Instead of pointing to another study that is peer reviewed and has less of a payback to compare, or to an economist's or even an accountant's numerical analysis, he linked to someone with an axe to grind and wasted everyone's time who bothered to read it.
No, they *are* exempt as per the plain wording of the law. Go read it where it says "exceptions". It's astonishingly plain.
>easy for me to blame Microsoft
Microsoft has more lawyers than God (but possibly not IBM). They were able to use the internet back when the NSF's AUP was "No commercial activity at all" - to the extent that posting a "classified ad" to get rid of a file cabinet taking up space in your office would get your account suspended. Microsoft has competent individuals that can read. They have competent people who know what the difference is between a CERT-like security bulletin is, and an email that is selling something.
To say that Microsoft is incapable of figuring out what is commercial activity and what isn't is a worse criticism of Microsoft than me saying that Microsoft is throwing a temper tantrum.
The law explicitly says that emails about product warranties, security updates, safety, etc, are exceptions to the consent part of the law.
I posted the relevant parts. Tell me how emailing emails about security is not covered by the exception without stretching language to the breaking point.
"Notice to IT professionals: As of July 1, 2014, due to changing governmental policies concerning the issuance of automated electronic messaging, Microsoft is suspending the use of email notifications that announce the following: Security bulletin advance notifications; Security bulletin summaries; New security advisories and bulletins; Major and minor revisions to security advisories and bulletins. In lieu of email notifications, you can subscribe to one or more of the RSS feeds described on the Security TechCenter website."
WindowsIT Pro blames Canada's new anti-spam law.
Really now? Fucking really?
Here is the exception that applies directly.
Exception
(6) Paragraph (1)(a) does not apply to a commercial electronic message that solely
(c) provides warranty information, product recall information or safety or security information about a product, goods or a service that the person to whom the message is sent uses, has used or has purchased;... (f) delivers a product, goods or a service, including product updates or upgrades, that the person to whom the message is sent is entitled to receive under the terms of a transaction that they have previously entered into with the person who sent the message or the person â" if different â" on whose behalf it is sent;
So what is (1)(a)?
(1) It is prohibited to send or cause or permit to be sent to an electronic address a commercial electronic message unless (a) the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied
Sending warranty, security, recall, update information is legal whether consented to or not.
Blaming this law "oh god, we don't know if it's legal to send security alerts!" means that they are either incompetent and can't read, or they're lying and throwing a temper tantrum.
"It seems that nobody really knows what it means to be identified as a spammer."
The general definition is UCE - Unsolicited Commercial Email. The FAQ gives some pretty good ideas what a "commercial email" is (SMS is also under this definition). Basically, stuff sent blindly, ignoring any kind of consent on the part of the recipient.
>blaming this law for not being able to send out security update emails
(c) provides warranty information, product recall information or safety or security information about a product, goods or a service that the person to whom the message is sent uses, has used or has purchased;
Blaming this law is simply whining.
Microsoft is throwing a temper tantrum. Fuck them.
But then the Congress and the Bush administration in 2006 forced the USPS to pay for all of its retiree health benefit payments for the next 75 years in 10 years. NO BUSINESS, PUBLIC OR PRIVATE, DOES THIS and it has created an untenable position. It's like the whole concept of proper amortization and actuarial tables never existed.
Prior to that, the USPS was profitable.
Republicans: "If it works, fuck with it anyway. Point at it when we've made it fail and say 'government sux' but it's not our fault - it's the fault of those liberals, over there, like the teacher's unions. Yeah, they made the USPS fail. That's the ticket."
Oh look, he thinks that IT is programming/comp sci.
How cute.
I don't expect the IT guy to be able to write a damn line of C code, but I have also run into plenty of programmers that can't remember why you have to "safely eject" a USB drive in Windows.
"Uh, hey, I can't find my stuff...can you get it back?"
IT is to comp sci as plumbing is to hydrology - I don't expect the hydrology prof at URIGSO to know how to hook up plastic pipe to copper, and I don't expect the plumber to tell me anything about the Ogallala Aquifer.
If that leads to a job, great, but that shouldn't be the point.
6-figure debt makes it the point. A debt that you cannot refinance makes it the point. A debt you can't escape through bankruptcy makes it the point.
A trillion dollar debt problem in the US makes it the point.
HR departments requiring a BA for the most menial of office tasks makes it the point.
