What exactly do you think "profoundly gifted" means? That someone can do well on tests?
Psychometricians, neurologists, psychologists... they've been working on what it means for a very long time and what - if anything - the IQ tests actually mean. Working theories cover such things as a larger "cache" (special region of the brain seems to function in the same way as cache on your MB), a greater ability to see consequences of actions, a higher level of raw capacity - some people may simply be able to hold more data, faster recall, greater ability to see patterns (many IQ tests have significant sections on spatial relationships), greater ability to connect abstract bits of data.... the theories are endless.
But what you - and most others - fail to address is that there -are- differences. Look at idiot savants: maybe there is somebody out there who could be brought into a math lab somewhere and tell at a single glance whether a million digit number is prime or not. Maybe there exists somebody who can fold proteins in his head. Maybe everybody thought they were useless morons because they couldn't learn to tie their shoes and they're locked up on Thorazine somewhere.
A high IQ score does not guarantee productivity. A high IQ score -is- a good indicator of -potential-. Kind of like when SETI @ Home sees an interesting signal in the first pass so they'll go back for a closer look.
You may be a genius, but if you want to earn respect from society you've got to do more than just be.
This is a philosophical/ethical/spirital question - should all human life have respect just because it -is- or should we only respect that human life that actually does something? It is also irrelevant to the question at hand. The original poster said "I believe I have these characteristics and I don't know what to do about it". The predominant response was "by telling us that you believe you have these characteristics you demonstrate yourself to be a useless, arrogant schmuck, you horrible loser you, get a life." That horrible zit on the ASCII of society should be encouraged to try and find his limits and act accordingly. Maybe that person will be the one to make an insane connection some day that cures cancer? Or never makes that insane connection because everybody told him to sit down, shut up, and fake interest in people who tell people like him to sit down, shut up and pretend to be interested in others.
If the author feels he so amazing, then why doesn't he tackle some of life's other great challenges?
Speculations:
Doesn't know how
Doesn't know which challenge to tackle
Runs in to too many people who ask "if you're so smart why aren't you rich?
In most of the corporations I've seen, creativity and brilliance are actively squashed. The brilliant person who can increase revenue 20% over the next 20 years isn't nearly as revered as the mediocre person who sees that by cutting back on customer service they can increase revenue 30% next quarter. Look at what Bell Labs has done with all of the brilliant researchers they used to employ. Granted, some companies (google, for example) seeks out and rewards exception talent, but such companies are the exception rather than the rule.
It is always interesting to note that society, to a much greater extent, tolerates the arrogance of people who wander the streets saying "I can play basketball better than you" or "I can afford a much more expensive car than you", than it can tolerate anybody who even hints - justifiably or not - that they may be more intelligent than others.
Shaq can play basketball, but can solve no problems. He gets millions (and no, I don't have a problem with that... I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist). The guy with an IQ of 190 but was bullied into being too shy to be anything more than a gas station clerk behind bullet-proof glass is an arrogant git who deserves what he gets for being lazy. Never mind that if given the chance he could invent new basketball shoes that gives Shaq an extra 3" on his vertical or solve world hunger. He's smart, doesn't know how to use his smarts (do you think they teach that sort of thing in public school?) and arrogant, lazy, and probably lying about how smart he is.
He describes himself as "uniquely bright," but admits he hasn't done anything spectacular to merit this title.
What an ignorant twit. Some of the most brilliant people on the planet never did "anything spectacular to merit this title". Do a google for Grady Towers - a guy with an IQ that I guarantee to be at least two sigma above yours, and probably three or four who was a security guard at the time of his murder.
Don't lose sight of the issue with brighter people being more likely to not fit in as well with others and miss out on all of the social promotions that many others have.
I realize that a lot of geniuses didn't do well in high school, but then, they weren't labeled such until after they did something to prove themselves.
On the Stanford-Binet scale, a genius is one with a score of 140 or higher. They don't have to do anything else to "prove" themselves, just score at that level. Unfortunately, with higher IQs come a far greater incidence of poor vision and mental illness - including depression, which can go a long way toward hindering this great and majestic sign of brilliance that you demand.
It is nothing shocking to find somebody who is profoundly gifted to do poorly in school. Social issues, boredom and/or other special needs can all go a long way towards lowering that GPA. The claim "too smart for their education" as this parent mocks is in fact quite possible. Difficult for many to understand, but possible nonetheless.
