Why is Intel getting into the virus writing business? Aren't there enough virus writers out there doing this for free? We don't need the virus writers to be payed for doing this work! Is this some misguided plan to force everyone to run Linux?
Actually I would think the Moon would be the first target of any mining activities. It is close enough that you could cycle people back to Earth fairly regularly with the cargo runs and if things went wrong you would have the possibility of sending a rescue mission or having them leave for Earth. And a Moon base would make a good jumping off point (pun intended) to get to the astroid belt and then on to Mars.
Bring back Major Matt Mason and his team of astronauts! They had a Moon base and crawlers back in the 60's.
The signature part of a credit card is ineffective at best. Why would anyone think that a clerk that could not add up your purchase if the cash registered failed is suddenly able to perform the function of analysing signatures? I have to keep from laughing out loud everytime they flip the card over and look at the back and then at what I signed on the slip.
As others have said the credit card company does not care. It does not cost them anything if a card is used fraudulently.
And when it gets to the point you describe with new movies being unplayable on existing players most people will stop buying DVDs entirely. Instead they will download pirated versions. This becomes a self fullfilling prophecy. Make a system so horrible for the end users to use and they will find ways around it.
You are right, it is an odd figure. Actually is a silly figure. The two have nothing to do with each other. This is the same as quoting some statistics to prove some irrelevant point. The numbers don't really mean anything, the write seems to be implying some kind of evil agenda. So is this a bad thing or good thing?
This is easy. In order to play the DVD you must get the proper key from the backend server. Without that key the DVD won't be able to play since you won't be able to decrypt it.
As others have mentioned they may try to implement something in the player to detect modified code being loaded on the player, but this will most likely be broken fairly quickly.
The reality is that if they try an implement such a system it will only take one vendor to release a system that is unencumbered by such controls for consumers to vote with their money and buy those systems instead of those with the checks. If they pass laws blocking the sale of such systems then people will find another method of entertainment and the entire move industry will collapse.
Personally I have seen one or two DVDs that run the don't steal clip at the beginning of the DVD or run commercials. If this becomes more prevalent there may be a number of movies that I will not buy DVDs for, at least until I sort out how to rip the DVD and remove the content I find objectionable.:)
Sounds like it is time for a Boston ink cartridge party. Let's get all those used lexmark ink cartridges and march down to the harbor and throw them in in protest!
If and when a company actually tries to enforce such a "contract" on an end user the news will make most consumers go out and buy another vendors product. This could put the company trying to enforce such a "contract" out of business. At least we can all hope!
As long as all vendors don't adopt such a practice there will be alternatives and it will become a selling point for those that don't engage in this practice. This could open up a number of business opportunites in those markets where some vendors try this tactic.
Because if you buy one of these systems you won't be able to play a DVD unless it can communicate with the RIAAs servers and validate your DVD. This means that when you cable goes out along with your Internet access you won't be able to pop a DVD into your player to watch a movie until the cable gets fixed.
This brings up a bigger issue, how are they going to enforce this on portable DVD players? Kind of hard to get network access to validate your DVDs when you are on the road or on an airplane.
This will mean that the next format that becomes available will be the winner. Blue-ray will become the Betamax of the DVD industry.
Of course if this does get some market penetration a few weeks later there will be a reverse engineered hack that will allow you to simulate the backend servers on your LAN to authorize any and all DVDs you put in the device. But most likely this will go no where since they will never be able to secure the system from hackers. Within a year of such systems being sold a hack will be created that will search them out on the Internet and shut them down by the thousands. Prompting rioting in the streets and lynchings of the manufacturers and developers of these systems.
If it was illegal for a company to punish the consumer then Microsoft would have been in jail years ago for inflicting Windows and the BSOD on everyone.:)
Get real! The linked article in the parent is nothing but ranting. There are no solutions presented or fixes for the existing system. Those complaining about the response must have expected all those troops, trucks, helicopters, and supplies to be prestaged somewhere and ready to roll minutes after the storm passed. The reality is that such operations require an assesment of what is needed, staging of those resources, and then execution on the plan. It is a horrible disaster, but the Monday morning quarterbacking by the media and other pundits is beyond ridiculous. I really feel for those people that were trapped in the city with out power or other supplies. I can understand at least a little of what they went through having lived through three direct hurricane hits last year. By no means was what I experienced even a fraction of what New Orleans is going through. But even here there were people in the neighborhood that were going around screaming that their power was not on.
