Except for the fact that I, as a human, can only solve most CAPTCHAs with 50% or 60% accuracy, which means I would have to take somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 tries to register my account.
It's bad enough I have to make 2 or 3 tries. 30 is just ridiculous and there's NO WAY I'd register for your service.
And as far as my poor accuracy, I know I'm not alone.
On all accounts less than X weeks old put a 1 hour hold on messages sent. Spam check all messages going into the buffer, if a large percentage are spam, dump it on the ground and close the account.
You effectively 'cancel' their sent messages if they try and send a bunch of spam without having to re-work the whole e-mail system.
I'd like to publically state that if I ever have something go wrong with my senses (go blind, deaf, etc) or body (paralyzed, etc) and I attempt to change the world to fit me at the expense of others, I'd like to be forcibly euthenized.
I'm very strongly of the opinion that as soon as any group starts dragging down the rest of society they need to be purged.
I have all the sympathy and respect in the world for people with serious conditions that try their best to fit in and operate in society as it is now. I have no respect whatsoever for those who just whine and try and get everyone to change to fit them. I know people who fit in both groups.
"NO plug-ins, period. Once you introduce a 3rd party software entry point, it's spoiled"
Check.
"No giving out referrer info unless you say so"
Can be enabled/disabled overall and overidden on a site-by-site basis.
"strict cookie control"
Can be enabled/disabled overall, set to ask you before accepting cookies, set to reset cookies back to original state when the browser exits, and to not accept 3rd party cookies. You can also view all cookies with their current values, change their values, delete them, etc. All of this can also be overridden on a site-by-site basis.
"mike's ad blocking hosts file built in, and configurable(or something similar)"
Content blocker to block whatever you want from wherever you want supporting wildcards? You'd have to add this Mike guys stuff on your own.
"CANCELABLE javascript. Wha? Any time you get a javascript prompt, you'll have OK, cancel, and "stop all javascript right fucking now"."
Every javascript prompt includes a "Stop executing scripts on this page" checkbox that you can check then hit OK to escape from endless loops, etc. It also asks you if a Javascript is taking up a lot of CPU/hanging up the GUI if you want to kill it.
"Javscript turn off URL bars, resizing of windows? I don't think so. Leave that to the user."
You have the following options which you can either enable or disable: - Allow resizing of windows - Allow moving of windows - Allow raising of windows - Allow lowering of windows - Allow changing of status field - Allow script to receive right clicks - Allow script to hide address bar
It also has searching from the address bar ("g search terms" to search google, for example), with the ability to set up custom search providers. True MDI tabs. Built in mouse gestures. Thumbnail preview of tabs. Standards compliant (CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 basic). Built in (and effective) pop-up blocker. The ability to quickly enable or disable a host of annoyances with two keypresses (GIF animation, sound, Java, plug-ins (Flash), javscript, cookies, sending of referrer). It has lots of other features that greatly simplify browsing and lots of options that let you fit the browser to how YOU like it (such as being able to set it to open new tabs next to the current one, and to cycle them in recently used order instead of just always opening them at the end and always moving to the next tab on Ctrl+Tab).
Behold the unborn fetus and Weep salt tears crocodilian; All life is sacred (save, of course, An enemy civilian). I think it's obvious which they would choose. Whichever is most convenient and beneficial to them, completely ignoring their religion.
Or hell, whichever is more beneficial to higher-ups of the same religion, because most people are fucking sheep and will just go along with whatever they're told.
Everyone. Every single person is missing the point.
This isn't a comprehensive obscenity filtering solution. This isn't a way to ensure that you never, ever see anything objectionable when you don't want to. This isn't a way to stop goatse trolls.
This is simply a codification (and bit of an extension) of the standard "(NSFW)" that lots of people place after a link ANYWAYS so that it can be handled by the end user's browser, rather than just parsed by the person reading the page.
