Being able to charge users $177 an hour ($2.95 a minute is common for tech support) to talk to some guy in India who is getting paid $1 per hour is a huge incentive for software companies to reduce both the quantity and quality of their documentation, and even possibly delay fixing bugs for which workarounds exist, in order to generate more calls to their support centers.
...based on the evidence available for many years.
We're still waiting to see a link to any of this evidence. With the number of people using cell phones, there should be plenty of explosions, all well-researched and documented, for you to link to. So far, you've only offered "everyone knows."
BTW, in the US, at least in every state I've ever lived in, the law requires that you use your turn signals every time you turn or change lanes, not just when you think there's someone else around. Cars you don't notice can hit you too. (not that there aren't plenty of people who break the law, mind you, but that's the law)
So you're smarter than the whole IEEE, assorted safety professionals, and the producers of TV shows that like to blow things up... but you still can't link to any verified incident of a cell phone causing an explosion. You talktalktalktalktalk and you throw around some very impressive jargon (even though you clearly don't know what some of the words mean)... but when it comes to actual facts, all you can do is throw insults.
Do you wear your seatbelt all the time?
Do you check your tires daily for proper inflation?
Do you never, ever drive when you're tired?
Do you always use your turn signals when changing lanes?
If not, then you can take your unsupported opinion and put it right back where you got it from -- because for each and every one of those items, you can find not a speculative one or two, but literally hundreds of cases in which they have caused deaths.
How about the guinea pig and the rabbit? I believe those were both domesticated more recently (by the Peruvian natives and the French) than 4000 years. Hm, and the turkey, perhaps?
Many years ago I owned an ancient mobile home with a furnace that was barely out of the stone age. Without going into detail on the technology involved, it involved piping kerosine into a metal pot-shaped combustion chamber and heating it to the point where the vapor could be burned when mixed with air. You lit this thing... I swear I am not making this up!... by dropping a burning rag into it. Among the things I learned from the years I dealt with that furnace (besides new ways to swear) was that under the right conditions (namely those that existed inside my furnace) cold kerosine is a remarkably effective substance to extinguish burning rags with.
If you had two brain cells to rub together, you might be dangerous. Come to think of it, the politicians who pass laws like that clearly don't have much in the way of brainpower, and they're a hell of a lot more dangerous than people using cell phones at gas stations.
Throwing jargon around doesn't impress/. readers unless you show at least some faint trace of knowing what you're actually talking about. Wish I had some mod points handy... score -5 (dumbass).
Like you can always tell the difference in a computer game between a data set obtained through normal game play, or an observably identical one obtained through some loophole.
Actually, depending on what kind of logging and audit tracking they have, they quite possibly can.
If, for instance, an item that is dropped as treasure by slain monsters is tagged with the ID# of the type of monster that dropped it, one that is created via a bug would not have that information, or might have invalid information -- a negative number, maybe. So any item that doesn't have a valid dropped-by field is the result of a bug or the exploiting of a bug.
You pull all such items from your database, you find out where they came from and where they went, and odds are there's someone connected to your problem. If 90% the counterfeit cash in town passed through Fred's Pawnshop, the cops are going to be very interested in Fred. If 90% of the duped items in the game passed through Sir Fred's inventory... well, there's no due process for suspected TOS violations.
Actually, didn't the "Arabic" numerals (zero and all) come from India originally?
The Mayans independantly invented the concept of zero. Unfortunately, they got too involved with fratricidal wars to really go anywhere with it.
And that points out a critical thing: EVERY civilization throughout history has had its flaws. None of them have been care bears. It's a fact of life that for most of human history, the Care Bears would have been little pastel bearskin rugs in the longhouses of their less enlightened, but much better armed, neighbors. Tolerance for outsiders and outside ideas is a luxury of those powerful enough not to be threatened with destruction by forces outside their own family, clan, tribe, nation, empire, or other cultural group. When a threat or perceived threat appears, then the tolerance vanishes.
