Q: What three things determine the value of a piece of property?
A: Location, location, and location.
You've been watching too much TV. The three things that determine the value of a piece of property are suitability, desire, and ability to pay. Location is one aspect of this, but is far from being the only aspect.
New Orleans is at a unique location, and that is why it has been so valuable for hundreds of years. Value that extended far beyond the state of Louisiana, but especially for the entire Mississippi River basin. Given a small and reasonable investment, it would have and should have continued to generate substantial profit.
You're on the right track but the train ain't quite yet pulled into the station. At the founding of the port of New Orleans people did the best with what they had, and did a pretty decent job of it. At some point, however, people decided they were tired of the river meandering forth and back and took a few steps to prevent this from happening again, locking themselves into a position which simply could not reasonably be held forever.
Nobody is disputing the value the port provides to the nation. Only short-sighted buffoons such as yourself declare that the city as developed should have been sustained regardless of cost, effort, or perhaps better location, location, location elsewhere in the region. Keep reading... the crux of your complaint is revealed below.
Except for Dubya's extraordinary incompetence and string of miserable failures, this was a crisis that the city could have avoided.
In the times of Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton you would have been squarely on the side of the federalists. It isn't that the city was wiped out - you can't honestly say that you really care much about the city or the people, can you? - it is that it happened on Bush's watch that gets your goat. Please be honest: since 2000 has the phrase "we were robbed" or some reasonable facsimile thereof even once crossed your mind? The city of New Orleans wasn't wiped out during Clinton's watch because they were lucky. They weren't wiped out during the watch of King George I because they were lucky. They weren't wiped out under Ronnie's watch because... well, I hope you get the point.
But as an exposed Bush-hating federalist your vision of America is clear: you hate the concept of local government control and want the centralized government to control all aspects of life, safety and security, don't you?
But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt: what specific mistakes did Bush make and what should he have done differently? Do you know? Or is this (as I strongly suspect) just a case of "let's stick it to George! That'll show him!" If you can't identify his mistakes, how do you know that he made them? Bush made lots of mistakes - it shouldn't be difficult to identify them. How many can you name?
BTW: I'm curious as to that about which I "lied maliciously".
Sorry, but you're barking up the wrong tree. My point is that New Orleans is a losing proposition from the getgo. Yes, Bush was wrong in cutting the funding and put people at risk. However, Governor Blanco (a Democrat... stupidity abounds on both sides) held football to be more important than preservation and Mayor Nagin is just some southern Democrat (there's that D word again) too stupid and inept for office who didn't have enough brains to plan for an evacuation that he knew would be needed.
There are lots of cities that don't need to be kept on life support 24/7 - the fact that New Orleans needed so much cash every single year should have been the first clue that maybe the planners should have rethought the city. Note that the city of New Orleans was declining in population (down some 2% and some between 1990 and 2000) - the leaders should have encouraged this trend rather than fight to reverse it.
Not far off from what they do in tornado-prone midwestern states. Photos of entire subdivisions with each house sporting what appears to be a bank vault that serves as a safe room demonstrate what can happen when people actually care about what might happen. The rest of the house may be destroyed, but everybody has safe haven and the foundations remain intact for easy rebuilding.
So let's see... let's say there is an exceptionally active tornado season that spawned 500 tornados, each twister 100 yards wide (on the larger side) with a ground track of 5 miles each, which result in approximately 150 square miles (heck... let's round up to 200 square miles) of devestation.
At 2nd landfall Katrina had hurricane force winds extending 105 miles out from the center. Let's pretend that the storm made it 20 miles inland and collapsed, causing no subsequent damage. 2,100 square miles of devestation. From a single storm. That is, on average, only one of multiple storms in any given season.
So compare:
Some communities are faced with the odds of being randomly selected by mother nature to be included within 150 square miles of destruction and make endless plans, preparations, code changes, modifications to standard building concepts and the development of new structures, technologies and strategies.
Other communities are faced with the prospect of being included in over 2,000 miles of destruction, elect a governor more interested in retaining a football team than the Mississippi, and not only wipe out the only natural protection they have (the wetlands) but actively discourage storm-and-flood resistance by incorporating strict historical accuracy codes and walk along the bottoms of their earthworks and never think once that the silt deposits are now several feet above their heads, let alone the ever-rising water surface.
What insurance companies. You can't buy flood insurance in New Orleans. No insurance company in their right mind would sell you flood insurance in a flood zone. That's just ludicrous.
The Federal Government graciously offers the National Flood Insurance Program to cover those that insurance companies (who are accountable to somebody and need to pay attention to pesky things like budgets) wisely avoid. After the Mississippi floods in the 90's the feds told a couple of towns that they had to relocate or they (the feds) might think about considering possibly reviewing the eventual option of nicely asking these towns to reconsider asking the taxpayers to rebuild their towns after the next flood (which will unquestionably happen again). Short of somebody who wants to build a house under Horseshoe Falls or perhaps completely on the riverbed of the Missouri River the chances that the feds will sell you heavily subsidized flood insurance are definitely stacked in your favor.
Most of the industrial infrastructure would be covered by insurance, and there can always be lawsuits over if the water came from the hurricane, from natural flooding, from the levies...
Then there is always the "there is lots of money we haven't taxed yet so of course we can throw money at New Orleans out of the goodness of our constituents' hearts" form of insurance.
Big flood along the Mississippi? OK...we'll just abandon it, and not bother to use the river.
What a maroon.
Contrary to what you imply, traffic on the Mississippi can get along just fine without the city of New Orleans. Reinforced port facilities could be built without surrounding them with a city that is below sea level. Ports are useful. Cities built without adaquate mitigation are not.
Your reality:
Fire in San Fran? Screw it...It'll just burn again eventually.
Reality's reality: Require improved building codes and effective fire fighting codes.
Your reality:
Hurricanes? Ok...Abandon every city within 50 miles of the coast from Galveston to Baltimore, and the entire state of F1orida.
Require improved building codes for hurricane resistance. Don't allow people to build directly on flood plains. Don't drain hurricane-buffering wetlands for million dollar condos.
New Orleans is built on delta silt, notoriously unstable and has been documented for decades to be slowly sinking, eventually turning into Venice of the Gulf. For decades the artifically channeled river continues to silt up, raising the water level ever higher, faster than dredging or levy improvements can check.
Your claim: New Orleans is useful so continue to throw money at a losing proposition that is guaranteed to result in massive loss of life and an environmental disaster beyond imagination. (By the way... since all of those toxic chemicals are about to be pumped directly into the Gulf, I would advise against eating any shrimp or other seafood from that region for the next few years).