So stop pointing fingers at everyone else and take some responsiblity. No one else is going to help you in such situations. Plan in advance what to do and have supplies on hand to last for several days or a week.
And they actually think they will be able to sell a device that not only requires full time network access (limits the potential customers) and can be disabled remotely (very good hacker potential here!)?
I know that the vast majority of people are not much more than cattle, but when they are asked to fork over several hundred dollars if not more for an entertainment device that they can do with out but have expensive restrictions built in most will recognize a bad deal for what it is.
If by some amazing fluke such devices become common it will only be a matter of time before a hacker finds a way to access those devices and shutdown them down for his own amusement. Now that will make headlines.
Of course they will! We have learned from Stargate: Atlantis that all cultures in a completely different galaxy all speak 21st century english. Always thought that was funny since the orginal mission to Abidos they had to learn ancient Egyptian to communicate.
So there should be no problem with anyone, human or otherwise, being able to read english and all those names.
My theory is that the aliens are collecting names for a phishing scheme later this year. They need a large number of identities to get through the increased security at the airports.
Ah! But the few nerds that do manage to procreate will be reduced to none since those needs will now be met in the holodeck. After a few generations the number of people that can create and support high technology systems will drop to an unsustainble level at which point when the systems start to fail and there are to few nerds left to repair the existing systems. There will be a few islands of technology sustained by a few nerds for awhile but as things get worse more and more of them will retire to the holodeck.
As soon as holodecks become widely available all the/. users and other nerds will retire to a fantasy world where they have dates all the time. Nothing new will be created or improved upon.
As such the real world will decline and systems will start failing and civilization will collapse.:)
The introduction of the Holodeck on Star Trek ruined the show. No Captain would have allowed one of those on there after the first time the damn thing took over the ship or trapped most of the crew in some bizare setting.
If the holodeck becomes a reality (pun intended) once it comes down in price where almost everyone can have one, similar to computers, all high tech countries in the world will collapse within a few years. No one will want to leave the holodeck to do anything real. Services will start to fail as people stop going to work. As things get worse more and more people will withdraw into a holodeck environment to escape. There will be a brief increase in home delivery type services, pizza places will experience a boom cycle. But slowly other services will start to fail. Power outages will result in massive riots as people are forced out of their holodecks to search for generators and inverters to keep the holodecks working. More and more people slow starve to death trying to exist on holodeck generated food.
The few people that manage to evade holodeck addiction will be forced to flee the major cities as most power, water, sewage, and other services are in complete disrepair.
When holodecks become a reality the world will end.
From what I have seen most users are clueless. Unless their machine locks up they just keep plugging along.
Greylisting is great. I set it at a site that was getting about 8000 spam messages a day. After implementing greylisting only about 8 to 10 spam a day got through and spamassassin tagged those. Last report was that things are still working at that level.
To many problems with everyone having a built in mail server. Just block port 25 and have way for those of us that want to run an email server to have port 25 enabled and things would be great.:)
Thanks for explaining "sender pays". However I don't see how this would stop spam. It may slow it down a little bit but I don't see how it would stop the spammer. The vast bulk of spam currently comes from spam bots, the spammer does not care if it uses a significant portion of the zombie systems cpu. It may make the spammers change their code to throttle the sending of messages a little but they would just look to expand their zombie networks to make up for the number of messages being sent.
Greylisting defeats zombie mail servers by using the standards of smtp to our advantage. It temp fails the message. A legit MTA will resend the message as some point in the future. The server using greylisting won't let a message come back for some specified period of time. After that time it is auto-whitelisted so subsequent messages from a legit MTA won't be greylisted for a certain interval. Zombie mail servers generally dump and run and don't retry messages. Combine greylisting with spamassassin and you get nearly a 100% relief from spam.