A society which only takes, and does not contribute, gains much of the benefit of the progress of more open societies but does not strengthen potential rivals. This is true whether you think of organized crime, intolerant religions, or any other group which continues to exist because the societies it exists among play by more tolerant rules.
I get a fair bit of solicited commercial email. I signed up with a couple of book publishers who sell books relevant to my profession so I can get their monthly new releases list. I signed up with Border's to get my 20% off coupons and news of author appearances, etc., in my area. I get my scheduled haircut reminder and coupon from Supercuts. (saves me from looking like too much of a geek) There are a few more, as well, including a game company whose list I'm still on in the fading hope that they'll produce another game that doesn't suck. I would be rather irritated to have any one of those go missing. (except maybe the game company)
Those companies DO have a dedicated audience who wants to receive their messages. I'm a part of it. My spam filters are set up to make sure my book coupons and new-release lists can get through. (on the other hand, I've been known to track down spammers and call them up at 4 in the morning to curse them out)
By your defintion -- either unsolicited email or commercial email = spam -- then, say, sending email to someone whose email address you found on a forum... say, writing to someone on a fishing forum to ask if he knows any good fishing guides in his area, where you happen to be planning a vacation... would be spam, as would those book publishers' new release lists, no matter how much I want them.
Your definition fails because it is too broad and breaks several legitimate things: One-to-one unsolicited email and confirmed opt-in lists, for example. One could even argue that it would cover things like confirmation emails, "your order just shipped" emails, etc., since they're commercial.
Bad definition, throw it back and catch a new one.
The only address of mine that Omaha Steaks has ever emailed is the one I set up for them when I signed up for their email list, after seeing a print ad for their steaks. The only email I have ever gotten at that address has been from Omaha Steaks, not any other "partner" or whatever. This does not represent typical spammer behavior.
Now, if you'd like a real winner, try iBill. As a matter of policy, I give a different email address to every company I do business with. I used iBill twice to pay my subscription to a MMORPG. Since then, I have gotten some of the most explicit porn spam ever seen by the bleeding human eyeball -- starting with bestiality and going down from there -- at the address I gave iBill and no one else. (the game company in question has two other addresses of mine, and those remain pristine, pinning the leak squarely on iBill)
Omaha Steaks may need a smackdown with regard to laxness about the people or companies who sign up for their affiliate program, then proceed to spam, but they're no iBill. (incidentally, they've been around longer than the Internet, and they sell damn good steaks) They need education. iBill needs a severe LARTing. People like SnottyScotty need... well, it's probably a federal crime to post the ideas here, but some of iBill's spamming buddies might find a use for pictures of it.
Remember Steve Jackson Games? Got a search warent over a card game and had everything taken. Never charged and got everything back after it long became obsolete.
In effect someone tried to shut down a game company becouse they didn't approve of a card game.
Actually... no.
The explanation of what led up to that whole situation was described in The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling. The details of it from Steve Jackson Games' side can be found on Steve Jackson Games' website. It had to do with a game writer and BBS user who was accused of a connection (as in guilt by association) with a guy who had copied a telco administrative document from an unsecured system run by BellSouth and showed it off to other crackers as a trophy. That particular document was all over the country at that point -- except anywhere near SJG's offices or computers.
The "Illuminati" being referred to was Steve's BBS, not the card game. Incidentally, it grew into an ISP, Illuminati Online, which the last I knew was being run by Steve's brother. They hosted my very first domain name, long ago. I've moved on to bigger things, but I'll always have a soft spot for my old home at io.com.
"Clear opt-out instructions."
Now why in the Multiverse would you even need those if you were running confirmed opt-IN to begin with?
The other day, I decided that I was never likely to buy any more plane tickets from a particular booking service I'd signed up with, so I didn't need their (several times a week) special rates announcements. So, I opted back out again. I found their email useful when I first signed up for it, but my needs have changed and now I don't.
Or to use my example of Omaha Steaks again... if I suddenly went vegetarian I wouldn't be likely to order from them again, so I'd opt out of the list that, once again, I knowingly and voluntarily opted into a year ago.