Do you absolutely need port facilities at that specific location? For the cost of a failed levy system with infinite maintenance and improvement requirements you can build a deep-water port on pilings to bedrock in the middle of the gulf itself, complete with ballast tanks to raise the entire infrastructure well above even 50' storm surges or simply made water-tight and let storm surges wash harmlessly over the entire facility. Multiple rail trestles (including light rail to easily and painlessly transport employees to/from their homes which are located safely inland) ensure efficient transportation of labor and goods.
Don't abandon Florida, simply require everybody to be self-insured. Insurance subsidies of people who want to enjoy ocean views force people living in trailer parks in Des Moines chip in to guarantee that people who build on the barrier islands of North Carolina (which repeatedly get wiped out) are close enough to repayment so ensure that the FEMA assistance will be enough for them to rebuild the same house in the same dangerous location.
"Pretty to live in" is not the same thing as "useful". "Useful" can be engineered. A governor who drives past houses with rooflines 10 feet below sea level on her way to celebrate agreeing to pay $190 million to the NFL Saints so they remain in the city is doing nobody a favor while refusing to even address the problem of the city sinking, the waterways silting up and an increase of hurricanes that exceed the design limitations of the city's levyworks is not "useful" by any stretch of the imagination.
My two cents: rebuild the port but not the houses. If people want to live there, let them assume their own risks. Ditto for people who build on barrier islands that repeatedly get hit by storms and people who build on steep slopes that unleash mudslides every few years.
States along the Gulf get hit by destructive hurricanes than California gets hit by destructive earthquakes: why is California spending so much more on mitigation than Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
when all of the sellers are owned by one company, and they jack up the prices, claiming there's a shortage, when there isn't, then that's "gouging"
Um, no. Please check the applicable state laws and statements of your local governors and attorneys general. If, after a hurricane, pipeline or other event that creates a shortage you have 9 stations charging $3.50/gallon of gas and a 10th that is charging $9.50/gallon that one station will be charged with gouging, even though consumers can simply go elsewhere. The situation you describe is monopolistic price fixing and is what the government routinely encourages by allowing - if not chartering - said monopolies.
When you impose rationing, then everybody gets a share - and nobody dies, and you get through the crisis.
Uh huh. You also encourage cheating, such as the widespread counterfeiting of 'Red C' stickers in the WWII era.
The delays and waiting lists are a disaster, agreed. *But*: Everyone has health care - It costs much less than a lot of other health care systems
One of the standard answers to the question "why do drugs cost so much money in the US" is "they have to subsidize the drugs sold to other nations at below-market cost". Medical care (any commodity) will always cost what it costs or said commodity will no longer be available. Living in a border area I see a steady stream of Americans going to Canada for cheap drugs and a steady stream of Canadians coming to America to see oncologists for whom they would be waiting months to see in Canada. People in Yellowknife can't get an appointment with a cancer specialist tomorrow and people in Topeka can't get Tamoxifen for 60% off. But it works well for people in Detroit, Toledo or Buffalo...
most people in a time of crisis are not rational and and want something way more, especially if the prices is increasing, so instead of prices reaching an equlibrum we get a funny feedback loop where demand and price contiue to rise. Look at atalanta 5-6 bucks a gallon for gas and the lines are just getting longer as the price climbs. I love the free market but it's not a religion.
That's because in Atlanta $5-6/gallon still isn't the fair market value. When the city is quickly burning through a ten day supply (did they get that pipeline back up?) the let's-prevent-gouging ilk are trying to make sure that everything is business-as-usual until the end when in reality a time of dire crisis (and this qualifies) is not a time to make sure that everybody can still get to the movies, the strip club or the tractor pull. It isn't business as usual. People need to drive the absolute bare-minimum and the only reasonable way of ensuring that they do is to allow the market to force them.
price gouging laws are not there to protect the consumer from getting gouged. They are there to prevent civil unrest.
You mean like the civil unrest that occurs when artificially low prices spark panic buying and people fight and claw to get every drop of gas they can while they can because there isn't going to be any tomorrow?
Remember the Apple notebook riot? This is what has happened, does happen and will always happen every single time with every single commodity in strong demand that is priced significantly below market price. IKEA had a grand opening with incredible deals on couches and they had a riot. WalMart has annual obscene Thanksgiving sales on DVD players and they usually see a person or two get trampled. What on this great, big, wide earth could possibly give you the idea that people won't erupt into general civil disorder when gas that is worth $8/gallon is sold at $3? Every now and then some gas station will have some promotion or another, usually in cahoots with a local radion station where gas will be sold for the station's frequency (97.1, 100.5, etc) or some other such thing. When these promotions were selling the gas for 40 cents below market value there was bedlam, lines for 1/2 a mile and invariably a fight or three.
During the great midwestern blackout the other summer gas was in tight supply because most stations didn't have power for their pumps. Those stations that -did- have power promptly saw a long line of people who were topping off the tanks of their SUVs and their boats because the owners were afraid that if they didn't fuel up today they wouldn't be able to go boating next week. This did not please the others in line and there were, as always some arguments and fights. If gas priced had been allowed to hit $3.50/gallon they would have bought only what they needed, and you wouldn't have had nervous crowds of 200 cars lined up just waiting for a single spark to trigger a riot. You also wouldn't have needed to have all those cops sitting around watching people pump gas - they could have been out doing much more useful things, such as patrolling the darkened neighborhoods watching for looters.
Merchandise sitting on shelves (and gas sitting in storage tanks!) does not magically cost the business 3x more. Price gouging is illegal for a good reason.
Let's pretend that I own a gas station with a 10,000 gallons of capacity in my underground tanks.
Monday morning, purchase 10,000 gallons of regular unleaded at $1/gallon and pay $10,000. I sell gas at $1.25/gallon to cover overhead, driveoffs, and keep about 2 cents/gallon profit.
Tuesday sees an earthquake take out one of the only two refineries that supplies my area and my wholesaler announces that because of the shortage he will charge $2.50/gallon starting immediately
Check the tanks... I have 8,000 gallons left. A line starts to form because the local news station has announced that there will be a gas shortage and prices will spike.
Decision time.
Option one:
I keep the price of my gas at $1.25 until I run out. I lose no money because that gas is already bought and paid for. At the bottom of my tank I find that I have raked in $12,500 - before paying any other expenses such as insurance, electricity, employee salaries and benefits, taxes and so on. Figuring my two cent/gallon profit I have earned $200 for myself.
But wait! I now need to replace 10,000 gallons of gas which will now cost me $25,000. Even assuming I had free utilities, labor and overhead my last storage tank fillup would only allow me to buy 5,000 gallons of gas. A couple more price hikes and I'll be out of business and nobody will be able to buy gas from me because I'll be closed.