Go read Fark for a while, periodically they'll post a link and the headline will be ended with "NSFW" or something. There doesn't need to be some super-complex solution to make sure all links like this are tagged. There doesn't need to be some objective specification of what's "NSFW". By seeing "NSFW" at the end of the headline you get as much information as you would get from a NSFW tag in the code... that there's something that the person tagging it thinks is probably inappropriate.
We don't NEED objective guidelines... when something's marked NSFW just look at the site that's marking it. I know something marked NSFW on Fark probably involves full-on nudity, where-as something marked NSFW on a bible sales site might simply contain the word "ass" or a similarly non-offensive (to me) word.
You're all over-thinking this. This tag is simply a way for browsers to parse and handle something humans are already parsing and handling, not a comprehensive solution to anything.
That was about 15 minutes work. (It's a bad thing when I get bored.)
Paste in a spam-armoured address, and it should spit out a valid e-mail address.
Admittedly, it's imperfect and some addresses (eg: yours, which shows up as "daranz@noSPAM.gmail.com" for me) come out slightly off (extra period), but a bit more work and I imagine it could parse almost anything correctly.
Wow. Paranoid much? I'm gonna go out on a limb and bet that Microsoft doesn't have some secret line of code somewhere in their Messenger Server that checks to see if you're using one of their e-mail addresses and I find the mere suggestion of it pretty silly. Oh, plus, I have several non-microsoft e-mail addresses registered as passports and I don't have the problem you're describing.
"Vote this way or you're fired, and I want to see the receipt."
Later: "I lost the receipt." "Our company no longer requires your services, we, uh, have decided to consolidate our action points to improve the synergy blah blah blah."
"I don't know why windows develops problems when you install too many programs, my Linux box has hundreds of programs installed, and doesn't slow down a bit."
Because "too many programs" is including some shitty, broken program. There is nothing in windows that inherently breaks when X number of programs are installed.
It takes me about 12 seconds to scroll from the top of my start menu to the bottom (119 items listed in Add/Remove programs, 51 gB worth of apps) and I have 21 icons in my system tray. My system is completely stable. No lock-ups, no crashes. Nothing.
Basically, it involves not being an idiot. Treat your Windows box like you would your *nix box and you should be fine. (Would you download a random binary off of the internet (no source) and run it as root on your *nix box? Didn't think so.)
Just use the "DriveLock" feature most laptops should have to put a password on the hard-drive, rather than a power-on password. The drive will now only be readable in the original laptop and only if the user has the correct password (meaning no swapping drive to another machine to bypass the password). As an added benefit, the second you cut power to the laptop the drive is locked again, so there's no worrying about forgetting to lock it or anything...
So the only way to recover the data on your hard-drive is to pay some company a bunch of money to reset the password. This provides very little security against someone actively trying to gain access to your data, but given that probably every single case that's been in the news with regards to missing laptops with sensitive data on them had the laptop stolen by some punk with no technical skills, it's no big deal. They'll try and start it up, there'll be a password, they'll take it down to the local dealers and try and pawn it off, maybe get $20 for it or something and that'll be the end of it.
Or if they are someone technically competent and realize how to fix it, chances are they'll drop $100 to buy a new hard-drive before they drop $300 or something on recovering the current one.
"Q3 Arena w/bots - for when you just want to run around and shoot things."
Yay for pointless, mindless violence! And no, that's not sarcasm. One of my favourite games to play after a bad day is Counter-Strike. I usually play Condition Zero, bots set to easy (they're pathetically easy that way) and just go around and mindlessly shoot shit over and over. Same repetative actions over and over. This is oddly soothing.
Another favourite of mine is Deer Hunter 2005. I love getting wrapped up in the realism (not necessarily graphically, but in the environment) and going on a good hunt. Sometimes I can convince a buddy of mine to load it up and we'll go hunting together. It's a great way just to forget about everything and have some not-so-braindead fun.
Some days if I'm in a bit more sinister mood I'll fire up GTA: San Andreas and just enable a bunch of cheats and go blow everything up, maybe beat a few innocent civilians to death with my bare fists.