If I had a really bad experience with a Border's brick-and-mortar store and swore never to buy a book from their company again, I'd want to drop their newsletter and regular supply of Border's 20% off coupons. If I found a place that did a better and cheaper job of cutting my hair than Supercuts, I'd cancel their haircut reminder and discount coupon service. Etc. Etc. There are a zillion reasons why someone would opt in for a list, then later decide to leave it when their needs changed.
I once worked for a company that sent 100,000 emails a month to customers who had requested it. However, there was one guy . ..
Exactly: there was this one guy.
And that one guy knew how to reach you.
If he'd sent that email and its headers to a spam-filtering service, they would have said "one complaint, clear and truthful headers, he's some wanker who signed up and is too stupid to un-sign himself." If that one complaint got forwarded to an ISP, the same thing would have happened. It's when they get 1,000 complaints about the same thing, and it takes a detective to figure out who it really came from, that it's an issue and they try to do something about it.
. . . without commerce the country will sink.
The country, and commerce, got by very nicely for hundreds of years without email, let alone spam. If worst came to worst, they could continue to get by without any email at all just like they did ten or fifteen years ago.
But, again, the issue is not commercial email. I just got done reading my opt-in email, and I'm about to place an order with Omaha Steaks. I read their print ad, went to their website, signed up for their email list, and I buy steaks from them. We're both happy. That's how commercial email should work.
The legitimate commercial emailers should be -- and some of them are -- in the forefront of the anti-spam fight. Take those folks with the tasty steaks: how much does it hurt their business because their customers have to sort through a hundred ads for penis enlarger pills to find this month's gourmet steak special? How much more do they have to pay for bandwidth because some hideous percentage of the available bandwidth is carrying spam? How much damage does it do to them when someone fakes their headers to get ads for fake Viagra through spam filters? They -- the businesses -- are getting hurt as much if not more than individual users.
Among other things, these "legitimate businesses" who just want their right of "free speech" are using networks of zombie computers recruited by various net worms to send out their spam for them. That's about as legitimate as a telemarketer tapping your phone line and making sales calls on it. I'd like to see how the "free commercial speech" argument would hold up if some company ever pulled that one. That alone should show you what kind of people are involved here.
Look at it this way: If the way you run a government requires you to move from safe house to safe house every night, have multiple decoys impersonating you, and wear body armor at all times, you're probably doing something wrong. If the way you run a business requires you to go to great lengths to disguise the identity of your business and the products you're selling . . . well, that should tell you something too.
I have caller ID, and I have a service from the phone company which turns away calls with have their ID information blocked. I am on the US do-not-call list. I have not heard of any business suing the phone company because they have a right to call me anonymously, no matter how much I don't want to be called.
Yes, the phone company is interfering with business and blocking communications. But it's MY PHONE and I have every damn right to sign up for the do-not-call list and reject anonymous calls. Likewise, it's MY EMAILBOX and I have every damn right to refuse email from the people who think that a) I have a penis, b) it's too small, and c) it won't stay up. Since running a full-scale spam filter of my own is less than practical, I deputize my ISP to handle that for me. It's part of what I pay them for.
Your right to swing your fist stops where my nose starts. Your right to peaceably assemble stops at my property line. And your right to send out spam stops at my mailserver.
But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords.
The issue isn't that the government is controlling what its employees can do online, or whether they can surf objectionable sites like usembassy.gov -- it's that the US government is offering a way around the censorship imposed by the governments of China and Iran, but substituting its own censorship instead.
It's not censoring pages coming into its organization. (well, it might be, but that's not what the article is about)
It's censoring the pages that people in China and Iran can see, via a proxy server (Anonymizer, which used to be legit) that it is funding as a way for the Chinese and Iranians to get around their government's censorship. That's the whole point: They're replacing the Chinese and Iranian government's censorship with the US government's censorship.
The Chinese government doesn't want Chinese people to read sites that have views opposed to theirs. The US government doesn't want Chinese people to read sites that have views opposed to theirs. I fail to see any difference.