Requiring a fucking MA to work in a library as a salaried employee and not a volunteer (the US is the only country I know of that does this) makes it the point.
But sure, it's/all/ the student's fault for expecting something in return for all that money./sneer
Why would a plant evolve a method that cleans the under-side of its leaves?
Come on, man, THINK for a second. What *else* might stick to leaves that the plant might not want? What about fungal spores? You know, organisms that might *eat* you if you were a tree? If you thought about it for a second, deciduousness in itself is a scheme to battle fungi too.
This really is "missing the forest for the trees" or in this case, leaves.
Perhaps, it has something to do with the high failure rate of such research. Would you pay a salary to 1000 employees, of which only one employee gives you solid results and the remaining fail?
>implying that this is bad
Typical bean-counter/MBA attitude.
That's not very business friendly.
Companies like HP, Xerox, etc, built empires on that kind of research.
They declined when they spun off or closed their research divisions because management failed to see the value/use the output of the research labs. The HP example is particularly striking - they went from an advanced technology company to a schlock printer seller, one that is sneered at and loathed, in a handful of years. Xerox is also striking in that PARC laid the foundation for a lot of modern computing but management only saw money to be made in copiers and filing paper and thusly ignored most of PARC's output, ceding the computer revolution to other companies.
It is also part of a larger problem. Because of the emphasis on short-term profits (quarters are too long!) at the expense of everything else, we in the West are so enthusiastic at shoving all our production to the Chinese and others saying "We can't be arsed to get our hands dirty; we want to just do the high-level stuff like design and company management" totally ignoring the fact where the production goes, so does the engineering development, science research, and eventually even upper-management. This was learned by Samuel Slater, Francis Cabot Lowell, and others who founded the "silicon valley" (Blackstone Valley) of the Industrial Revolution. A lesson forgotten through complacency, greed, and snobbery.
Alexander Graham Bell is shouting at you from his grave calling you a moron.
Because a "data compression algorithm" is more than a mathematical equation.
You can't be serious.
Indeed, outside the material scope of a computer it has no existence,
IN TYPING CLASS 30(mumble) YEARS AGO we had this "game" where you were basically given a sheet with LZW compressed data and when you typed it out, you got a pretty picture. No computer used at all. Indeed, they were manual typewriters, except for the single IBM Selectric in the corner of the room.
Shut the fuck up. Seriously, shut the fuck up. You are wrong in every possible way.
Let's see what happens before we pass judgment though.
No, let's not.
They are totally incapable of following the law, as written, nevermind the spirit of the law.
The NSA has proven that it cannot be trusted with a single penny. Merely telling them "don't do that" with money doesn't change the fact that the NSA leadership doesn't give a damn what the law says.
Federal agencies can have you disappeared and you can't do a damn thing about it.^1 You think a little thing like funding is going to change things in the surveillance/police state?
Years ago, I would have said what I just wrote was paranoid nonsense. The past year has disabused me of that kind of thinking.
Yeah, a lot of savings can be done by not doing anything at all./sarcasm
A lot of the value of the postal service is that you can send stuff from the sticks to the cities and back again. You propose cutting out half of that. Go look up "network effect."
which include using your real, verifiable identity
Pray tell, which ones? None of the ones I use. Even online services that "require" a cell number really don't - they put in grayed out text a clickthrough to skip it, even Facebook.
If you're talking about banking and payment services, they've required your real identity in meatspace for hundreds of years, so it's not the same thing as what we're discussing here. All online services have unenforceable and unconscionable terms and conditions. I can require your first-born male as payment, but that doesn't mean it's legally binding, and such terms should be ignored as a matter of course. I do. If you don't, you're a fool.
The last time an online service required my meatspace identity, it was the Chebucto Freenet back in the early 90s that wanted a photocopy of my driver's license. But that was a different time and you could actually trust admins (that weren't Simon Travaglia) back then. It was also a different time back then when your domain record had your real name tied to it and you didn't have to worry about stalkers, idiots, and loons. Anyone who does that these days not hiding behind even a "paper" company name, is quite frankly a victim waiting to happen.
And lastly, the whole "we require a cellphone" nonsense can be worked around with stuff like this: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/to...
Those who call for an end to privacy, usually have something to gain from it.