Of course, there's nothing like firing up Act of War and just nuking the fuck out of the opponents. The satisfying BOOM as the nuke hits and everything is demolished... in fact, I'm gonna go play that right now.
Some user gets into a flamewar with Theo, getting personal and then mail-bombs Theo's server.
Theo responds with some rude comment.
User forwards e-mail to core group, even though the whole situation was unrelated to the NetBSD project.
Theo is removed from the core group because they believe he's a bad representative of the NetBSD project. They don't give Theo a chance to defend himself, and the one post he did make to a mailing list defending himself was deleted by one of the core group.
They revoke his CVS access at the same time, even though he could have kept it and stayed on as the sparc port maintainer even if he was removed from the core group.
Theo asks for CVS access back. Says he doesn't care about the core group and hates politics anyways. Refuses to work with the new sparc port maintiner to merge over 10'000 lines of diffs including several new files. ("It's like the CEO reporting to the janitor.")
The sparc port maintiner asks the core group to give Theo CVS access.
The core group refuses unless he agrees to be a 'professional' in all his e-mail.
He argues that this is unfair because other committers are not held to any standard, and is not going to agree to have all his e-mail be included, arguing that private messages are private.
Core argues that private messages can still be related, kind of agreeing but not really to the fact that private e-mail should not reasonably be covered (making sure to remember that the original reason this all started was because of a private e-mail, he mentions that he thinks that they wont agree to this because it would be admitting they made a mistake originally).
Theo asks that a clear line be drawn so he knows what is considered NetBSD-related e-mail and is covered under the policy and a general outline of expectations are drawn up, and all committers agree to it (not just him).
Core agrees, says they're working on an agreement.
Months later, Theo gets fed up and walks out and founds OpenBSD.
Uh, he did promise that he would be professional on the conditions that:
- There was a clear line drawn on what was considered NetBSD-related e-mail and was subject to this, and what was private/unrelated.
- All the people who were given CVS access were subject to the same conditions.
The core team agreed and told Theo they would draw up some sort of agreement. They then spent months accomplishing nothing but telling him "We're working on it." before he realized it was never going to happen and got fed up and left.
"looks to me that the author of this email is just another jaded old coder that got his commit privs revoked. maybe something good will come out of this -- look at what Theo did."
Funny you should mention Theo.
This guy (Charles) was one of the members of the core group around the time they decided to give Theo the boot, and then was the main obstacle for 7 months while Theo tried to get some sort of CVS commit access back before he (Theo) finally just forked NetBSD and took his >10'000 lines of diffs and several drivers (that users were requesting) somewhere else.
The card wasn't the problem. I've run it under Linux since then (the Auditor distro among others now ship with the driver installed by default). I know 100% that the card uses the Atheros chipset and is compatible with the ath driver under FreeBSD and whatever the equivilant is under Linux.
"but installing drivers is trivial"
Let's see:
Update kernel because the driver needs 2.6.23423413.41341343 not 2.6.23423413.41341342 or something.
Fix all the shit that I broke attempting to do that.
Re-install because I've FUBAR'd something.
Go back to step 1 and repeat several times.
Finally get the new kernel running.
Install about 14 different tools, half of which I couldn't find in the apt repository and had to spend multiple hours finding all over the net and installing.
Compile the driver.
Install the driver.
With each of those steps having a hundred fracking steps involved to accomplish them, and about 40 different places to branch based on what goes wrong.
Linux has this amazing ability to start me off simply wanting to accomplish something simple (playing a song), and ending up with me updating the kernel or something so I can update gcc so I can compile some library that needs a newer gcc that is required by some other library that is required by the music playing app. (not a real nor necessarily realistic example, just trying to make a point) Hell, by the time I give up, I've often forgotten what my original goal was.
Sure, you guys might not be making a whole lot of money on them, but they're still bloody expensive, especially when I come in and drink 2 or 3 in a sitting;)
(Oh, and while I've got someone's attention, are you guys hiring any part-timers at the moment?;) )
We've got one here called "The Matrix". It's really nothing spectacular, but they've got decent machines and a good selection of games and overpriced beverages (only place in town you can buy Bawls).
