube sending spam...
FYI, Arnold can't be president. He wasn't born in the US.
There is a reason behind why neither popular vote nor the electoral college system works. In the Federalist Papers, Publius recognized that it's not possible for one person to represent an entire nation. We have a congress to do that. We have president to get things done after congress has debated and decided. That's why the president was originally an executive, not a legislator.
IMO, the reason things aren't working today is because the president has gained too much power. The concept in the constitution is that we have a bicamoral congress to make decisions and "lead", and the president just carried out what congress told him to do.
The electoral college system works if all the president would do is carry out policy instead of make it.
Base-64 encoding is a 4/3 ratio of increase.
why don't they pool their marketing expertise and realise that when they do things like this, they make themselves look bad and in turn discourage people from buying from them - effectively inducing piracy.
Well then let's hope the INDUCE act passes, then we can nail them for inducing their own piracy!
Some might remember this from a while back. This feature's origins come from the Google Programming Contest. They said that the good entries might actually become google features if they had sufficient merit. The winner from 2002 whipped up a prototype geographic search. I guess that this is the full-scale realization of that work.