But these are point defenses. To get sweeping reduction in spam the ISPs need to block port 25 except for their email servers. Allow users to request port 25 be opened per user so those that want to run MTAs can. Most users won't make that request. This would reduce spam by significant levels if all ISPs did this.
I agree that white/black lists with central authorities are not a good solution. To many issues with such a setup.
How about a real solution? was(Re:Poor solution)
on
Spammers on the Run
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· Score: 1
So how about picking a real solution then?
Sender pays won't work, if there are any loop holes allowing some users to send free of cost the spammers will find a way to use the loop hole. (to say nothing of the exemption that would be applied to goverment offices and congress critters, charities etc.) Imposing such fees would end the Internet as a relatively efficient means to exchange ideas and information.
DDOSing the web sites that sell the crap pushed in spam while some what satisfying is as you point out not a final solution to the problem.
Over the last year or two of this topic being brought up time and again there have been several very effective solutions proposed here on/.
First get all the ISPs to block port 25 except for their email servers. Allow users to request port 25 be opened for their address if they want to run an email server. This will eliminate virtually all of the spam bots that exist out there on all those compromised Windows systems. But still allow end users the ability to setup their own email server if they want to.
It is important to note that the ISPs must have a process in place to allow users to setup and run their own email servers. If spamming from such users is detected the ISP kills the account and bars that user from using that ISP (or possibly any ISP) ever again.
Second, send a spam out to all users. Those that actually click on the enclosed link get identified, their Internet access is revoked for life, and their computers are confiscated and turned over to schools. This will make a dent in the spammers pocket books, no customers = no money. This would have to repeated a few times a year to catch any new users. This works two ways, it immediately impacts the spammers cash flow and scares users into not reading or opening any email that did not come from a trusted source.
Hit them in the pocket book and the spammers will go away. That is the only reason they do it.
In the mean time you can implement greylisting which blocks virtually all of the spam bot generated spam out there. Again, this is something the ISPs should implement on their email servers. So this can be done now while we get the laws in place to allow people to be banned from the Internet.
So we need to do this on the cheap. OK, how about this, we get an old cement mixer bucket to use for the crew compartment. Stick it on top of an engine using hydrozine. Pack enough fuel to get there and back and do a powered landing back here at the junk yard, uh I mean Earth.
I'm sure we can get some second hand space suits from NASA for the trip.
What are the problems they are avoiding with this distribution?
Moving from windows to linux takes some home work to find out what the user does on a system and identify an equivalent package under linux to do that job. Keeping a user with feet in both OSes does not do them any good. I recently moved a user from a Windows ME system to Linux. Their needs were modest. Took a few hours to build the system on a new harddrive and then save some files from the old system. They were up and running on linux the next day and have not had any problems so far.
By keeping old windows programs around with the complications of running them under crossoveroffice or wine just presents more problems IMHO. Taking the plunge will in general get a user productive in the new environment quicker than trying to ease them into it.
The real trick doing it this way is to do the work up front and clearly identify all the tasks that a user wants/needs to perform on a system. Clearly identify replacement applications then get the user off of windows. Even setting a system up for dual boot just prolongs the agony and makes the user have to figure out how to get things tranfered back and forth. Most mailing lists and forums are filled with people having problems dual booting.
Eliminate these problems by converting over completely. No more half measures.:)
While they are at it how about doing the same with daylight savings time?
They are making DST longer that standard time now which will most likely cause some computers to have significant problems.
Get rid of DST entirely. If people want to adjust schedules for some perceived benefit of saving energy then just getup an hour earlier or later and change their start times that way instead of mucking with the clocks.
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Why is Intel getting into the virus writing business? Aren't there enough virus writers out there doing this for free? We don't need the virus writers to be payed for doing this work! Is this some misguided plan to force everyone to run Linux?
:)
Oh, wait, did it say anti-virus? Never mind.
Maybe the masses realized that if you sit down at a poker game and you don't see a sucker, you are the sucker.