But these cameras interfere with my right to go wherever I goddamn please without someone knowing where I went, and where I went from there, and what I did while there, etc etc.
Put up or shut up. What document conveys upon you this absolute right to travel hither thither and yon without anybody knowing where you went? Got news for ya buddy, but Visa knows everywhere you use a credit card. Your bank knows everywhere you use an ATM or a debit card. Mobil knows everywhere you buy gas. Add all of these records together along with your credit record and it paints a very clear picture that you drive approximately 120 miles/week, you frequently speed between the liquor store and the adult bookstore and two weeks after that trip to Cancun you started using an antibiotic and a powerful hemorrhoid cream.
Even worse, if you drive a flashy set of wheels then people will notice and begin to recognize you and your habits. If you are a hot, manly stud then women will start to notice you about town and recognize your habits.
In a nutshell, when you set foot out your door you have no right to "freedom from observation". You may not be searched, but you certainly can be watched, noted, observed, viewed, and seen. And you probably will be.
Privacy IS important, because it means having the right to live life like you want
What you REALLY want to say here is that privacy is important because it means having the ability to get away with things and not be subject to peer review: in other words you are advocating the freedom to minimize negative consequences from activities that enjoy less than 100% approval from girlfriends, mothers and the public at large.
And I've got a great new idea - allow the police to force you to strip naked
This is the eventual goal of TSA at all airports, though the stripsearch is done electronically with the "BodySearch" device (and, presumably others, but BodySearch is the only specific model name of which I am familiar.) The device takes photos of what you look like under your clothes with enough resolution to detect items such as a thin, plexiglass knife. Tattoos are invisible, but nipples and male genitalia are clearly seen. I am waiting for the lawsuits that declare that only women can screen women with the device and that woman must be allowed to screen men in the name of equality.
Information on the device and sample images can be found without too much difficulty through AltaVista and/or other search engines.
Get cameras out of our society. Big Brother does not need to be watching us.
How many candidates have you voted for/against on this issue? How many candidates share/oppose your viewpoint. You have informed your current mayor that if he ever tries to implement this system in your hometown you will form a grassroots campaign to ensure that he will be defeated, haven't you?
So, the FCC has great utility in that they allocate spectrum. OTOH, they are absolutely *useless* because they absolutely refuse to enforce it
The enforcement actions taken by the FCC are frequent and part of the public record. Want to modify your two-way and transmit across the entire 10m band? $10,000 fine. Local cable company won't plug a leak that is blocking local Skywarn, RACES and EOC traffic? The FCC enforcement guys will take on the most powerful corporations in the US - and will win.
The FCC is the domestic agency charged with enforcing the international laws that prevents Canada from jamming all of the radio stations in Seattle with local farm reports and Swatch from beaming ads for Beat Time 24/7 from an orbiting satellite in the middle of the recreational bands.
The Internet is nifty, but amateur radio operators still handle large amounts of emergency traffic - during the big blackout last year the hams around here helped coordinate the evacuation of a hospital that had a burning emergency generator. During major earthquakes and hurricanes international cooperation and the FCC makes sure that the needs of the affected are taken care of and that some trucking company can't jam the signals.
http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/ provides public access to field citations, NALs and NOVs (Notice of Violation) and (Notice of Apparent Liability). People like McCullagh know nothing of the FCCs activities beyond the front page or the financial section: they don't care much that some boat in Hawaii turned on their emergency transmitting beacon and left it on while docked, and I'm sure he thinks that the local police will care if the TV tower's anti-plane-crash beacon lights are burned out.
While - like everything else in government - there are massive imperfections, McCullagh simply doesn't have a clue and isn't thinking beyond immediate shareholder returns. Under his plan Clearchannel would be allowed to own 88MHz through 108MHz coast to coast - improving competition and public choice, right?
PhDs are supposedly experts: somebody who knows more and more about less and less until they eventually know everything there is to know about nothing.
Absolutely. CVN-77 is the current aircraft carrier that is being built and the entire boat runs off of Windows 2000.
Imagine all of the spam they will receive when they forget to lock down port 445. "Captain! 20 inbound fighters, bearing 2... no! I don't want to refinance my house right now!" "Captain, the nuclear reactor has shut down and we have to reboot the ship!" "Captain, the mess has been serving nothing but pancakes for the past 4 days. We have to shut down and restart the food service!"