What's really sad is that the Anonymizer used to be a legitimate company, with some concern about things like privacy and freedom. I wonder how much money it took to make them John Ashcroft's bitch. I sure wouldn't trust them for "anonymous" surfing any more... they probably have a direct feed to the Vaterland Security Agency.
There's a simple solution for people who sue because they did something a toddler should be expected to be smart enough not to do and it bit them:
They have admitted in open court that they are unable to take care of themselves or handle adult responsibilities. Therefore, they should be put in a home, and any money they collected from that lawsuit should be turned over to the home to pay for their lifetime care.
This would not only solve the problem of frivolous lawsuits and the quest for deep pockets, but it would also help the employment situation by removing these people from the job market and creating jobs for people to take care of them. After all, someone who doesn't know that coffee is hot can't even be trusted to feed themself, or to eat anything that they might choke on, so there will be a need for caretakers to feed them their pureed food blend, help them go potty, and tend to them at all times.
I wonder what other theories that are generally accepted throughout the scientific community have not been completely tested and/or verified.
All of them.
It is not possible to completely test and verify anything. That's the nature of reality. A theory is defined as an explanation that has been thorougly tested and is widely accepted by people knowledgable in that field, but it's an essential part of science that nothing is ever proved beyond all doubt; there is always room for change if additional data comes to light, or a better explanation for existing data is devised.
One of my pet peeves is the common misuse of "theory" to mean "hypothesis" -- an untested conjecture. This popular misconception then leads to scientific knowledge being dismissed as "it's only a theory" by people who don't understand what a theory actually is, and assume that the Theory of (fill in the blank) is a mere hypothesis.
A. The facts in HardOCP's article were false and could be readily determined to be false with the most minimal of investigation.
B. They lost venture capital because of the HardOCP article.
Now, unless the court is willing to believe that all of those investors made their decisions solely on the basis of one single article on a game website without investigating either the statements made in the article or the company itself, both A. and B. cannot both be true.
Plus of course nobody trusts a company that says "We've got this great thingie, we won't let you see it, but it's real, honest it is!"
Perhaps the Phantom is the platform that Dawn will run on?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a box with a blue light inside.
Slashdot Mirror
Being able to charge users $177 an hour ($2.95 a minute is common for tech support) to talk to some guy in India who is getting paid $1 per hour is a huge incentive for software companies to reduce both the quantity and quality of their documentation, and even possibly delay fixing bugs for which workarounds exist, in order to generate more calls to their support centers.
...based on the evidence available for many years.
We're still waiting to see a link to any of this evidence. With the number of people using cell phones, there should be plenty of explosions, all well-researched and documented, for you to link to. So far, you've only offered "everyone knows."
BTW, in the US, at least in every state I've ever lived in, the law requires that you use your turn signals every time you turn or change lanes, not just when you think there's someone else around. Cars you don't notice can hit you too. (not that there aren't plenty of people who break the law, mind you, but that's the law)
Oooh, got you where it hurts, did we?
... but you still can't link to any verified incident of a cell phone causing an explosion. You talktalktalktalktalk and you throw around some very impressive jargon (even though you clearly don't know what some of the words mean) ... but when it comes to actual facts, all you can do is throw insults.
So you're smarter than the whole IEEE, assorted safety professionals, and the producers of TV shows that like to blow things up
Do you wear your seatbelt all the time?
Do you check your tires daily for proper inflation?
Do you never, ever drive when you're tired?
Do you always use your turn signals when changing lanes?
If not, then you can take your unsupported opinion and put it right back where you got it from -- because for each and every one of those items, you can find not a speculative one or two, but literally hundreds of cases in which they have caused deaths.
How about the guinea pig and the rabbit? I believe those were both domesticated more recently (by the Peruvian natives and the French) than 4000 years. Hm, and the turkey, perhaps?
Just for general amusement:
... I swear I am not making this up! ... by dropping a burning rag into it. Among the things I learned from the years I dealt with that furnace (besides new ways to swear) was that under the right conditions (namely those that existed inside my furnace) cold kerosine is a remarkably effective substance to extinguish burning rags with.