I'm no expert on business and such, but I notice they have a tendancy to pick poorer neighbourhoods to set up shop in, where people are much less likely to own computers and have internet access. This means they got a lot of people coming in simply to use it like an internet cafe (just to check e-mail, chat on MSN...) to supplement the gamers.
So to generalize this, try appealing to a broader market than just gamers, maybe?
At least not any more. I still know someone with an $89/month dedicated server through Server Matrix, which is part of The Planet (for all purposes except the name on the bill, they are The Planet). (They haven't sold any plans that cheap in quite a long time, he's had it a while...)
And they definitely deserve their reputation. Their technicians are helpful, their connection reliability is great and overall I've only had good experiences with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Except for the fact that I, as a human, can only solve most CAPTCHAs with 50% or 60% accuracy, which means I would have to take somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 tries to register my account.
It's bad enough I have to make 2 or 3 tries. 30 is just ridiculous and there's NO WAY I'd register for your service.
And as far as my poor accuracy, I know I'm not alone.
ND
Or, much more feasibly and realistically:
On all accounts less than X weeks old put a 1 hour hold on messages sent. Spam check all messages going into the buffer, if a large percentage are spam, dump it on the ground and close the account.
You effectively 'cancel' their sent messages if they try and send a bunch of spam without having to re-work the whole e-mail system.
I'd like to publically state that if I ever have something go wrong with my senses (go blind, deaf, etc) or body (paralyzed, etc) and I attempt to change the world to fit me at the expense of others, I'd like to be forcibly euthenized.
I'm very strongly of the opinion that as soon as any group starts dragging down the rest of society they need to be purged.
I have all the sympathy and respect in the world for people with serious conditions that try their best to fit in and operate in society as it is now. I have no respect whatsoever for those who just whine and try and get everyone to change to fit them. I know people who fit in both groups.
ND
"NO activeX"
Check.
"NO plug-ins, period. Once you introduce a 3rd party software entry point, it's spoiled"
Check.
"No giving out referrer info unless you say so"
Can be enabled/disabled overall and overidden on a site-by-site basis.
"strict cookie control"
Can be enabled/disabled overall, set to ask you before accepting cookies, set to reset cookies back to original state when the browser exits, and to not accept 3rd party cookies. You can also view all cookies with their current values, change their values, delete them, etc. All of this can also be overridden on a site-by-site basis.
"mike's ad blocking hosts file built in, and configurable(or something similar)"
Content blocker to block whatever you want from wherever you want supporting wildcards? You'd have to add this Mike guys stuff on your own.
"CANCELABLE javascript. Wha? Any time you get a javascript prompt, you'll have OK, cancel, and "stop all javascript right fucking now"."
Every javascript prompt includes a "Stop executing scripts on this page" checkbox that you can check then hit OK to escape from endless loops, etc. It also asks you if a Javascript is taking up a lot of CPU/hanging up the GUI if you want to kill it.
"Javscript turn off URL bars, resizing of windows? I don't think so. Leave that to the user."
You have the following options which you can either enable or disable:
- Allow resizing of windows
- Allow moving of windows
- Allow raising of windows
- Allow lowering of windows
- Allow changing of status field
- Allow script to receive right clicks
- Allow script to hide address bar
It also has searching from the address bar ("g search terms" to search google, for example), with the ability to set up custom search providers. True MDI tabs. Built in mouse gestures. Thumbnail preview of tabs. Standards compliant (CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 basic). Built in (and effective) pop-up blocker. The ability to quickly enable or disable a host of annoyances with two keypresses (GIF animation, sound, Java, plug-ins (Flash), javscript, cookies, sending of referrer). It has lots of other features that greatly simplify browsing and lots of options that let you fit the browser to how YOU like it (such as being able to set it to open new tabs next to the current one, and to cycle them in recently used order instead of just always opening them at the end and always moving to the next tab on Ctrl+Tab).