Scary? No, that's plain honesty. Which should be respected.
Depends on how the disclaimer is presented. If it is buried on line 9,000 of 90,000 in 6 point type then while the letter of honesty is obeyed the spirit is sucked away like yet another Slimer in Ghostbusters.
The application of EULAs in general needs to be reviewed. For example, I propose that any EULA written in legalese be declared null and void if the expected audience is significantly populated by non-lawyers. I also propose that EULAs be prohibited from overriding the predominant claim made in advertising: to pull an fictionaly example past my sphincter, an online backup service should not be able to advertise in 24 point type "we will keep your data safe for $9.95/month!" then in 2.4 point type say "we are under no obligation to protect your data". But that's just me.
WRT the specific example at hand, nobody should trust Hotmail as a safe repository - even if they have a paid account, but that is because nobody should -ever- trust a single copy of -anything-. As the poster in my HS CS class said: "remember to back up your data or it may suffer a horrible fata".
Way back in the long long ago having touch tone phones was still far from ubiquitous. Many families still had the "Princess" model of rotary dial phone and could purchase a small lock and key that would prevent somebody (ie: children) from dialing any digit other than one by mechanically preventing the dial from going 'round and 'round. Of course there was a way around this:)
Rotary dials indicated the desired number by "hook flashing" - in other words, when you dialed the number '4' your phone would essentially click the "hang up button" on and off four times. If you did this manually you could dial any number you wished even if the lock was in place. To dial the number 6 you would click up and down 6 times. To dial the number 0 you would click up and down ten times. To dial the number '2' you would...
wait for it...
double click!
(For what it was worth I could dial 1-8 flawlessly, but would often flub up 9 and 0)
Re:The DMA hates spammers (true)
on
NYT on Spam Cops
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So long as the marketing target bears the costs not only should the lists be opt-in but they should be excluded from any sales. Selling a physical mailing address is one thing, selling a cellphone #, an SMS ID or an email address is something entirely different.
Along a tangential line, anybody who responds to a lead generated by unsolicited email should be required to honor any promises made in that email. This means that I should be able to get a $200,000 loan at $350/month - the spam specifically said "you have been approved" at those rates. By the same token, any loan officer to responds to my response to an email that reads "your lo.an app.lication has been denied" should either provide, in writing, the reason for the decline or lose their license for participating in fraud.
I'll take 5 of those $200,000 loans, please - a $1,000,000 mortgage for just $1,750/month isn't such a bad deal. And the loan officer will think twice about purchasing spam-source leads again in the future.
That said, there are certain courses of action that would be quite effective against certain types of spam. For example, consider the dozen or so mortgage applications that arrive each day with specific promises along the lines of "$200,000 mortgage for $350 regardless of credit". If I were to reply some loan officer somewhere would presumably call me back. If said officer were required by law to give me $200,000 at $350/month you can believe that word would quickly get around that this particular lead source was no good and that particular individual would be forced to change tactics.
To step up the pressure a bit, a law that revoked the license of any lender who purchased leads from any company that did not include a specific phrase - "this is an unsolicited attempt to procure a loan application" for example - would mean that lenders either use bulk emailers who provide a clear and consistent way to identify (and/dev/nul) to generate leads or lose their entire income. Ditto goes for insurance underwriters.
For all spams that are not outright frauds there is a stationary target ultimately providing the goods/services. They are not hard to identify, nor is it difficult to regulate them at the federal level (Article I, Section 8). For most insurance and lending organizations they are already subject to a myriad of of regulations. It won't matter that the spam is sent from zombie blind dates in China who have pockets full of herbs to give you many big large p.e.n....is pr0n, the underwriters who use companies that engage in fraudulent advertisements are easy to find, and have nice, deep pockets to pay all kinds of fines.
The North Carolina hog industry has tripled in size since 1990, making it the fastest-growing as well as the largest in the country. This growth has come at a cost, however. Most waste from hogs and cows raised in confinement is collected in lagoons, which are large, shallow pits dug into the ground. The waste solids sink to the bottom of the lagoon and are broken down by anaerobic bacteria over a period of months. In theory, operators keep the lagoons from overflowing by spraying the liquid that rises to the surface on nearby fields.