Except that a lot of people who call for an end to privacy have nothing to gain and actually lose. ESR is one of those people, and I had to drop him from my G+ circles because I just couldn't stand the cognitive dissonance (doublethink, if we're going to use Orwell) any longer.
Back when it was a "nerd playground" people used their real names more often than not. Because we didn't have to worry about morons like yourself. Because it was safe to do. Because we didn't have to worry about being pizza bombed or SWATted.
But that's entirely beside the point of idiots like you insisting that we should not have the right in e-space to call ourselves whatever the fuck we want as long as we're not trying to defraud anyone. THIS IS A RIGHT THAT EXISTS IN MEATSPACE you fucking tool.
Why is it that people such as yourself and FUCKING ERIC S. RAYMOND have a fucking huge problem with it? "They" - the people whose boots you are so willing to lick - do not give one flying fuck about you. Yet people like you and ESR want to give them the tools to remove any protections we have out here from criminals, corrupt politicians, police-states, and others. This war against anonymity is fucking odious, orwellian, and frankly fucking offensive as a wet fart on a hard wooden pew in church.
NO. FUCK YOU. IF YOU WANT TO USE YOUR REAL NAME, YOU GO RIGHT AHEAD AND USE IT. THE REST OF US WILL EXERCISE OUR RIGHTS IF WE CHOOSE TO. THE LIKES OF YOU AND ERIC S. RAYMOND AND HIS "HOTGIRL69 PROBLEM" CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF.
Slashdot Mirror
My point exactly.
Instead of pointing to another study that is peer reviewed and has less of a payback to compare, or to an economist's or even an accountant's numerical analysis, he linked to someone with an axe to grind and wasted everyone's time who bothered to read it.
Like me.
I prefer to not be intellectually insulted.
--
BMO
The rebuttal is from a climate-change denial site?
What the fuck is this, Fox News? What's next, Free Republic?
Fuck you, Timothy. Seriously, just fuck off.
--
BMO
>No, they are likely exempt.
No, they *are* exempt as per the plain wording of the law. Go read it where it says "exceptions". It's astonishingly plain.
>easy for me to blame Microsoft
Microsoft has more lawyers than God (but possibly not IBM). They were able to use the internet back when the NSF's AUP was "No commercial activity at all" - to the extent that posting a "classified ad" to get rid of a file cabinet taking up space in your office would get your account suspended. Microsoft has competent individuals that can read. They have competent people who know what the difference is between a CERT-like security bulletin is, and an email that is selling something.
To say that Microsoft is incapable of figuring out what is commercial activity and what isn't is a worse criticism of Microsoft than me saying that Microsoft is throwing a temper tantrum.
Because you're calling them idiots.
--
BMO
If they're 100% security related, then they likely are exempt.
No, not "likely" - they are exempt.
>Microsoft has a problem sending out security update emails without ads
Well, if they're that incompetent, then they should just completely close up shop.
One wonders how they got along on the Internet before the NSF was no longer the backbone.
Your statements defy credulity and overstate the "problem" to such a degree as to be nonsensical.
--
BMO
It doesn't matter if it's commercial or not.
The law explicitly says that emails about product warranties, security updates, safety, etc, are exceptions to the consent part of the law.
I posted the relevant parts. Tell me how emailing emails about security is not covered by the exception without stretching language to the breaking point.
--
BMO
>hand held
>pointed directly at filter
>not satisfied
I foed you for a reason. Thanks for reminding me.
--
BMO
With the correct lens, yes.
Anton van Leeuwenhoek's microscope was held up close to the eye, and it was a single lens enstrument.
http://www.history-of-the-micr...
--
BMO
WindowsIT Pro blames Canada's new anti-spam law.
Really now? Fucking really?
Here is the exception that applies directly.
So what is (1)(a)?
Sending warranty, security, recall, update information is legal whether consented to or not.
Blaming this law "oh god, we don't know if it's legal to send security alerts!" means that they are either incompetent and can't read, or they're lying and throwing a temper tantrum.
Fuck Microsoft and Windows IT Pro.
--
BMO
"It seems that nobody really knows what it means to be identified as a spammer."
The general definition is UCE - Unsolicited Commercial Email. The FAQ gives some pretty good ideas what a "commercial email" is (SMS is also under this definition). Basically, stuff sent blindly, ignoring any kind of consent on the part of the recipient.
>blaming this law for not being able to send out security update emails
It's one of the explicit exceptions to this law:
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca...