The browser you're looking for is Opera.
Weep salt tears crocodilian;
All life is sacred (save, of course,
An enemy civilian). I think it's obvious which they would choose. Whichever is most convenient and beneficial to them, completely ignoring their religion.
Or hell, whichever is more beneficial to higher-ups of the same religion, because most people are fucking sheep and will just go along with whatever they're told.
Everyone. Every single person is missing the point.
This isn't a comprehensive obscenity filtering solution. This isn't a way to ensure that you never, ever see anything objectionable when you don't want to. This isn't a way to stop goatse trolls.
This is simply a codification (and bit of an extension) of the standard "(NSFW)" that lots of people place after a link ANYWAYS so that it can be handled by the end user's browser, rather than just parsed by the person reading the page.
Go read Fark for a while, periodically they'll post a link and the headline will be ended with "NSFW" or something. There doesn't need to be some super-complex solution to make sure all links like this are tagged. There doesn't need to be some objective specification of what's "NSFW". By seeing "NSFW" at the end of the headline you get as much information as you would get from a NSFW tag in the code... that there's something that the person tagging it thinks is probably inappropriate.
We don't NEED objective guidelines... when something's marked NSFW just look at the site that's marking it. I know something marked NSFW on Fark probably involves full-on nudity, where-as something marked NSFW on a bible sales site might simply contain the word "ass" or a similarly non-offensive (to me) word.
You're all over-thinking this. This tag is simply a way for browsers to parse and handle something humans are already parsing and handling, not a comprehensive solution to anything.
ND
http://nd.snackbox.org/slashdot/spam.php
That was about 15 minutes work. (It's a bad thing when I get bored.)
Paste in a spam-armoured address, and it should spit out a valid e-mail address.
Admittedly, it's imperfect and some addresses (eg: yours, which shows up as "daranz@noSPAM.gmail.com" for me) come out slightly off (extra period), but a bit more work and I imagine it could parse almost anything correctly.
ND
"Beware of geeks, bare in GIFs."
I have 4 MSN accounts:
@hotmail.com
@gmail.com
@mydomain.com
@anotherdomain.org
I've been using GAIM with these same four accounts for several years now, and never had a single problem that didn't affect them all equally.
ND
Wow. Paranoid much? I'm gonna go out on a limb and bet that Microsoft doesn't have some secret line of code somewhere in their Messenger Server that checks to see if you're using one of their e-mail addresses and I find the mere suggestion of it pretty silly. Oh, plus, I have several non-microsoft e-mail addresses registered as passports and I don't have the problem you're describing.
ND
"Vote this way or you're fired, and I want to see the receipt."
Later:
"I lost the receipt."
"Our company no longer requires your services, we, uh, have decided to consolidate our action points to improve the synergy blah blah blah."
Because "too many programs" is including some shitty, broken program. There is nothing in windows that inherently breaks when X number of programs are installed.
It takes me about 12 seconds to scroll from the top of my start menu to the bottom (119 items listed in Add/Remove programs, 51 gB worth of apps) and I have 21 icons in my system tray. My system is completely stable. No lock-ups, no crashes. Nothing.
Basically, it involves not being an idiot. Treat your Windows box like you would your *nix box and you should be fine. (Would you download a random binary off of the internet (no source) and run it as root on your *nix box? Didn't think so.)
ND
Just use the "DriveLock" feature most laptops should have to put a password on the hard-drive, rather than a power-on password. The drive will now only be readable in the original laptop and only if the user has the correct password (meaning no swapping drive to another machine to bypass the password). As an added benefit, the second you cut power to the laptop the drive is locked again, so there's no worrying about forgetting to lock it or anything...
So the only way to recover the data on your hard-drive is to pay some company a bunch of money to reset the password. This provides very little security against someone actively trying to gain access to your data, but given that probably every single case that's been in the news with regards to missing laptops with sensitive data on them had the laptop stolen by some punk with no technical skills, it's no big deal. They'll try and start it up, there'll be a password, they'll take it down to the local dealers and try and pawn it off, maybe get $20 for it or something and that'll be the end of it.