In practice, however, these lagoons do not necessarily contain the waste. The most dramatic evidence for this came on June 21 of this year (1995), when North Carolina suffered the largest agricultural waste spill in its history: a 7.5-acre, 12-foot-deep lagoon leaked 25 million gallons of hog waste into the headwaters of the New River near Richlands. The waste from the 10,000-head operation, owned by Oceanview Farms, contaminated the water for several miles downstream, increasing the levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients. When nutrient levels dramtically increase in rivers and other bodies of water, algae grow furiously, consuming most of the dissolved oxygen and asphyxiating the other aquatic organisms living there. An estimated 5,000 fish died as a result of the Oceanview Farms spill. Nine subsequent waste lagoon spills--six in North Carolina and three in Iowa--showed that this was not an isolated occurrence.
According to a post I found at http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID= 829
If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.
The trick is to feed all of those turkeys h erbal v 14 gr.a and give them all a freakishly large p 3.ni5 to increase the mass that goes into the machines, thereby increasing the output.
But seriously, Circle Four farms in Utah claims on their website to have produced 1,000,000 market hogs in 2003 - http://www.c4farms.com/FAQ/FAQ.htm#market. A typical market hog can be expected to produce 2 tons of waste every year (large hog farms produce sewage waste in quantities similar to small-to-medium cities). 2,000,000 tons of manure would produce somewhere around 600,000 barrels of light oil/year. Granted, this isn't much (Saudia Arabia will shift their production by 1,000,000 barrels/day), but it would mean that this particular farm and many houses around it could be self-sufficient energy-wise, and they wouldn't need those massive lagoons of pig waste that occasionally break open and flood the neighborhood.
Once upon a time I worked for one of the big three (automakers) and one of our OS/2 machines being used as a print server was starting to flake out on me. Because we had some uber massive uber expensive support contract with a company that, after the pattern of "I, Robot" called themselves "I, Bowel Movement" I called up their touchtone maze and wandered through the prompts until I reached their software support department, print servers, if-you-are-wearing-a-green-shirt-press-one group.
I patiently described the problem, listed the troubleshooting steps I had already taken and asked how I could do whatever it was I was trying to do at the time. The rep was strangely silent, but I was giving kudos to myself because I thought for once I had a tech rep who wouldn't tell me to endlessly reboot. Then came the moment of truth:
"Uh, I've asked around and we've never heard of OS/2."
Spam is not protected speech. One of the most relevant cases ever heard by the US Supreme Court (which is rarely, if ever, mentioned in spam debates) is Rowan v U.S. Post Office Dept, 397 U.S. 728 (1970)
Appellants challenge the constitutionality of Title III of the Postal Revenue and Federal Salary Act of 1967, 81 Stat. 645, 39 U.S.C. 4009 ( 1964 ed., Supp. IV), under which a person may require that a mailer remove his name from its mailing lists and stop all future mailings to the householder. The appellants are publishers, distributors, owners, and operators of mail order houses, mailing list brokers, and owners and operators of mail service organizations whose business activities are affected by the challenged statute.
A new law had recently been passed whereby people could demand that unsolicited pr0n no longer be mailed to their houses. The homeowners didn't want free samples mailed to their kids. The pr0n magazines wanted to show everybody what they were missing and claimed absolute right to do so under the guise of the First Amendment. (Sound like a familiar battle?) The Supreme Court found against the postal spammers.
Some very relevant passages from the decision:
"the right of every person 'to be let alone' must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate."
"In today's complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today's merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman's mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive."
"Weighing the highly important right to communicate, but without trying to determine where it fits into constitutional imperatives, against the very basic right to be free from sights, sounds, and tangible matter we do not want, it seems to us that a mailer's [397 U.S. 728 , 737] right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of an unreceptive addressee.
The Court has traditionally respected the right of a householder to bar, by order or notice, solicitors, hawkers, and peddlers from his property. See Martin v. City of Struthers, supra; cf. Hall v. Commonwealth, 188 Va. 72, 49 S.E.2d 369, appeal dismissed, 335 U.S. 875 (1948). In this case the mailer's right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.
To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail. The ancient concept that 'a man's home is his castle' into which 'not even the king may enter' has lost none of its vitality, and none of the recognized exceptions includes any right to communicate offensively with another. See Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523 (1967)."