Blaming this law is simply whining.
Microsoft is throwing a temper tantrum. Fuck them.
--
BMO
A tree can't very well wash away an infection that has invaded its leaves.
The only real way is to drop its leaves.
If you've walked in the woods often enough, you'd see this.
--
BMO
Share with who, exactly?
There were no qualifiers to the message I originally replied to, only students mentioned.
So whatever, man.
--
BMO
>postal service loses money
But then the Congress and the Bush administration in 2006 forced the USPS to pay for all of its retiree health benefit payments for the next 75 years in 10 years. NO BUSINESS, PUBLIC OR PRIVATE, DOES THIS and it has created an untenable position. It's like the whole concept of proper amortization and actuarial tables never existed.
Prior to that, the USPS was profitable.
Republicans: "If it works, fuck with it anyway. Point at it when we've made it fail and say 'government sux' but it's not our fault - it's the fault of those liberals, over there, like the teacher's unions. Yeah, they made the USPS fail. That's the ticket."
--
BMO
Oh look, he thinks that IT is programming/comp sci.
How cute.
I don't expect the IT guy to be able to write a damn line of C code, but I have also run into plenty of programmers that can't remember why you have to "safely eject" a USB drive in Windows.
"Uh, hey, I can't find my stuff...can you get it back?"
IT is to comp sci as plumbing is to hydrology - I don't expect the hydrology prof at URIGSO to know how to hook up plastic pipe to copper, and I don't expect the plumber to tell me anything about the Ogallala Aquifer.
--
BMO
>Don't straw man me
You said, and I quote accurately:
All these people who go to college for the piece of paper are turning colleges into half-assed trade schools
If those aren't students, then who the fuck are they?
--
BMO
Ivory Tower Mentality right here:
If that leads to a job, great, but that shouldn't be the point.
6-figure debt makes it the point. A debt that you cannot refinance makes it the point. A debt you can't escape through bankruptcy makes it the point.
A trillion dollar debt problem in the US makes it the point.
HR departments requiring a BA for the most menial of office tasks makes it the point.
Requiring a fucking MA to work in a library as a salaried employee and not a volunteer (the US is the only country I know of that does this) makes it the point.
But sure, it's /all/ the student's fault for expecting something in return for all that money. /sneer
I have nothing but contempt for you.
--
BMO
FTFA:
Why would a plant evolve a method that cleans the under-side of its leaves?
Come on, man, THINK for a second. What *else* might stick to leaves that the plant might not want? What about fungal spores? You know, organisms that might *eat* you if you were a tree? If you thought about it for a second, deciduousness in itself is a scheme to battle fungi too.
This really is "missing the forest for the trees" or in this case, leaves.
--
BMO
Perhaps, it has something to do with the high failure rate of such research. Would you pay a salary to 1000 employees, of which only one employee gives you solid results and the remaining fail?
>implying that this is bad
Typical bean-counter/MBA attitude.
That's not very business friendly.
Companies like HP, Xerox, etc, built empires on that kind of research.
They declined when they spun off or closed their research divisions because management failed to see the value/use the output of the research labs. The HP example is particularly striking - they went from an advanced technology company to a schlock printer seller, one that is sneered at and loathed, in a handful of years. Xerox is also striking in that PARC laid the foundation for a lot of modern computing but management only saw money to be made in copiers and filing paper and thusly ignored most of PARC's output, ceding the computer revolution to other companies.
It is also part of a larger problem. Because of the emphasis on short-term profits (quarters are too long!) at the expense of everything else, we in the West are so enthusiastic at shoving all our production to the Chinese and others saying "We can't be arsed to get our hands dirty; we want to just do the high-level stuff like design and company management" totally ignoring the fact where the production goes, so does the engineering development, science research, and eventually even upper-management. This was learned by Samuel Slater, Francis Cabot Lowell, and others who founded the "silicon valley" (Blackstone Valley) of the Industrial Revolution. A lesson forgotten through complacency, greed, and snobbery.
Alexander Graham Bell is shouting at you from his grave calling you a moron.
--
BMO
Because a "data compression algorithm" is more than a mathematical equation.
You can't be serious.