Or if they are someone technically competent and realize how to fix it, chances are they'll drop $100 to buy a new hard-drive before they drop $300 or something on recovering the current one.
ND
Yay for pointless, mindless violence! And no, that's not sarcasm. One of my favourite games to play after a bad day is Counter-Strike. I usually play Condition Zero, bots set to easy (they're pathetically easy that way) and just go around and mindlessly shoot shit over and over. Same repetative actions over and over. This is oddly soothing.
Another favourite of mine is Deer Hunter 2005. I love getting wrapped up in the realism (not necessarily graphically, but in the environment) and going on a good hunt. Sometimes I can convince a buddy of mine to load it up and we'll go hunting together. It's a great way just to forget about everything and have some not-so-braindead fun.
Some days if I'm in a bit more sinister mood I'll fire up GTA: San Andreas and just enable a bunch of cheats and go blow everything up, maybe beat a few innocent civilians to death with my bare fists.
Of course, there's nothing like firing up Act of War and just nuking the fuck out of the opponents. The satisfying BOOM as the nuke hits and everything is demolished... in fact, I'm gonna go play that right now.
Cheers,
ND
If an officer feels that a person is a real threat and has to be subdued, he's got a few options:
Sure, tazers aren't perfect, but IMHO it beats the alternatives. Of the three I'd definitely choose a tazer
ND
Or at least that's how I remember it.
ND
Uh, he did promise that he would be professional on the conditions that:
- There was a clear line drawn on what was considered NetBSD-related e-mail and was subject to this, and what was private/unrelated.
- All the people who were given CVS access were subject to the same conditions.
The core team agreed and told Theo they would draw up some sort of agreement. They then spent months accomplishing nothing but telling him "We're working on it." before he realized it was never going to happen and got fed up and left.
ND
BSD Family Tree
Of course, that might just cause more confusion.
ND
Funny you should mention Theo.
This guy (Charles) was one of the members of the core group around the time they decided to give Theo the boot, and then was the main obstacle for 7 months while Theo tried to get some sort of CVS commit access back before he (Theo) finally just forked NetBSD and took his >10'000 lines of diffs and several drivers (that users were requesting) somewhere else.
ND
Let's see:
With each of those steps having a hundred fracking steps involved to accomplish them, and about 40 different places to branch based on what goes wrong.
Linux has this amazing ability to start me off simply wanting to accomplish something simple (playing a song), and ending up with me updating the kernel or something so I can update gcc so I can compile some library that needs a newer gcc that is required by some other library that is required by the music playing app. (not a real nor necessarily realistic example, just trying to make a point) Hell, by the time I give up, I've often forgotten what my original goal was.
ND
Sure, you guys might not be making a whole lot of money on them, but they're still bloody expensive, especially when I come in and drink 2 or 3 in a sitting ;)
;) )
(Oh, and while I've got someone's attention, are you guys hiring any part-timers at the moment?
ND
We've got one here called "The Matrix". It's really nothing spectacular, but they've got decent machines and a good selection of games and overpriced beverages (only place in town you can buy Bawls).
I'm no expert on business and such, but I notice they have a tendancy to pick poorer neighbourhoods to set up shop in, where people are much less likely to own computers and have internet access. This means they got a lot of people coming in simply to use it like an internet cafe (just to check e-mail, chat on MSN...) to supplement the gamers.
So to generalize this, try appealing to a broader market than just gamers, maybe?
ND
"Soylent Green: The taste differs from person to person."
At least not any more. I still know someone with an $89/month dedicated server through Server Matrix, which is part of The Planet (for all purposes except the name on the bill, they are The Planet). (They haven't sold any plans that cheap in quite a long time, he's had it a while...)
And they definitely deserve their reputation. Their technicians are helpful, their connection reliability is great and overall I've only had good experiences with them.
Cheers,
ND
"Evolution is a theory just like gravity. If you don't like it, go jump off a bridge."