Slashdot Mirror
Psychometricians, neurologists, psychologists... they've been working on what it means for a very long time and what - if anything - the IQ tests actually mean. Working theories cover such things as a larger "cache" (special region of the brain seems to function in the same way as cache on your MB), a greater ability to see consequences of actions, a higher level of raw capacity - some people may simply be able to hold more data, faster recall, greater ability to see patterns (many IQ tests have significant sections on spatial relationships), greater ability to connect abstract bits of data.... the theories are endless.
But what you - and most others - fail to address is that there -are- differences. Look at idiot savants: maybe there is somebody out there who could be brought into a math lab somewhere and tell at a single glance whether a million digit number is prime or not. Maybe there exists somebody who can fold proteins in his head. Maybe everybody thought they were useless morons because they couldn't learn to tie their shoes and they're locked up on Thorazine somewhere.
A high IQ score does not guarantee productivity. A high IQ score -is- a good indicator of -potential-. Kind of like when SETI @ Home sees an interesting signal in the first pass so they'll go back for a closer look.
This is a philosophical/ethical/spirital question - should all human life have respect just because it -is- or should we only respect that human life that actually does something? It is also irrelevant to the question at hand. The original poster said "I believe I have these characteristics and I don't know what to do about it". The predominant response was "by telling us that you believe you have these characteristics you demonstrate yourself to be a useless, arrogant schmuck, you horrible loser you, get a life." That horrible zit on the ASCII of society should be encouraged to try and find his limits and act accordingly. Maybe that person will be the one to make an insane connection some day that cures cancer? Or never makes that insane connection because everybody told him to sit down, shut up, and fake interest in people who tell people like him to sit down, shut up and pretend to be interested in others.
Speculations:
Doesn't know how
Doesn't know which challenge to tackle
Runs in to too many people who ask "if you're so smart why aren't you rich?
In most of the corporations I've seen, creativity and brilliance are actively squashed. The brilliant person who can increase revenue 20% over the next 20 years isn't nearly as revered as the mediocre person who sees that by cutting back on customer service they can increase revenue 30% next quarter. Look at what Bell Labs has done with all of the brilliant researchers they used to employ. Granted, some companies (google, for example) seeks out and rewards exception talent, but such companies are the exception rather than the rule.
It is always interesting to note that society, to a much greater extent, tolerates the arrogance of people who wander the streets saying "I can play basketball better than you" or "I can afford a much more expensive car than you", than it can tolerate anybody who even hints - justifiably or not - that they may be more intelligent than others.
Shaq can play basketball, but can solve no problems. He gets millions (and no, I don't have a problem with that... I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist). The guy with an IQ of 190 but was bullied into being too shy to be anything more than a gas station clerk behind bullet-proof glass is an arrogant git who deserves what he gets for being lazy. Never mind that if given the chance he could invent new basketball shoes that gives Shaq an extra 3" on his vertical or solve world hunger. He's smart, doesn't know how to use his smarts (do you think they teach that sort of thing in public school?) and arrogant, lazy, and probably lying about how smart he is.
Makes sense to me.
What an ignorant twit. Some of the most brilliant people on the planet never did "anything spectacular to merit this title". Do a google for Grady Towers - a guy with an IQ that I guarantee to be at least two sigma above yours, and probably three or four who was a security guard at the time of his murder.
There are many absolutely brilliant people out there who will never do anything "spectacular". Some by choice (the concept of Atlas Shrugged is quite real). Some by mandate (Robert Jordan was denied a position on the New London, CT police force because his IQ of 125 was considered "too high" - the courts agreed that if New London wanted cops with an IQ of 120 or lower then that was their right.
Don't lose sight of the issue with brighter people being more likely to not fit in as well with others and miss out on all of the social promotions that many others have.
On the Stanford-Binet scale, a genius is one with a score of 140 or higher. They don't have to do anything else to "prove" themselves, just score at that level. Unfortunately, with higher IQs come a far greater incidence of poor vision and mental illness - including depression, which can go a long way toward hindering this great and majestic sign of brilliance that you demand.
It is nothing shocking to find somebody who is profoundly gifted to do poorly in school. Social issues, boredom and/or other special needs can all go a long way towards lowering that GPA. The claim "too smart for their education" as this parent mocks is in fact quite possible. Difficult for many to understand, but possible nonetheless.