Many years ago I owned an ancient mobile home with a furnace that was barely out of the stone age. Without going into detail on the technology involved, it involved piping kerosine into a metal pot-shaped combustion chamber and heating it to the point where the vapor could be burned when mixed with air. You lit this thing
...there are very many dociumented cases, with eyewitness accounts, worldwide.
Please be kind enough to link us to some of the documentation.
If you had two brain cells to rub together, you might be dangerous. Come to think of it, the politicians who pass laws like that clearly don't have much in the way of brainpower, and they're a hell of a lot more dangerous than people using cell phones at gas stations.
/. readers unless you show at least some faint trace of knowing what you're actually talking about. Wish I had some mod points handy ... score -5 (dumbass).
Throwing jargon around doesn't impress
Like you can always tell the difference in a computer game between a data set obtained through normal game play, or an observably identical one obtained through some loophole.
... well, there's no due process for suspected TOS violations.
Actually, depending on what kind of logging and audit tracking they have, they quite possibly can.
If, for instance, an item that is dropped as treasure by slain monsters is tagged with the ID# of the type of monster that dropped it, one that is created via a bug would not have that information, or might have invalid information -- a negative number, maybe. So any item that doesn't have a valid dropped-by field is the result of a bug or the exploiting of a bug.
You pull all such items from your database, you find out where they came from and where they went, and odds are there's someone connected to your problem. If 90% the counterfeit cash in town passed through Fred's Pawnshop, the cops are going to be very interested in Fred. If 90% of the duped items in the game passed through Sir Fred's inventory
According to Wired, people actually do buy that crap: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59907,00 .html
Actually, didn't the "Arabic" numerals (zero and all) come from India originally?
The Mayans independantly invented the concept of zero. Unfortunately, they got too involved with fratricidal wars to really go anywhere with it.
And that points out a critical thing: EVERY civilization throughout history has had its flaws. None of them have been care bears. It's a fact of life that for most of human history, the Care Bears would have been little pastel bearskin rugs in the longhouses of their less enlightened, but much better armed, neighbors. Tolerance for outsiders and outside ideas is a luxury of those powerful enough not to be threatened with destruction by forces outside their own family, clan, tribe, nation, empire, or other cultural group. When a threat or perceived threat appears, then the tolerance vanishes.
A society which only takes, and does not contribute, gains much of the benefit of the progress of more open societies but does not strengthen potential rivals. This is true whether you think of organized crime, intolerant religions, or any other group which continues to exist because the societies it exists among play by more tolerant rules.
So you're redefining the word for us?
... say, writing to someone on a fishing forum to ask if he knows any good fishing guides in his area, where you happen to be planning a vacation ... would be spam, as would those book publishers' new release lists, no matter how much I want them.
I get a fair bit of solicited commercial email. I signed up with a couple of book publishers who sell books relevant to my profession so I can get their monthly new releases list. I signed up with Border's to get my 20% off coupons and news of author appearances, etc., in my area. I get my scheduled haircut reminder and coupon from Supercuts. (saves me from looking like too much of a geek) There are a few more, as well, including a game company whose list I'm still on in the fading hope that they'll produce another game that doesn't suck. I would be rather irritated to have any one of those go missing. (except maybe the game company)
Those companies DO have a dedicated audience who wants to receive their messages. I'm a part of it. My spam filters are set up to make sure my book coupons and new-release lists can get through. (on the other hand, I've been known to track down spammers and call them up at 4 in the morning to curse them out)
By your defintion -- either unsolicited email or commercial email = spam -- then, say, sending email to someone whose email address you found on a forum
Your definition fails because it is too broad and breaks several legitimate things: One-to-one unsolicited email and confirmed opt-in lists, for example. One could even argue that it would cover things like confirmation emails, "your order just shipped" emails, etc., since they're commercial.
Bad definition, throw it back and catch a new one.