Option two:
I jack the prices up to match what I expect my next delivery will cost so I can keep the tanks full and stay in business. Unfortunately, no matter what I charge I'll never make more than two cents/gallon profit - and that doesn't count all of the people who feel entitled to rip me off because I'm "gouging". Or don't come in and buy my fountain drinks and candy bars which is where 80% of my profits come from.
Yes, I could refrain from "gouging" but a quick failure of the business is a definite certainty.
Anti-gouging laws are one of the sillier things ever supplied by pandering politicians to stupid, demanding citizens. During normal times I can charge $15,000 for a generator and nobody will care because they'll go to Home Depot and buy one for $700. I would be in violation of the law but nobody would care because nobody wants to buy generators. But when the disaster strikes and everybody sells out of $700 generators (which are covered with dust because they sat on the shelves for 2 1/2 years because nobody thought that the designation "hurricane zone" actually meant something") and they see my stock of $15,000 generators (covered in dust because in 10 years nobody except the government wanted to buy my generators at a price so far above market) and I would be the greatest villian in the history of mankind, even if I -lowered- my price from $15,000 to $14,000.
When the supply can't reach where the demand is, then what?
Then you have a shortage. In times of normalcy 100 people are willing to buy a generator at $700 and everybody who wants one gets one. In time of natural disaster 50,000 people want a generator at $700 and 49,999 people are SOL because the first person in line buys all of them then sells all 100 out of the back of his truck for $2,000 each. Just because the government says that generators are only worth $700 doesn't mean that that is what they will be sold for.
The free market is not our savior.
No, but it is what prevents our economy from looking like Cuba (no food is available), Russia (no heating fuel is available) or Canada (9 months of waiting for a mammogram).
Caution, WinZip 10.0, when it is released, will not be a free upgrade. If you are a registered user of a previous version of WinZip and install WinZip 10.0, you will no longer be registered.
In other words, all of those people who were promised free upgrades way back when are now SOL. Yes, WinZip has the right to change their terms any time they want and have no obligation to continue to provide free upgrades, power to them.
But I don't have to continue to support their company. Their "upgrade assurance" program is cute, though... for an extra 20% you can receive assurances that if a new version of WinZip comes out within the next year you'll get a copy. They've been averaging a new version what, every two? three? years? How many people are going to fall for that one?
personally, I'm considering publishing a list of the IPs I block, and my reasons for doing so: as others weigh in (agreeing or dissenting), it could become the ultimate democracy...
Be warned: if you do this you will have all kinds of people accusing you of blocking email sent to some other network you've never heard of. Some people will threaten you with lawsuits, some may actually file against you.
The concept is simple: my email server, I can accept or reject any email sent for any reason. I can unplug the cable. I can reject any email that contains the letter 'e'. I can apply a randomizer and accept/reject messages whenever the computer feels like it. I can ask that guy down in Central America who claimed to be Moses which servers should be filtered out.
Personally, I have never received a single email that wasn't spam from any source within APNIC or RIPE, nor do I ever expect to. Any email coming from anywhere in those areas go straight to \dev\nul (or towards the nearest copy of the federal budget) without a second thought. I've never seen a legitimate email from Brazil either... hasta la pasta, baby.
But your miles may vary and probably do. What works and is appropriate for me may or may not for you. Your server. Do whatever the zork you want with it. I don't have any right or reasonable expectation to care nor would it matter to you if it was the most important thing in the world to me.
But don't send me an email from some internet cafe in Seoul to express your opinion, either for or against - I'll never see it.
Now if only I could get a plugin for Firefox that would indicate if I'm on a website hosted by a spam-tolerant company so I could make a point of never doing business with anybody who hosted with them.
Some years ago I (the uncertified) was on site down in Mexico with a group of mercin-geeks, among who happened to be an MCSE. Some question arose about some arkane tidbit or another... nothing that was a show-stopper, more along the lines of a "why did they do it like this sort of thing" (I now know that this wouldn't have been covered in any MCSE prep and wasn't required to be known on the exams) and I suggested to the crowd that they go ask whuzzizface because "he's an MCSE... he should know."
Whuzzizhace happened to overhear my suggestion and rather than a) answer the question or b) respond with a simple "I dunno... that's not part of the training" he flew into a massive zitface rant about how I thought I was so smart and I needed to show respect for his credentials and respect how hard he worked to get his ticket and stormed off.
Tickets are needed to convince hiring managers - most of whom have no technical skills - that you know what you are talking about. They don't know the difference between a good tech and a bad one so they rely on certifications they know nothing about.
Understandable... would you trust a guy claiming to be the best gynecologist in the world if he didn't have a medical degree?
Hence some higher intelligence -- beyond human intelligence -- must be involved in creating such organisms. But now, we are stepping closer to make one on our own. What does that say about humans? Are we becoming a god?
In a nutshell, yes.
What are the requisite criteria to be considered "a god"? My personal opinion (well, more of a suspicion... my thoughts are always subject to change whenever I stumble upon something that I like better) (at which I have arrived with my own thoughts, ponderings and logic, if you have a different opinion I'm really happy for you, but this one is mine and you can't have it) is that "a god" is one who has perfect understanding of all natural laws and processes in the universe.
I once presented a conceptual lesson plan to some staunch intelligent-design-is-impossible-evolution-is-the- only-right-thinking people - leaving out any conclusions or statements of what did happen I suggested that students be led through a discussion of what knowledge, technology and timeframes would be required to build a (fungus / fruit fly / wombat) from scratch. To me this is a perfect thought exercise and would cover all aspects of life, from physiology to biochemistry to genetic engineering, but to them the very question was proof positive that I was a world-created-in-144-hours crackpot ready to burn people at the stake for daring to mention heliocentricity.
As in all cases, there are crackpots and extremists on both sides - the anti-evolutionaries ignore the magic of the color-changing moths and the anti-designers think that current levels of technology represent the high-water mark of knowledge in the universe and that nobody - past, present or future - has ever been or will ever be able to guide evolution on a planetary scale and that humans are unquestionably the result of accident and chance.
Novocaine/lidocaine injections at the dentist do nothing for the nerve in the tooth but make the gum/tongue numb and for a few hours after such injections anything cold feels hot. Well, I can't say -nothing- because one dentist actually gave me a total of 7 shots (the last five of which he told me were directly into the nerve itself) during the only drill and fill session where I didn't feel the drill. When it came time for the four wisdom teeth to come out I almost smacked him with the X-Ray machine when they asked if I had a preference between lidocaine shots or the general anesthetic.