Put up or shut up. What document conveys upon you this absolute right to travel hither thither and yon without anybody knowing where you went? Got news for ya buddy, but Visa knows everywhere you use a credit card. Your bank knows everywhere you use an ATM or a debit card. Mobil knows everywhere you buy gas. Add all of these records together along with your credit record and it paints a very clear picture that you drive approximately 120 miles/week, you frequently speed between the liquor store and the adult bookstore and two weeks after that trip to Cancun you started using an antibiotic and a powerful hemorrhoid cream.
Even worse, if you drive a flashy set of wheels then people will notice and begin to recognize you and your habits. If you are a hot, manly stud then women will start to notice you about town and recognize your habits.
In a nutshell, when you set foot out your door you have no right to "freedom from observation". You may not be searched, but you certainly can be watched, noted, observed, viewed, and seen. And you probably will be.
What you REALLY want to say here is that privacy is important because it means having the ability to get away with things and not be subject to peer review: in other words you are advocating the freedom to minimize negative consequences from activities that enjoy less than 100% approval from girlfriends, mothers and the public at large.
This is the eventual goal of TSA at all airports, though the stripsearch is done electronically with the "BodySearch" device (and, presumably others, but BodySearch is the only specific model name of which I am familiar.) The device takes photos of what you look like under your clothes with enough resolution to detect items such as a thin, plexiglass knife. Tattoos are invisible, but nipples and male genitalia are clearly seen. I am waiting for the lawsuits that declare that only women can screen women with the device and that woman must be allowed to screen men in the name of equality.
Information on the device and sample images can be found without too much difficulty through AltaVista and/or other search engines.
How many candidates have you voted for/against on this issue? How many candidates share/oppose your viewpoint. You have informed your current mayor that if he ever tries to implement this system in your hometown you will form a grassroots campaign to ensure that he will be defeated, haven't you?
Secret angle, eh? How about 30 degrees... down on the bow plane. Reduce that pesky radar signature to 0.
The enforcement actions taken by the FCC are frequent and part of the public record. Want to modify your two-way and transmit across the entire 10m band? $10,000 fine. Local cable company won't plug a leak that is blocking local Skywarn, RACES and EOC traffic? The FCC enforcement guys will take on the most powerful corporations in the US - and will win.
The FCC is the domestic agency charged with enforcing the international laws that prevents Canada from jamming all of the radio stations in Seattle with local farm reports and Swatch from beaming ads for Beat Time 24/7 from an orbiting satellite in the middle of the recreational bands.
The Internet is nifty, but amateur radio operators still handle large amounts of emergency traffic - during the big blackout last year the hams around here helped coordinate the evacuation of a hospital that had a burning emergency generator. During major earthquakes and hurricanes international cooperation and the FCC makes sure that the needs of the affected are taken care of and that some trucking company can't jam the signals.
http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/ provides public access to field citations, NALs and NOVs (Notice of Violation) and (Notice of Apparent Liability). People like McCullagh know nothing of the FCCs activities beyond the front page or the financial section: they don't care much that some boat in Hawaii turned on their emergency transmitting beacon and left it on while docked, and I'm sure he thinks that the local police will care if the TV tower's anti-plane-crash beacon lights are burned out.
While - like everything else in government - there are massive imperfections, McCullagh simply doesn't have a clue and isn't thinking beyond immediate shareholder returns. Under his plan Clearchannel would be allowed to own 88MHz through 108MHz coast to coast - improving competition and public choice, right?
PhDs are supposedly experts: somebody who knows more and more about less and less until they eventually know everything there is to know about nothing.
Imagine all of the spam they will receive when they forget to lock down port 445. "Captain! 20 inbound fighters, bearing 2... no! I don't want to refinance my house right now!" "Captain, the nuclear reactor has shut down and we have to reboot the ship!" "Captain, the mess has been serving nothing but pancakes for the past 4 days. We have to shut down and restart the food service!"
Depends on how the disclaimer is presented. If it is buried on line 9,000 of 90,000 in 6 point type then while the letter of honesty is obeyed the spirit is sucked away like yet another Slimer in Ghostbusters.
The application of EULAs in general needs to be reviewed. For example, I propose that any EULA written in legalese be declared null and void if the expected audience is significantly populated by non-lawyers. I also propose that EULAs be prohibited from overriding the predominant claim made in advertising: to pull an fictionaly example past my sphincter, an online backup service should not be able to advertise in 24 point type "we will keep your data safe for $9.95/month!" then in 2.4 point type say "we are under no obligation to protect your data". But that's just me.