The only address of mine that Omaha Steaks has ever emailed is the one I set up for them when I signed up for their email list, after seeing a print ad for their steaks. The only email I have ever gotten at that address has been from Omaha Steaks, not any other "partner" or whatever. This does not represent typical spammer behavior. Now, if you'd like a real winner, try iBill. As a matter of policy, I give a different email address to every company I do business with. I used iBill twice to pay my subscription to a MMORPG. Since then, I have gotten some of the most explicit porn spam ever seen by the bleeding human eyeball -- starting with bestiality and going down from there -- at the address I gave iBill and no one else. (the game company in question has two other addresses of mine, and those remain pristine, pinning the leak squarely on iBill) Omaha Steaks may need a smackdown with regard to laxness about the people or companies who sign up for their affiliate program, then proceed to spam, but they're no iBill. (incidentally, they've been around longer than the Internet, and they sell damn good steaks) They need education. iBill needs a severe LARTing. People like SnottyScotty need ... well, it's probably a federal crime to post the ideas here, but some of iBill's spamming buddies might find a use for pictures of it.
Remember Steve Jackson Games? Got a search warent over a card game and had everything taken. Never charged and got everything back after it long became obsolete. In effect someone tried to shut down a game company becouse they didn't approve of a card game.
... no.
Actually
The explanation of what led up to that whole situation was described in The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling. The details of it from Steve Jackson Games' side can be found on Steve Jackson Games' website. It had to do with a game writer and BBS user who was accused of a connection (as in guilt by association) with a guy who had copied a telco administrative document from an unsecured system run by BellSouth and showed it off to other crackers as a trophy. That particular document was all over the country at that point -- except anywhere near SJG's offices or computers.
The "Illuminati" being referred to was Steve's BBS, not the card game. Incidentally, it grew into an ISP, Illuminati Online, which the last I knew was being run by Steve's brother. They hosted my very first domain name, long ago. I've moved on to bigger things, but I'll always have a soft spot for my old home at io.com.
Or to use my example of Omaha Steaks again
If I had a really bad experience with a Border's brick-and-mortar store and swore never to buy a book from their company again, I'd want to drop their newsletter and regular supply of Border's 20% off coupons. If I found a place that did a better and cheaper job of cutting my hair than Supercuts, I'd cancel their haircut reminder and discount coupon service. Etc. Etc. There are a zillion reasons why someone would opt in for a list, then later decide to leave it when their needs changed.
And that one guy knew how to reach you.
If he'd sent that email and its headers to a spam-filtering service, they would have said "one complaint, clear and truthful headers, he's some wanker who signed up and is too stupid to un-sign himself." If that one complaint got forwarded to an ISP, the same thing would have happened. It's when they get 1,000 complaints about the same thing, and it takes a detective to figure out who it really came from, that it's an issue and they try to do something about it.
The country, and commerce, got by very nicely for hundreds of years without email, let alone spam. If worst came to worst, they could continue to get by without any email at all just like they did ten or fifteen years ago.
But, again, the issue is not commercial email. I just got done reading my opt-in email, and I'm about to place an order with Omaha Steaks. I read their print ad, went to their website, signed up for their email list, and I buy steaks from them. We're both happy. That's how commercial email should work.
The legitimate commercial emailers should be -- and some of them are -- in the forefront of the anti-spam fight. Take those folks with the tasty steaks: how much does it hurt their business because their customers have to sort through a hundred ads for penis enlarger pills to find this month's gourmet steak special? How much more do they have to pay for bandwidth because some hideous percentage of the available bandwidth is carrying spam? How much damage does it do to them when someone fakes their headers to get ads for fake Viagra through spam filters? They -- the businesses -- are getting hurt as much if not more than individual users.
Among other things, these "legitimate businesses" who just want their right of "free speech" are using networks of zombie computers recruited by various net worms to send out their spam for them. That's about as legitimate as a telemarketer tapping your phone line and making sales calls on it. I'd like to see how the "free commercial speech" argument would hold up if some company ever pulled that one. That alone should show you what kind of people are involved here.
Look at it this way: If the way you run a government requires you to move from safe house to safe house every night, have multiple decoys impersonating you, and wear body armor at all times, you're probably doing something wrong. If the way you run a business requires you to go to great lengths to disguise the identity of your business and the products you're selling . . . well, that should tell you something too.
I have caller ID, and I have a service from the phone company which turns away calls with have their ID information blocked. I am on the US do-not-call list. I have not heard of any business suing the phone company because they have a right to call me anonymously, no matter how much I don't want to be called.
Yes, the phone company is interfering with business and blocking communications. But it's MY PHONE and I have every damn right to sign up for the do-not-call list and reject anonymous calls. Likewise, it's MY EMAILBOX and I have every damn right to refuse email from the people who think that a) I have a penis, b) it's too small, and c) it won't stay up. Since running a full-scale spam filter of my own is less than practical, I deputize my ISP to handle that for me. It's part of what I pay them for.
Your right to swing your fist stops where my nose starts. Your right to peaceably assemble stops at my property line. And your right to send out spam stops at my mailserver.
Slashdot encourages thinking.
In today's Amerika, thinking is a criminal skill.
A quote for the content challenged:
But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords.
The issue isn't that the government is controlling what its employees can do online, or whether they can surf objectionable sites like usembassy.gov -- it's that the US government is offering a way around the censorship imposed by the governments of China and Iran, but substituting its own censorship instead.
It's not censoring pages coming into its organization. (well, it might be, but that's not what the article is about)
... they probably have a direct feed to the Vaterland Security Agency.
It's censoring the pages that people in China and Iran can see, via a proxy server (Anonymizer, which used to be legit) that it is funding as a way for the Chinese and Iranians to get around their government's censorship. That's the whole point: They're replacing the Chinese and Iranian government's censorship with the US government's censorship.
The Chinese government doesn't want Chinese people to read sites that have views opposed to theirs. The US government doesn't want Chinese people to read sites that have views opposed to theirs. I fail to see any difference.
What's really sad is that the Anonymizer used to be a legitimate company, with some concern about things like privacy and freedom. I wonder how much money it took to make them John Ashcroft's bitch. I sure wouldn't trust them for "anonymous" surfing any more
There's a simple solution for people who sue because they did something a toddler should be expected to be smart enough not to do and it bit them:
They have admitted in open court that they are unable to take care of themselves or handle adult responsibilities. Therefore, they should be put in a home, and any money they collected from that lawsuit should be turned over to the home to pay for their lifetime care.
This would not only solve the problem of frivolous lawsuits and the quest for deep pockets, but it would also help the employment situation by removing these people from the job market and creating jobs for people to take care of them. After all, someone who doesn't know that coffee is hot can't even be trusted to feed themself, or to eat anything that they might choke on, so there will be a need for caretakers to feed them their pureed food blend, help them go potty, and tend to them at all times.
I wonder what other theories that are generally accepted throughout the scientific community have not been completely tested and/or verified.
All of them.
It is not possible to completely test and verify anything. That's the nature of reality. A theory is defined as an explanation that has been thorougly tested and is widely accepted by people knowledgable in that field, but it's an essential part of science that nothing is ever proved beyond all doubt; there is always room for change if additional data comes to light, or a better explanation for existing data is devised.
One of my pet peeves is the common misuse of "theory" to mean "hypothesis" -- an untested conjecture. This popular misconception then leads to scientific knowledge being dismissed as "it's only a theory" by people who don't understand what a theory actually is, and assume that the Theory of (fill in the blank) is a mere hypothesis.
According to Infinium:
A. The facts in HardOCP's article were false and could be readily determined to be false with the most minimal of investigation.
B. They lost venture capital because of the HardOCP article.
Now, unless the court is willing to believe that all of those investors made their decisions solely on the basis of one single article on a game website without investigating either the statements made in the article or the company itself, both A. and B. cannot both be true.
Plus of course nobody trusts a company that says "We've got this great thingie, we won't let you see it, but it's real, honest it is!"
Perhaps the Phantom is the platform that Dawn will run on?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a box with a blue light inside.