After the wisdom teeth came out they gave me a week's worth of percodan: I couldn't tell the difference on or off so after about three days I stopped taking them, got the shakes real bad but other than that didn't feel that the percodans weren't really sugar pills. Vicoden after a root canal and the occasional flu/cold season robitussen with codeine (which up until just a few years ago could be bought without an Rx) didn't make me feel any differently.
Compare this with some people I've known who are knocked flat for hours with a single benadryl.
Maybe I should have been trying the v!c0d3n since vicoden obviously doesn't work...
I loved GDS and used it for quite awhile (and installed it on the 10 other systems I maintain).
But the lack of ability to search across the network and the insistance of returning multiple copies of the same emails posed a problem. I switched to the MS search but would love to switch back (if only there was some other way to use tabbed browsing in MSIE... the sites I am forced to use are designed to require MSIE with no way around it that I've found so far).
I haven't found anything that says "yes it indexes across the network" or "no it does not" - anybody know the answer? And did they fix the show-the-same-email-twice bug?
The question put forth is "why should anyone resign". The answer is so blatantly obvious that I really shouldn't take the time to respond, but I will anyway because there are a lot of people out there too stupid to understand why certainly employment relationships should end over this. People of the same level of insight and intelligence as the parents of these kids, for example.
First, it is absolutely critical to understand that there are the things that the kids did and things that the administration did. In the world of personal responsibility the kids should answer for their actions and the administration should answer for theirs. Let's begin.
We need to be perfectly clear here: any sysadmin this clueless and stupid needs to lose their job. The sysadmin is responsible for ensuring security and such an obvious password demonstrates such clear and present stupidity that the need to relieve said person of the burden of responsibility and need to think
Next, somebody made the decision to tape passwords onto the computers. Not just one, but apparently on every single one of the 600 systems. This means that somebody with management authority instructed people to print out multiple tags and manually attach them to computers. There is no logical justification for such an activity anywhere under any circumstance. Whoever made that decision needs to be relieved of command as they obviously don't know what they are doing.
Note that not a single word escaped from my computer about what the kids did. This is because people shouldn't lose jobs over what the kids got away with, but should lose their exceptionally well-paid government administrative jobs with mounds and mounds of benefits for raw, basic, unadulterated incompetence.
If not a single member of the board of education loses the next election over this then I will chalk this up to this being the will of the people and forget about it.
Whoever taped those passwords to the back of the computers needs to be fired. Whoever gave that person a job needs to be fired. Whoever has the authority to demand that the people above must be fired immediately but hasn't needs to be fired.
But this isn't happening. Rather than start demanding even a fleeting glimpse of intelligence within the public schools the parents simply get together and whine that the people they voted for have their heads so far up their rectum that you can't distinguish a fart from a whistle don't engage in sphincter-yoga.
Yes, there is the possibility that these parents didn't vote this particular schoolboard (and mayor , who allowed this particular police chief and DA to make such stupid decisions), but I'll hedge my bets and say that either they voted for them or didn't vote at all.
Are they demanding the resignation of the board? No.
Are they demanding the resignation of the DA? No.
Are they even promising to vote for somebody else in the next election? No.
So if they don't care enough to actually DO something about the situation, why should anybody else?
I am 100% against video cameras in the PUBLIC space I am not against video cameras in a private space (i.e. dressing rooms of a store).
Why? What possible expectation do you have for privacy in public? Do you object to news teams setting up video cameras to film a public event or only fixed cameras? While in public anything visible to the public is fair game, be that behavior or the T-Shirt that reads "I am a terrorist but because I am in public you have no right to read my shirt".
While on private property I say that any disclosed filming is acceptable. I have an issue with hidden cameras in dressing rooms, but if there is a sign that clearly reads "These dressing rooms are monitored by pimply 19 year olds who would rather monitor you than be turned down for a date yet again by that redheaded girl in cosmetics" then by all means. I would personally shop elsewhere, but that's irrelevant.
MS gives them 5 billion to allocate to a certain section that I feel has been largly ignored. So why do you have issue with it?
Five billion ($5,000,000,000) or five million (remove the last three zeros)?
I don't have issue with MS doing whatever they want with their private funds. They should spend their own, private money on anything they want. But generous gifts usually end up in a zero net increase in expenditures on the targeted application as gifts tend to cause existing funds to be diverted or are simply redirected to higher priorities. My point is that until the attitudes and priorities change the gifts are basically meaningless and won't result in much if anything.
And for the record, if there was even a single successful prosecution of parents who failed to monitor their children's activities allowing them to sex up complete strangers 4 hours a night for months then much of the problem would evaporate. If parents turn their back for 30 seconds and a naked four year old chases a kitten into the front yard DPS is all over them. If parents spend $2,500 on a state of the art computer complete with webcam, $250 on wireless gear, buy and install a webcam, shell out $75/month for always-on broadband access, then turn their back for 2,000 hours a year as the computer is specifically placed in an area where the parents' eyes can't see the screen without giving the kid 30 seconds of warning to close various windows suddenly the argument is that "parents can't be expected to keep track of their kids all the time".
I'm talking about local polcie departments and agencies that aren't getting money for teh war on drugs.
They have enough money to park an officer in chatrooms for hours on end pretending to be a 16 1/2 year old girl but don't have enough money to investigate the theft of a $15,000 driveway (true story - the bad guys dug up the brick pavers that constituted the driveway one by one and hauled them off). It is a question of priorities: give the local LEAs a billion dollars and unless there is specific incentive to target these things they will always have something more important. "We really need mahogany paneling for the offices because morale is low" or "what's the matter, don't you think we should be targeting chatroom predators? This money is going for more sting operations and if you oppose this then you must be a pedophile."
The war on drugs has been funded to the gills for an entire generation now and the most that has come out of it is a plan to require a trip to the doctor to get an Rx for Nyquil (this is finally going to stop the meth trade! We really mean it this time!)
Stopping the drug trade (like spam and telemarketing) is logistically easy but politically difficult. Want to stop the traffic of Heroin? Spray the poppy crops in Afghanistan with Roundup. But the local warlords would stop lending support to the CIA so you can't do that. Want to stop spam and telemarketing? Levy effective fines and make them stick. But the DMA would fund your opponent in the next election so you can't do that.
Your assertion that the private sector ("often") has more money than the public sector is entirely untrue - this is an allocation problem rather than a budgetary problem.
The private sector will often have more money that the public sector
Demonstrably untrue. Consider the Gravina Island bridge project - $250,000,000 to build a bridge from a city of 8,000 to an island with a population pegged at 50 or smaller. Nobody in the private sector has this much money to bury in an Alaskan swamp, yet the public sector - which is unfettered by the bounds of accountability or revenue generator - will drop this wad of cash like a mangy cat sheds it fur.
PR fluff and posturing and empty promises are all nice and good but the icy cold reality of the matter is that without an incentive to stop spam spam will not stop. Microsoft has no incentive to actually end spam, only an incentive to a) look like they give a rat's spleen or b) fight spam if doing so will generate revenue.
For the time being the government is much more interested in handing out 17 years jail term for somebody who pointed a camcorder at a $10 movie or a 1 year jail term for a WorldCom Exec who scammed hundreds of millions of dollars than than even smacking the hand of a person who sends out obscene and sexually explicit photos to 10 year olds or provide bulletproof hosting services for people who use spam to introduce keylogging applications to home computers then drain somebody's life savings.
If and only if sufficient incentive is dangled in front of LEAs will the problems be addressed. Remember, salting only 99.9% of your driveway will cost you your house in the civil suit. Retaining hundreds of millions of records against Visa's policies then allowing those records to fall into the wrong hands will at most get Visa to issue a press release stating that they won't be using your services for awhile (and the cynical might point out that there is nothing preventing Visa from simply claiming to make the association change while maintaining the status quo).
if we're really going to stop junk email, these are the people we should be working on educating
No, if we really wanted to stop spam then we need to do two things:
1. Force specific performance on the part of the end beneficiary of the spam. When I get a spam offering a guaranteed mortg4ge of $350,000 at %3.5 and $600/month regardless of credit then any mortgage broker who responds to my click here action should be absolutely forced to give me a mortgage on those terms. Let him take it up with the spammer for making promises he couldn't keep.
2. Bar credit card companies from forcing payment for items advertised through spam.
The appropriate target is not the spammers - when a house is filled with roaches you blame the people who left the pizza rotting under the couch. Go after the people who are advertising and discourage them from paying people to spam from them. They often have lots of money and are easy to locate - Kraft (did you ever get an ad for Gevalia coffee?), Publishers Clearinghouse, General Motors... one guy sued Sears for spamming and won.
With the exception of the proof-of-concept and spam-to-spy mailings spam has a purpose defined by the people writing the checks. Make it more trouble and expense for those people and they will no longer write checks to the spammers.
By doing that and blocking all inbound email from RIPE, APNIC and Brazil and the spam issue is almost completely eliminated (to my satisfaction on my servers and my inbox at least - YMMV).
Slashdot Mirror
You've been watching too much TV. The three things that determine the value of a piece of property are suitability, desire, and ability to pay. Location is one aspect of this, but is far from being the only aspect.
You're on the right track but the train ain't quite yet pulled into the station. At the founding of the port of New Orleans people did the best with what they had, and did a pretty decent job of it. At some point, however, people decided they were tired of the river meandering forth and back and took a few steps to prevent this from happening again, locking themselves into a position which simply could not reasonably be held forever.
Nobody is disputing the value the port provides to the nation. Only short-sighted buffoons such as yourself declare that the city as developed should have been sustained regardless of cost, effort, or perhaps better location, location, location elsewhere in the region. Keep reading... the crux of your complaint is revealed below.
In the times of Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton you would have been squarely on the side of the federalists. It isn't that the city was wiped out - you can't honestly say that you really care much about the city or the people, can you? - it is that it happened on Bush's watch that gets your goat. Please be honest: since 2000 has the phrase "we were robbed" or some reasonable facsimile thereof even once crossed your mind? The city of New Orleans wasn't wiped out during Clinton's watch because they were lucky. They weren't wiped out during the watch of King George I because they were lucky. They weren't wiped out under Ronnie's watch because... well, I hope you get the point.
But as an exposed Bush-hating federalist your vision of America is clear: you hate the concept of local government control and want the centralized government to control all aspects of life, safety and security, don't you?
But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt: what specific mistakes did Bush make and what should he have done differently? Do you know? Or is this (as I strongly suspect) just a case of "let's stick it to George! That'll show him!" If you can't identify his mistakes, how do you know that he made them? Bush made lots of mistakes - it shouldn't be difficult to identify them. How many can you name?
BTW: I'm curious as to that about which I "lied maliciously".
There are lots of cities that don't need to be kept on life support 24/7 - the fact that New Orleans needed so much cash every single year should have been the first clue that maybe the planners should have rethought the city. Note that the city of New Orleans was declining in population (down some 2% and some between 1990 and 2000) - the leaders should have encouraged this trend rather than fight to reverse it.
So let's see... let's say there is an exceptionally active tornado season that spawned 500 tornados, each twister 100 yards wide (on the larger side) with a ground track of 5 miles each, which result in approximately 150 square miles (heck... let's round up to 200 square miles) of devestation.
At 2nd landfall Katrina had hurricane force winds extending 105 miles out from the center. Let's pretend that the storm made it 20 miles inland and collapsed, causing no subsequent damage. 2,100 square miles of devestation. From a single storm. That is, on average, only one of multiple storms in any given season.
So compare:
Some communities are faced with the odds of being randomly selected by mother nature to be included within 150 square miles of destruction and make endless plans, preparations, code changes, modifications to standard building concepts and the development of new structures, technologies and strategies.
Other communities are faced with the prospect of being included in over 2,000 miles of destruction, elect a governor more interested in retaining a football team than the Mississippi, and not only wipe out the only natural protection they have (the wetlands) but actively discourage storm-and-flood resistance by incorporating strict historical accuracy codes and walk along the bottoms of their earthworks and never think once that the silt deposits are now several feet above their heads, let alone the ever-rising water surface.
Yeah, the city cared about being prepared.
The Federal Government graciously offers the National Flood Insurance Program to cover those that insurance companies (who are accountable to somebody and need to pay attention to pesky things like budgets) wisely avoid. After the Mississippi floods in the 90's the feds told a couple of towns that they had to relocate or they (the feds) might think about considering possibly reviewing the eventual option of nicely asking these towns to reconsider asking the taxpayers to rebuild their towns after the next flood (which will unquestionably happen again). Short of somebody who wants to build a house under Horseshoe Falls or perhaps completely on the riverbed of the Missouri River the chances that the feds will sell you heavily subsidized flood insurance are definitely stacked in your favor.
Most of the industrial infrastructure would be covered by insurance, and there can always be lawsuits over if the water came from the hurricane, from natural flooding, from the levies...
Then there is always the "there is lots of money we haven't taxed yet so of course we can throw money at New Orleans out of the goodness of our constituents' hearts" form of insurance.
What a maroon.
Contrary to what you imply, traffic on the Mississippi can get along just fine without the city of New Orleans. Reinforced port facilities could be built without surrounding them with a city that is below sea level. Ports are useful. Cities built without adaquate mitigation are not.