Indeed, outside the material scope of a computer it has no existence,
IN TYPING CLASS 30(mumble) YEARS AGO we had this "game" where you were basically given a sheet with LZW compressed data and when you typed it out, you got a pretty picture. No computer used at all. Indeed, they were manual typewriters, except for the single IBM Selectric in the corner of the room.
Shut the fuck up. Seriously, shut the fuck up. You are wrong in every possible way.
--
BMO
I still put horse shoes on my horse (actually, I get the cobbler at the stables to do that).
No you don't.
If you did, you'd call him/her a farrier.
You don't own a horse.
--
BMO
Let's see what happens before we pass judgment though.
No, let's not.
They are totally incapable of following the law, as written, nevermind the spirit of the law.
The NSA has proven that it cannot be trusted with a single penny. Merely telling them "don't do that" with money doesn't change the fact that the NSA leadership doesn't give a damn what the law says.
Federal agencies can have you disappeared and you can't do a damn thing about it.^1 You think a little thing like funding is going to change things in the surveillance/police state?
Years ago, I would have said what I just wrote was paranoid nonsense. The past year has disabused me of that kind of thinking.
--
BMO
1.http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/06/17/judge-finds-courts-cannot-protect-us-citizens-tortured-by-us-government-officials-abroad/
Yeah, a lot of savings can be done by not doing anything at all. /sarcasm
A lot of the value of the postal service is that you can send stuff from the sticks to the cities and back again. You propose cutting out half of that. Go look up "network effect."
You must be an accountant.
--
BMO
No, I'm not kidding.
I use g+ to follow Linus and others.
Wait, are you one of the guys who started putting X-NoArchive in the text of your usenet posts when DejaNews showed up?
>putting google in 0.0.0.0
There's being judicious about what you post, and then there's paranoia.
--
BMO
which include using your real, verifiable identity
Pray tell, which ones? None of the ones I use. Even online services that "require" a cell number really don't - they put in grayed out text a clickthrough to skip it, even Facebook.
If you're talking about banking and payment services, they've required your real identity in meatspace for hundreds of years, so it's not the same thing as what we're discussing here. All online services have unenforceable and unconscionable terms and conditions. I can require your first-born male as payment, but that doesn't mean it's legally binding, and such terms should be ignored as a matter of course. I do. If you don't, you're a fool.
The last time an online service required my meatspace identity, it was the Chebucto Freenet back in the early 90s that wanted a photocopy of my driver's license. But that was a different time and you could actually trust admins (that weren't Simon Travaglia) back then. It was also a different time back then when your domain record had your real name tied to it and you didn't have to worry about stalkers, idiots, and loons. Anyone who does that these days not hiding behind even a "paper" company name, is quite frankly a victim waiting to happen.
And lastly, the whole "we require a cellphone" nonsense can be worked around with stuff like this:
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/to...
Good fucking luck tying identity to SMS.
--
BMO
Those who call for an end to privacy, usually have something to gain from it.
Except that a lot of people who call for an end to privacy have nothing to gain and actually lose. ESR is one of those people, and I had to drop him from my G+ circles because I just couldn't stand the cognitive dissonance (doublethink, if we're going to use Orwell) any longer.
--
BMO
What a fucking boot-licker you are.
>nerd playground
Back when it was a "nerd playground" people used their real names more often than not. Because we didn't have to worry about morons like yourself. Because it was safe to do. Because we didn't have to worry about being pizza bombed or SWATted.
But that's entirely beside the point of idiots like you insisting that we should not have the right in e-space to call ourselves whatever the fuck we want as long as we're not trying to defraud anyone. THIS IS A RIGHT THAT EXISTS IN MEATSPACE you fucking tool.
Why is it that people such as yourself and FUCKING ERIC S. RAYMOND have a fucking huge problem with it? "They" - the people whose boots you are so willing to lick - do not give one flying fuck about you. Yet people like you and ESR want to give them the tools to remove any protections we have out here from criminals, corrupt politicians, police-states, and others. This war against anonymity is fucking odious, orwellian, and frankly fucking offensive as a wet fart on a hard wooden pew in church.
NO. FUCK YOU. IF YOU WANT TO USE YOUR REAL NAME, YOU GO RIGHT AHEAD AND USE IT. THE REST OF US WILL EXERCISE OUR RIGHTS IF WE CHOOSE TO. THE LIKES OF YOU AND ERIC S. RAYMOND AND HIS "HOTGIRL69 PROBLEM" CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF.
--
BMO.