Of course this is difficult to do with computer poker but then I guess this can be modified to:
If you join a computer poker game and you are not a bot, then you are the human that is about to lose really bad.
Actually I would think the Moon would be the first target of any mining activities. It is close enough that you could cycle people back to Earth fairly regularly with the cargo runs and if things went wrong you would have the possibility of sending a rescue mission or having them leave for Earth. And a Moon base would make a good jumping off point (pun intended) to get to the astroid belt and then on to Mars.
Bring back Major Matt Mason and his team of astronauts! They had a Moon base and crawlers back in the 60's.
The signature part of a credit card is ineffective at best. Why would anyone think that a clerk that could not add up your purchase if the cash registered failed is suddenly able to perform the function of analysing signatures? I have to keep from laughing out loud everytime they flip the card over and look at the back and then at what I signed on the slip.
As others have said the credit card company does not care. It does not cost them anything if a card is used fraudulently.
And when it gets to the point you describe with new movies being unplayable on existing players most people will stop buying DVDs entirely. Instead they will download pirated versions. This becomes a self fullfilling prophecy. Make a system so horrible for the end users to use and they will find ways around it.
You are right, it is an odd figure. Actually is a silly figure. The two have nothing to do with each other. This is the same as quoting some statistics to prove some irrelevant point. The numbers don't really mean anything, the write seems to be implying some kind of evil agenda. So is this a bad thing or good thing?
This is easy. In order to play the DVD you must get the proper key from the backend server. Without that key the DVD won't be able to play since you won't be able to decrypt it.
:)
As others have mentioned they may try to implement something in the player to detect modified code being loaded on the player, but this will most likely be broken fairly quickly.
The reality is that if they try an implement such a system it will only take one vendor to release a system that is unencumbered by such controls for consumers to vote with their money and buy those systems instead of those with the checks. If they pass laws blocking the sale of such systems then people will find another method of entertainment and the entire move industry will collapse.
Personally I have seen one or two DVDs that run the don't steal clip at the beginning of the DVD or run commercials. If this becomes more prevalent there may be a number of movies that I will not buy DVDs for, at least until I sort out how to rip the DVD and remove the content I find objectionable.
Sounds like it is time for a Boston ink cartridge party. Let's get all those used lexmark ink cartridges and march down to the harbor and throw them in in protest!
If and when a company actually tries to enforce such a "contract" on an end user the news will make most consumers go out and buy another vendors product. This could put the company trying to enforce such a "contract" out of business. At least we can all hope!
As long as all vendors don't adopt such a practice there will be alternatives and it will become a selling point for those that don't engage in this practice. This could open up a number of business opportunites in those markets where some vendors try this tactic.
Because if you buy one of these systems you won't be able to play a DVD unless it can communicate with the RIAAs servers and validate your DVD. This means that when you cable goes out along with your Internet access you won't be able to pop a DVD into your player to watch a movie until the cable gets fixed.
This brings up a bigger issue, how are they going to enforce this on portable DVD players? Kind of hard to get network access to validate your DVDs when you are on the road or on an airplane.
This will mean that the next format that becomes available will be the winner. Blue-ray will become the Betamax of the DVD industry.
Of course if this does get some market penetration a few weeks later there will be a reverse engineered hack that will allow you to simulate the backend servers on your LAN to authorize any and all DVDs you put in the device. But most likely this will go no where since they will never be able to secure the system from hackers. Within a year of such systems being sold a hack will be created that will search them out on the Internet and shut them down by the thousands. Prompting rioting in the streets and lynchings of the manufacturers and developers of these systems.
If it was illegal for a company to punish the consumer then Microsoft would have been in jail years ago for inflicting Windows and the BSOD on everyone. :)
Get real! The linked article in the parent is nothing but ranting. There are no solutions presented or fixes for the existing system. Those complaining about the response must have expected all those troops, trucks, helicopters, and supplies to be prestaged somewhere and ready to roll minutes after the storm passed. The reality is that such operations require an assesment of what is needed, staging of those resources, and then execution on the plan. It is a horrible disaster, but the Monday morning quarterbacking by the media and other pundits is beyond ridiculous. I really feel for those people that were trapped in the city with out power or other supplies. I can understand at least a little of what they went through having lived through three direct hurricane hits last year. By no means was what I experienced even a fraction of what New Orleans is going through. But even here there were people in the neighborhood that were going around screaming that their power was not on.
So stop pointing fingers at everyone else and take some responsiblity. No one else is going to help you in such situations. Plan in advance what to do and have supplies on hand to last for several days or a week.
And they actually think they will be able to sell a device that not only requires full time network access (limits the potential customers) and can be disabled remotely (very good hacker potential here!)?
I know that the vast majority of people are not much more than cattle, but when they are asked to fork over several hundred dollars if not more for an entertainment device that they can do with out but have expensive restrictions built in most will recognize a bad deal for what it is.
If by some amazing fluke such devices become common it will only be a matter of time before a hacker finds a way to access those devices and shutdown them down for his own amusement. Now that will make headlines.
Looks like it is time to convert all those mysql databases to postgresql before mysql starts it's baseless lawsuits similar to SCO's.
Shame to see a good application tie an anchor to itself.
Of course they will! We have learned from Stargate: Atlantis that all cultures in a completely different galaxy all speak 21st century english. Always thought that was funny since the orginal mission to Abidos they had to learn ancient Egyptian to communicate.
So there should be no problem with anyone, human or otherwise, being able to read english and all those names.
My theory is that the aliens are collecting names for a phishing scheme later this year. They need a large number of identities to get through the increased security at the airports.
The proper term would be intranet not Internet. Hopefully they have found something useful to use all that fiber capacity for.
Ah! But the few nerds that do manage to procreate will be reduced to none since those needs will now be met in the holodeck. After a few generations the number of people that can create and support high technology systems will drop to an unsustainble level at which point when the systems start to fail and there are to few nerds left to repair the existing systems. There will be a few islands of technology sustained by a few nerds for awhile but as things get worse more and more of them will retire to the holodeck.
As soon as holodecks become widely available all the /. users and other nerds will retire to a fantasy world where they have dates all the time. Nothing new will be created or improved upon.
:)
As such the real world will decline and systems will start failing and civilization will collapse.
The introduction of the Holodeck on Star Trek ruined the show. No Captain would have allowed one of those on there after the first time the damn thing took over the ship or trapped most of the crew in some bizare setting.
If the holodeck becomes a reality (pun intended) once it comes down in price where almost everyone can have one, similar to computers, all high tech countries in the world will collapse within a few years. No one will want to leave the holodeck to do anything real. Services will start to fail as people stop going to work. As things get worse more and more people will withdraw into a holodeck environment to escape. There will be a brief increase in home delivery type services, pizza places will experience a boom cycle. But slowly other services will start to fail. Power outages will result in massive riots as people are forced out of their holodecks to search for generators and inverters to keep the holodecks working. More and more people slow starve to death trying to exist on holodeck generated food.
The few people that manage to evade holodeck addiction will be forced to flee the major cities as most power, water, sewage, and other services are in complete disrepair.
When holodecks become a reality the world will end.
From what I have seen most users are clueless. Unless their machine locks up they just keep plugging along.
:)
Greylisting is great. I set it at a site that was getting about 8000 spam messages a day. After implementing greylisting only about 8 to 10 spam a day got through and spamassassin tagged those. Last report was that things are still working at that level.
To many problems with everyone having a built in mail server. Just block port 25 and have way for those of us that want to run an email server to have port 25 enabled and things would be great.
Thanks for explaining "sender pays". However I don't see how this would stop spam. It may slow it down a little bit but I don't see how it would stop the spammer. The vast bulk of spam currently comes from spam bots, the spammer does not care if it uses a significant portion of the zombie systems cpu. It may make the spammers change their code to throttle the sending of messages a little but they would just look to expand their zombie networks to make up for the number of messages being sent.
Greylisting defeats zombie mail servers by using the standards of smtp to our advantage. It temp fails the message. A legit MTA will resend the message as some point in the future. The server using greylisting won't let a message come back for some specified period of time. After that time it is auto-whitelisted so subsequent messages from a legit MTA won't be greylisted for a certain interval. Zombie mail servers generally dump and run and don't retry messages. Combine greylisting with spamassassin and you get nearly a 100% relief from spam.
But these are point defenses. To get sweeping reduction in spam the ISPs need to block port 25 except for their email servers. Allow users to request port 25 be opened per user so those that want to run MTAs can. Most users won't make that request. This would reduce spam by significant levels if all ISPs did this.
I agree that white/black lists with central authorities are not a good solution. To many issues with such a setup.
So how about picking a real solution then?
/.
:)
Sender pays won't work, if there are any loop holes allowing some users to send free of cost the spammers will find a way to use the loop hole. (to say nothing of the exemption that would be applied to goverment offices and congress critters, charities etc.) Imposing such fees would end the Internet as a relatively efficient means to exchange ideas and information.
DDOSing the web sites that sell the crap pushed in spam while some what satisfying is as you point out not a final solution to the problem.
Over the last year or two of this topic being brought up time and again there have been several very effective solutions proposed here on
First get all the ISPs to block port 25 except for their email servers. Allow users to request port 25 be opened for their address if they want to run an email server. This will eliminate virtually all of the spam bots that exist out there on all those compromised Windows systems. But still allow end users the ability to setup their own email server if they want to.
It is important to note that the ISPs must have a process in place to allow users to setup and run their own email servers. If spamming from such users is detected the ISP kills the account and bars that user from using that ISP (or possibly any ISP) ever again.
Second, send a spam out to all users. Those that actually click on the enclosed link get identified, their Internet access is revoked for life, and their computers are confiscated and turned over to schools. This will make a dent in the spammers pocket books, no customers = no money. This would have to repeated a few times a year to catch any new users. This works two ways, it immediately impacts the spammers cash flow and scares users into not reading or opening any email that did not come from a trusted source.
Hit them in the pocket book and the spammers will go away. That is the only reason they do it.
In the mean time you can implement greylisting which blocks virtually all of the spam bot generated spam out there. Again, this is something the ISPs should implement on their email servers. So this can be done now while we get the laws in place to allow people to be banned from the Internet.
Actually Apple got the idea for the GUI and mouse from Xerox. :)
50 million to get to the moon in 5 years?
So we need to do this on the cheap. OK, how about this, we get an old cement mixer bucket to use for the crew compartment. Stick it on top of an engine using hydrozine. Pack enough fuel to get there and back and do a powered landing back here at the junk yard, uh I mean Earth.
I'm sure we can get some second hand space suits from NASA for the trip.
hmmm, how come this sounds familiar.......
What are the problems they are avoiding with this distribution?
:)
Moving from windows to linux takes some home work to find out what the user does on a system and identify an equivalent package under linux to do that job. Keeping a user with feet in both OSes does not do them any good. I recently moved a user from a Windows ME system to Linux. Their needs were modest. Took a few hours to build the system on a new harddrive and then save some files from the old system. They were up and running on linux the next day and have not had any problems so far.
By keeping old windows programs around with the complications of running them under crossoveroffice or wine just presents more problems IMHO. Taking the plunge will in general get a user productive in the new environment quicker than trying to ease them into it.
The real trick doing it this way is to do the work up front and clearly identify all the tasks that a user wants/needs to perform on a system. Clearly identify replacement applications then get the user off of windows. Even setting a system up for dual boot just prolongs the agony and makes the user have to figure out how to get things tranfered back and forth. Most mailing lists and forums are filled with people having problems dual booting.
Eliminate these problems by converting over completely. No more half measures.
While they are at it how about doing the same with daylight savings time?
They are making DST longer that standard time now which will most likely cause some computers to have significant problems.
Get rid of DST entirely. If people want to adjust schedules for some perceived benefit of saving energy then just getup an hour earlier or later and change their start times that way instead of mucking with the clocks.