Your reality:
Reality's reality: Require improved building codes and effective fire fighting codes.
Your reality:
Require improved building codes for hurricane resistance. Don't allow people to build directly on flood plains. Don't drain hurricane-buffering wetlands for million dollar condos.
New Orleans is built on delta silt, notoriously unstable and has been documented for decades to be slowly sinking, eventually turning into Venice of the Gulf. For decades the artifically channeled river continues to silt up, raising the water level ever higher, faster than dredging or levy improvements can check.
Your claim: New Orleans is useful so continue to throw money at a losing proposition that is guaranteed to result in massive loss of life and an environmental disaster beyond imagination. (By the way... since all of those toxic chemicals are about to be pumped directly into the Gulf, I would advise against eating any shrimp or other seafood from that region for the next few years).
Do you absolutely need port facilities at that specific location? For the cost of a failed levy system with infinite maintenance and improvement requirements you can build a deep-water port on pilings to bedrock in the middle of the gulf itself, complete with ballast tanks to raise the entire infrastructure well above even 50' storm surges or simply made water-tight and let storm surges wash harmlessly over the entire facility. Multiple rail trestles (including light rail to easily and painlessly transport employees to/from their homes which are located safely inland) ensure efficient transportation of labor and goods.
Don't abandon Florida, simply require everybody to be self-insured. Insurance subsidies of people who want to enjoy ocean views force people living in trailer parks in Des Moines chip in to guarantee that people who build on the barrier islands of North Carolina (which repeatedly get wiped out) are close enough to repayment so ensure that the FEMA assistance will be enough for them to rebuild the same house in the same dangerous location.
"Pretty to live in" is not the same thing as "useful". "Useful" can be engineered. A governor who drives past houses with rooflines 10 feet below sea level on her way to celebrate agreeing to pay $190 million to the NFL Saints so they remain in the city is doing nobody a favor while refusing to even address the problem of the city sinking, the waterways silting up and an increase of hurricanes that exceed the design limitations of the city's levyworks is not "useful" by any stretch of the imagination.
My two cents: rebuild the port but not the houses. If people want to live there, let them assume their own risks. Ditto for people who build on barrier islands that repeatedly get hit by storms and people who build on steep slopes that unleash mudslides every few years.
States along the Gulf get hit by destructive hurricanes than California gets hit by destructive earthquakes: why is California spending so much more on mitigation than Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
Depends on where you live: what holds up wonderfully against a hurricane or tornado can fail miserably the first time San Andres sneezes.
Um, no. Please check the applicable state laws and statements of your local governors and attorneys general. If, after a hurricane, pipeline or other event that creates a shortage you have 9 stations charging $3.50/gallon of gas and a 10th that is charging $9.50/gallon that one station will be charged with gouging, even though consumers can simply go elsewhere. The situation you describe is monopolistic price fixing and is what the government routinely encourages by allowing - if not chartering - said monopolies.
Uh huh. You also encourage cheating, such as the widespread counterfeiting of 'Red C' stickers in the WWII era.
One of the standard answers to the question "why do drugs cost so much money in the US" is "they have to subsidize the drugs sold to other nations at below-market cost". Medical care (any commodity) will always cost what it costs or said commodity will no longer be available. Living in a border area I see a steady stream of Americans going to Canada for cheap drugs and a steady stream of Canadians coming to America to see oncologists for whom they would be waiting months to see in Canada. People in Yellowknife can't get an appointment with a cancer specialist tomorrow and people in Topeka can't get Tamoxifen for 60% off. But it works well for people in Detroit, Toledo or Buffalo...
That's because in Atlanta $5-6/gallon still isn't the fair market value. When the city is quickly burning through a ten day supply (did they get that pipeline back up?) the let's-prevent-gouging ilk are trying to make sure that everything is business-as-usual until the end when in reality a time of dire crisis (and this qualifies) is not a time to make sure that everybody can still get to the movies, the strip club or the tractor pull. It isn't business as usual. People need to drive the absolute bare-minimum and the only reasonable way of ensuring that they do is to allow the market to force them.
You mean like the civil unrest that occurs when artificially low prices spark panic buying and people fight and claw to get every drop of gas they can while they can because there isn't going to be any tomorrow?
Remember the Apple notebook riot? This is what has happened, does happen and will always happen every single time with every single commodity in strong demand that is priced significantly below market price. IKEA had a grand opening with incredible deals on couches and they had a riot. WalMart has annual obscene Thanksgiving sales on DVD players and they usually see a person or two get trampled. What on this great, big, wide earth could possibly give you the idea that people won't erupt into general civil disorder when gas that is worth $8/gallon is sold at $3? Every now and then some gas station will have some promotion or another, usually in cahoots with a local radion station where gas will be sold for the station's frequency (97.1, 100.5, etc) or some other such thing. When these promotions were selling the gas for 40 cents below market value there was bedlam, lines for 1/2 a mile and invariably a fight or three.
During the great midwestern blackout the other summer gas was in tight supply because most stations didn't have power for their pumps. Those stations that -did- have power promptly saw a long line of people who were topping off the tanks of their SUVs and their boats because the owners were afraid that if they didn't fuel up today they wouldn't be able to go boating next week. This did not please the others in line and there were, as always some arguments and fights. If gas priced had been allowed to hit $3.50/gallon they would have bought only what they needed, and you wouldn't have had nervous crowds of 200 cars lined up just waiting for a single spark to trigger a riot. You also wouldn't have needed to have all those cops sitting around watching people pump gas - they could have been out doing much more useful things, such as patrolling the darkened neighborhoods watching for looters.
Let's pretend that I own a gas station with a 10,000 gallons of capacity in my underground tanks.
Decision time.
Option one:
I keep the price of my gas at $1.25 until I run out. I lose no money because that gas is already bought and paid for. At the bottom of my tank I find that I have raked in $12,500 - before paying any other expenses such as insurance, electricity, employee salaries and benefits, taxes and so on. Figuring my two cent/gallon profit I have earned $200 for myself.
But wait! I now need to replace 10,000 gallons of gas which will now cost me $25,000. Even assuming I had free utilities, labor and overhead my last storage tank fillup would only allow me to buy 5,000 gallons of gas. A couple more price hikes and I'll be out of business and nobody will be able to buy gas from me because I'll be closed.
Option two:
I jack the prices up to match what I expect my next delivery will cost so I can keep the tanks full and stay in business. Unfortunately, no matter what I charge I'll never make more than two cents/gallon profit - and that doesn't count all of the people who feel entitled to rip me off because I'm "gouging". Or don't come in and buy my fountain drinks and candy bars which is where 80% of my profits come from.
Yes, I could refrain from "gouging" but a quick failure of the business is a definite certainty.
Anti-gouging laws are one of the sillier things ever supplied by pandering politicians to stupid, demanding citizens. During normal times I can charge $15,000 for a generator and nobody will care because they'll go to Home Depot and buy one for $700. I would be in violation of the law but nobody would care because nobody wants to buy generators. But when the disaster strikes and everybody sells out of $700 generators (which are covered with dust because they sat on the shelves for 2 1/2 years because nobody thought that the designation "hurricane zone" actually meant something") and they see my stock of $15,000 generators (covered in dust because in 10 years nobody except the government wanted to buy my generators at a price so far above market) and I would be the greatest villian in the history of mankind, even if I -lowered- my price from $15,000 to $14,000.
Then you have a shortage. In times of normalcy 100 people are willing to buy a generator at $700 and everybody who wants one gets one. In time of natural disaster 50,000 people want a generator at $700 and 49,999 people are SOL because the first person in line buys all of them then sells all 100 out of the back of his truck for $2,000 each. Just because the government says that generators are only worth $700 doesn't mean that that is what they will be sold for.
No, but it is what prevents our economy from looking like Cuba (no food is available), Russia (no heating fuel is available) or Canada (9 months of waiting for a mammogram).
In other words, all of those people who were promised free upgrades way back when are now SOL. Yes, WinZip has the right to change their terms any time they want and have no obligation to continue to provide free upgrades, power to them.
But I don't have to continue to support their company. Their "upgrade assurance" program is cute, though... for an extra 20% you can receive assurances that if a new version of WinZip comes out within the next year you'll get a copy. They've been averaging a new version what, every two? three? years? How many people are going to fall for that one?
You mean like SPEWS?
Be warned: if you do this you will have all kinds of people accusing you of blocking email sent to some other network you've never heard of. Some people will threaten you with lawsuits, some may actually file against you.
The concept is simple: my email server, I can accept or reject any email sent for any reason. I can unplug the cable. I can reject any email that contains the letter 'e'. I can apply a randomizer and accept/reject messages whenever the computer feels like it. I can ask that guy down in Central America who claimed to be Moses which servers should be filtered out.
Personally, I have never received a single email that wasn't spam from any source within APNIC or RIPE, nor do I ever expect to. Any email coming from anywhere in those areas go straight to \dev\nul (or towards the nearest copy of the federal budget) without a second thought. I've never seen a legitimate email from Brazil either... hasta la pasta, baby.
But your miles may vary and probably do. What works and is appropriate for me may or may not for you. Your server. Do whatever the zork you want with it. I don't have any right or reasonable expectation to care nor would it matter to you if it was the most important thing in the world to me.
But don't send me an email from some internet cafe in Seoul to express your opinion, either for or against - I'll never see it.
Now if only I could get a plugin for Firefox that would indicate if I'm on a website hosted by a spam-tolerant company so I could make a point of never doing business with anybody who hosted with them.
Whuzzizhace happened to overhear my suggestion and rather than a) answer the question or b) respond with a simple "I dunno... that's not part of the training" he flew into a massive zitface rant about how I thought I was so smart and I needed to show respect for his credentials and respect how hard he worked to get his ticket and stormed off.
Tickets are needed to convince hiring managers - most of whom have no technical skills - that you know what you are talking about. They don't know the difference between a good tech and a bad one so they rely on certifications they know nothing about.
Understandable... would you trust a guy claiming to be the best gynecologist in the world if he didn't have a medical degree?
Of course, won't be long until really good poker players start cheating by pretending to be bots...
In a nutshell, yes.
What are the requisite criteria to be considered "a god"? My personal opinion (well, more of a suspicion... my thoughts are always subject to change whenever I stumble upon something that I like better) (at which I have arrived with my own thoughts, ponderings and logic, if you have a different opinion I'm really happy for you, but this one is mine and you can't have it) is that "a god" is one who has perfect understanding of all natural laws and processes in the universe.
I once presented a conceptual lesson plan to some staunch intelligent-design-is-impossible-evolution-is-the- only-right-thinking people - leaving out any conclusions or statements of what did happen I suggested that students be led through a discussion of what knowledge, technology and timeframes would be required to build a (fungus / fruit fly / wombat) from scratch. To me this is a perfect thought exercise and would cover all aspects of life, from physiology to biochemistry to genetic engineering, but to them the very question was proof positive that I was a world-created-in-144-hours crackpot ready to burn people at the stake for daring to mention heliocentricity.
As in all cases, there are crackpots and extremists on both sides - the anti-evolutionaries ignore the magic of the color-changing moths and the anti-designers think that current levels of technology represent the high-water mark of knowledge in the universe and that nobody - past, present or future - has ever been or will ever be able to guide evolution on a planetary scale and that humans are unquestionably the result of accident and chance.
After the wisdom teeth came out they gave me a week's worth of percodan: I couldn't tell the difference on or off so after about three days I stopped taking them, got the shakes real bad but other than that didn't feel that the percodans weren't really sugar pills. Vicoden after a root canal and the occasional flu/cold season robitussen with codeine (which up until just a few years ago could be bought without an Rx) didn't make me feel any differently.
Compare this with some people I've known who are knocked flat for hours with a single benadryl.
Maybe I should have been trying the v!c0d3n since vicoden obviously doesn't work...
I loved GDS and used it for quite awhile (and installed it on the 10 other systems I maintain). But the lack of ability to search across the network and the insistance of returning multiple copies of the same emails posed a problem. I switched to the MS search but would love to switch back (if only there was some other way to use tabbed browsing in MSIE... the sites I am forced to use are designed to require MSIE with no way around it that I've found so far). I haven't found anything that says "yes it indexes across the network" or "no it does not" - anybody know the answer? And did they fix the show-the-same-email-twice bug?
First, it is absolutely critical to understand that there are the things that the kids did and things that the administration did. In the world of personal responsibility the kids should answer for their actions and the administration should answer for theirs. Let's begin.
First off, somebody in the administration was idiotic enough to use a shortened version the school's address as the password.
We need to be perfectly clear here: any sysadmin this clueless and stupid needs to lose their job. The sysadmin is responsible for ensuring security and such an obvious password demonstrates such clear and present stupidity that the need to relieve said person of the burden of responsibility and need to think
Next, somebody made the decision to tape passwords onto the computers. Not just one, but apparently on every single one of the 600 systems. This means that somebody with management authority instructed people to print out multiple tags and manually attach them to computers. There is no logical justification for such an activity anywhere under any circumstance. Whoever made that decision needs to be relieved of command as they obviously don't know what they are doing.
Note that not a single word escaped from my computer about what the kids did. This is because people shouldn't lose jobs over what the kids got away with, but should lose their exceptionally well-paid government administrative jobs with mounds and mounds of benefits for raw, basic, unadulterated incompetence.
Whoever taped those passwords to the back of the computers needs to be fired. Whoever gave that person a job needs to be fired. Whoever has the authority to demand that the people above must be fired immediately but hasn't needs to be fired.
But this isn't happening. Rather than start demanding even a fleeting glimpse of intelligence within the public schools the parents simply get together and whine that the people they voted for have their heads so far up their rectum that you can't distinguish a fart from a whistle don't engage in sphincter-yoga.
Yes, there is the possibility that these parents didn't vote this particular schoolboard (and mayor , who allowed this particular police chief and DA to make such stupid decisions), but I'll hedge my bets and say that either they voted for them or didn't vote at all.
Are they demanding the resignation of the board? No.
Are they demanding the resignation of the DA? No.
Are they even promising to vote for somebody else in the next election? No.
So if they don't care enough to actually DO something about the situation, why should anybody else?
Why? What possible expectation do you have for privacy in public? Do you object to news teams setting up video cameras to film a public event or only fixed cameras? While in public anything visible to the public is fair game, be that behavior or the T-Shirt that reads "I am a terrorist but because I am in public you have no right to read my shirt".
While on private property I say that any disclosed filming is acceptable. I have an issue with hidden cameras in dressing rooms, but if there is a sign that clearly reads "These dressing rooms are monitored by pimply 19 year olds who would rather monitor you than be turned down for a date yet again by that redheaded girl in cosmetics" then by all means. I would personally shop elsewhere, but that's irrelevant.
Five billion ($5,000,000,000) or five million (remove the last three zeros)?
I don't have issue with MS doing whatever they want with their private funds. They should spend their own, private money on anything they want. But generous gifts usually end up in a zero net increase in expenditures on the targeted application as gifts tend to cause existing funds to be diverted or are simply redirected to higher priorities. My point is that until the attitudes and priorities change the gifts are basically meaningless and won't result in much if anything.
And for the record, if there was even a single successful prosecution of parents who failed to monitor their children's activities allowing them to sex up complete strangers 4 hours a night for months then much of the problem would evaporate. If parents turn their back for 30 seconds and a naked four year old chases a kitten into the front yard DPS is all over them. If parents spend $2,500 on a state of the art computer complete with webcam, $250 on wireless gear, buy and install a webcam, shell out $75/month for always-on broadband access, then turn their back for 2,000 hours a year as the computer is specifically placed in an area where the parents' eyes can't see the screen without giving the kid 30 seconds of warning to close various windows suddenly the argument is that "parents can't be expected to keep track of their kids all the time".
They have enough money to park an officer in chatrooms for hours on end pretending to be a 16 1/2 year old girl but don't have enough money to investigate the theft of a $15,000 driveway (true story - the bad guys dug up the brick pavers that constituted the driveway one by one and hauled them off). It is a question of priorities: give the local LEAs a billion dollars and unless there is specific incentive to target these things they will always have something more important. "We really need mahogany paneling for the offices because morale is low" or "what's the matter, don't you think we should be targeting chatroom predators? This money is going for more sting operations and if you oppose this then you must be a pedophile."
The war on drugs has been funded to the gills for an entire generation now and the most that has come out of it is a plan to require a trip to the doctor to get an Rx for Nyquil (this is finally going to stop the meth trade! We really mean it this time!)
Stopping the drug trade (like spam and telemarketing) is logistically easy but politically difficult. Want to stop the traffic of Heroin? Spray the poppy crops in Afghanistan with Roundup. But the local warlords would stop lending support to the CIA so you can't do that. Want to stop spam and telemarketing? Levy effective fines and make them stick. But the DMA would fund your opponent in the next election so you can't do that.
Your assertion that the private sector ("often") has more money than the public sector is entirely untrue - this is an allocation problem rather than a budgetary problem.
Demonstrably untrue. Consider the Gravina Island bridge project - $250,000,000 to build a bridge from a city of 8,000 to an island with a population pegged at 50 or smaller. Nobody in the private sector has this much money to bury in an Alaskan swamp, yet the public sector - which is unfettered by the bounds of accountability or revenue generator - will drop this wad of cash like a mangy cat sheds it fur.
PR fluff and posturing and empty promises are all nice and good but the icy cold reality of the matter is that without an incentive to stop spam spam will not stop. Microsoft has no incentive to actually end spam, only an incentive to a) look like they give a rat's spleen or b) fight spam if doing so will generate revenue.
For the time being the government is much more interested in handing out 17 years jail term for somebody who pointed a camcorder at a $10 movie or a 1 year jail term for a WorldCom Exec who scammed hundreds of millions of dollars than than even smacking the hand of a person who sends out obscene and sexually explicit photos to 10 year olds or provide bulletproof hosting services for people who use spam to introduce keylogging applications to home computers then drain somebody's life savings.
If and only if sufficient incentive is dangled in front of LEAs will the problems be addressed. Remember, salting only 99.9% of your driveway will cost you your house in the civil suit. Retaining hundreds of millions of records against Visa's policies then allowing those records to fall into the wrong hands will at most get Visa to issue a press release stating that they won't be using your services for awhile (and the cynical might point out that there is nothing preventing Visa from simply claiming to make the association change while maintaining the status quo).
No, if we really wanted to stop spam then we need to do two things:
1. Force specific performance on the part of the end beneficiary of the spam. When I get a spam offering a guaranteed mortg4ge of $350,000 at %3.5 and $600/month regardless of credit then any mortgage broker who responds to my click here action should be absolutely forced to give me a mortgage on those terms. Let him take it up with the spammer for making promises he couldn't keep.
2. Bar credit card companies from forcing payment for items advertised through spam.
The appropriate target is not the spammers - when a house is filled with roaches you blame the people who left the pizza rotting under the couch. Go after the people who are advertising and discourage them from paying people to spam from them. They often have lots of money and are easy to locate - Kraft (did you ever get an ad for Gevalia coffee?), Publishers Clearinghouse, General Motors... one guy sued Sears for spamming and won.
With the exception of the proof-of-concept and spam-to-spy mailings spam has a purpose defined by the people writing the checks. Make it more trouble and expense for those people and they will no longer write checks to the spammers.
By doing that and blocking all inbound email from RIPE, APNIC and Brazil and the spam issue is almost completely eliminated (to my satisfaction on my servers and my inbox at least - YMMV).