WRT the specific example at hand, nobody should trust Hotmail as a safe repository - even if they have a paid account, but that is because nobody should -ever- trust a single copy of -anything-. As the poster in my HS CS class said: "remember to back up your data or it may suffer a horrible fata".
Best laugh I've had all week.
Rotary dials indicated the desired number by "hook flashing" - in other words, when you dialed the number '4' your phone would essentially click the "hang up button" on and off four times. If you did this manually you could dial any number you wished even if the lock was in place. To dial the number 6 you would click up and down 6 times. To dial the number 0 you would click up and down ten times. To dial the number '2' you would...
wait for it...
double click!
(For what it was worth I could dial 1-8 flawlessly, but would often flub up 9 and 0)
So long as the marketing target bears the costs not only should the lists be opt-in but they should be excluded from any sales. Selling a physical mailing address is one thing, selling a cellphone #, an SMS ID or an email address is something entirely different. Along a tangential line, anybody who responds to a lead generated by unsolicited email should be required to honor any promises made in that email. This means that I should be able to get a $200,000 loan at $350/month - the spam specifically said "you have been approved" at those rates. By the same token, any loan officer to responds to my response to an email that reads "your lo.an app.lication has been denied" should either provide, in writing, the reason for the decline or lose their license for participating in fraud. I'll take 5 of those $200,000 loans, please - a $1,000,000 mortgage for just $1,750/month isn't such a bad deal. And the loan officer will think twice about purchasing spam-source leads again in the future.
That said, there are certain courses of action that would be quite effective against certain types of spam. For example, consider the dozen or so mortgage applications that arrive each day with specific promises along the lines of "$200,000 mortgage for $350 regardless of credit". If I were to reply some loan officer somewhere would presumably call me back. If said officer were required by law to give me $200,000 at $350/month you can believe that word would quickly get around that this particular lead source was no good and that particular individual would be forced to change tactics.
To step up the pressure a bit, a law that revoked the license of any lender who purchased leads from any company that did not include a specific phrase - "this is an unsolicited attempt to procure a loan application" for example - would mean that lenders either use bulk emailers who provide a clear and consistent way to identify (and /dev/nul) to generate leads or lose their entire income. Ditto goes for insurance underwriters.
For all spams that are not outright frauds there is a stationary target ultimately providing the goods/services. They are not hard to identify, nor is it difficult to regulate them at the federal level (Article I, Section 8). For most insurance and lending organizations they are already subject to a myriad of of regulations. It won't matter that the spam is sent from zombie blind dates in China who have pockets full of herbs to give you many big large p.e.n....is pr0n, the underwriters who use companies that engage in fraudulent advertisements are easy to find, and have nice, deep pockets to pay all kinds of fines.
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1995/103-12/focus
Once upon a time I worked for one of the big three (automakers) and one of our OS/2 machines being used as a print server was starting to flake out on me. Because we had some uber massive uber expensive support contract with a company that, after the pattern of "I, Robot" called themselves "I, Bowel Movement" I called up their touchtone maze and wandered through the prompts until I reached their software support department, print servers, if-you-are-wearing-a-green-shirt-press-one group. I patiently described the problem, listed the troubleshooting steps I had already taken and asked how I could do whatever it was I was trying to do at the time. The rep was strangely silent, but I was giving kudos to myself because I thought for once I had a tech rep who wouldn't tell me to endlessly reboot. Then came the moment of truth: "Uh, I've asked around and we've never heard of OS/2."
Appellants challenge the constitutionality of Title III of the Postal Revenue and Federal Salary Act of 1967, 81 Stat. 645, 39 U.S.C. 4009 ( 1964 ed., Supp. IV), under which a person may require that a mailer remove his name from its mailing lists and stop all future mailings to the householder. The appellants are publishers, distributors, owners, and operators of mail order houses, mailing list brokers, and owners and operators of mail service organizations whose business activities are affected by the challenged statute.
A new law had recently been passed whereby people could demand that unsolicited pr0n no longer be mailed to their houses. The homeowners didn't want free samples mailed to their kids. The pr0n magazines wanted to show everybody what they were missing and claimed absolute right to do so under the guise of the First Amendment. (Sound like a familiar battle?) The Supreme Court found against the postal spammers.
Some very relevant passages from the decision: