This is just my two cents, but I belive the music industry executives to be complete and total morons. When will they realize that people will not continue to buy your product when you're overcharging? This is basic economics. If a dairy wanted to charge $20 for a gallon of milk, do you think anyone would buy it? No. There are better ways to support the artist than buying their music. Steal the music, go to their concerts, but their t-shirts.
And here's a hint to the music industry: Collective Licensing. You will continue to be forced to lower your royalties until you reach this.
Voluntary Collective Licensing
I had to deal with PKI a little in the military, as I was getting out as it was coming in, but it still leaves the problem of who decides who should be trusted. Verisign will trust anyone that throws enough cash at them.
As for your opinion of management, and especially middle-management, I agree completely. They way things are and they way things should be are rarely one in the same. How many times do you have to de-funkify the middle management's computers before you have enough evidence that they're part of the problem?
"Which of course brings us to the problem of authorization. We have a PKI infrastructure thanks to Verisign &Co and it's right in the browsers, so that could be used.
Yes, that just might work."
I'm sensing a little sarcasm there. Now, I don't know a whole lot about PKI infrastructure (heard something about PKI in the military and thought it sounded stupid) and I know enough about Verisign to know that they're not to be trusted, but that doesn't make a difference in my argument. I'm not saying anyone with XYZ authorization certificate should be authorized to run automated programs on your system. Fuck that. That's a horrendously bad idea. I was refering to the software, in this case the browser, connecting to one server at one IP, and receiving it's forced updates from there. What does it take to be authorized to run this code at this point? Either you're at this IP, or you're not. End of story. Full Tilt Poker, as an example, and most anti-virus software can securely update their software without intervention, so why can't a browser or instant messenger?
"As for non-educated users - they aren't the problem. They're the boundary conditions of our work environment as security people. They will not change. Anyone talking about user-education needs to realize that it's not 1985 anymore, and we've fucking tried it for 20 years. It's not working."
I agree with you, but at the same time, my observations disagree. Training users has failed horribly on the grand scale. But, when I'm teaching a friend of family member how to use the internet to it's potential without getting viruses or spyware, it works. They know what programs to run, what kind of sites to avoid, what things to never execute. I see two factors. Intelligence. Give a shit. If your user doesn't give a shit, training won't matter. If your user doesn't have the intelligence, then he just won't pick it up. I can't see any other way to explain this discrepancy.
In the corporate workplace, my gameplan is this. Educate them. See if they fuck it up. Educate them again. See if they fuck up again. If they do, lockdown. They run nothing not authorized by the sysadmin, they download nothing not authorized, they transfer nothing unauthorized, they bring in nothing from home that's not authorized. They use dictated software. Every system is the same. Same OS, same software, same versions. Every user has a folder on their system. If you save something outside of this folder, don't expect it to be there the next day. It'll be wiped clean. Users will bitch and complain, but you will have given them two chances. The management should support you, as you tried it their way.
"And here I was, thinking that automatic program execution without end-user involvement was the #1 security problem of our days..."
You're quite close, Mr. Tom.
That would be unauthorized automatic program execution without end-user involvement is a security problem of our day. I don't know about it being #1, as non-educated click-happy end-users seems to rank right up there as well.
That doesn't mean the end-user pays any attention to it. Force it. Make it so that they have the best security everytime they run the program. Problem solved.
or (b) delete it if it didn't let me disable the phone-home option.
But that's the beauty of it. If the advanced user could disable it, and the regular end-user could leave it enabled, then what does it matter? You're paranoid? So disable it. If you're willing to rely on the Mozilla foundation, leave it enabled. I can't think of a better group to leave it in the hands of.
Why is this do difficult? If you're smart enough to defend yourself, leave it disabled. If you would prefer others do it for you, leave it enabled.
It's that simple. All we need is someone to code it.
As someone else pointed out, the quickess of the patch doesn't matter because the end-user who's not the average slashdotter won't know there's a patch and won't install it. So why not forced security?
I play poker at Fulltiltpoker.com. Every time I want to play, the software connects to their server, checks for any updates, and then asks me to login. Granted, the poker software client is not as complicated as a web browser, but how difficult would it be make Firefox check and install updates every time the user ran the program? I imagine it would be pretty simple. Have this enabled by default, and the active security-aware users can disable it if they would rather do it themselves or are if they're paranoid. Think it might cost too much time to check every single time you run the program? Simply solved, a line of code telling it skip the check if it's checked in the past 12 hours.
One of the simplest ideas in security is that if the end-user has to do it themselves, like not opening random e-mail attachments, then it's likely going to get fucked up. It's that simple. Take it out of their hands.
For those of you that are paranoid about Firefox contacting servers on it's own, how do you think it knows when there are updates? It certainly didn't find out through telepathy.
If I had to venture a guess as to why there are no serious open-source grammar checkers, I'd say it's because most of the open-source coders mastered basic grammar in elementary school before they mastered programming in high school. Why would they spend their own time writing a program that they don't need? If you feel the need for a better grammar checker, perhaps you should work on your grammar.
I received an e-mail today about this job posting. They're looking for an experienced web developer, but an expert in slashcode would likely be able to get the job as it would be pretty useful.
It's also a great excuse to relocate to Las Vegas, but you don't have to.
I don't know about most people, but my everyday keychain weighs a bit with only 5 or 6 keys on it. Is the physical interface between the key and the ignition going to be able to support that weight, or will it just be a few weeks before your USB ignition is broken from the strain and your key falls out every time you hit a bump or go around a corner?
I'm sure most of the slashdot crowd has seen a USB port that's been strained a little too much and is a bit flaky because of it.
"Spam is worse than junk mail. With junk mail, it's the companies who have to pay for the paper, envelope, and postage. The more letters they send, the more money they have to pay. Plus they all clearly identify who sent it. The usps also is able to oversee the entire system (in the usa at least). With spam, there is no material cost or postage. It costs just as much to send 100 emails as 1,000,000. there is anonymity; spoofed addresses, spam zombies, and open relays make covering one's tracks child's play. In addition, there's nobody you can complain to.
I agree with you that spam is worse than junk mail because of the costs involved, but it's still in the same category. Yes, they are partially anonymous, as you can't tell who sent you what. But there is an easy, although more involved, way to find out who is sending the e-mails. The spam is advertising products and providing a link to a website to purchase said crap. You can't sell things anonymously very easily. You identify the seller of the crap, err.. goods. You make it illegal for them to support spammers with legislation or prosecute them for obstruction of justice should they refuse to identify who they paid to send out the spam. These people did not transfer money by slipping someone a wad of cash in a showbar. There's a trail of transactions to follow. If these sellers are using illegal means to transfer money to the spammers, then it's just more weight to use against them to make them cooperate. You don't have to threaten them with jail time, just fine them so hard that it is, financially, a poor business choice.
Anyone seen the newest cop show on TV, Wanted? It's a great show, but I predict the next new cop show will be all about hunting down spammers. Maybe I can sell that idea to Dick Wolf.
"They must be using models from the ugly tree corp of America in your area then either that or their not your type. Personally being distracted in the the first place is the annoying thing not how long it takes me to look away."
Actually, I live less than a block away from the headquarters of Venus Swimwear. They use the most impressive models I have ever seen on a billboard, but I'm only distracted 4 times a year when they change the billboard for the new season, even though I drive by it everyday.
Amusingly enough, the winter billboard still sports a woman in a bikini.
"giving spam an air of legitimacy
And TV, Billboard, Radio , Film and Hommy Tilfiger Logos on cloths don't have exactly the same effect?
I'm not saying I support spam, just that spam is another form of advertising. If other forms of advertising come unsolicited from companies.
Why is spam any worse than someone wearing a krappa t-shirt, drinking a can of Koke and eating a MukDonalds, why is spam any worse than traditional junk mail?"
Fundamentally, spam is the same as junk mail. It intrudes upon your personal space and requires you to take the time to discard it. Logo's on t-shirts and billboards are not the same. It only takes an instant to move your eyes away from it, and it need not come into your home.
"Has anyone on here actually ever bought anything from one of these mass market emails? I myself haven't, and I don't know anyone off hand who has. What I wonder is how they stay in business. Money has to be coming in from somewhere."
Now, I don't like to make comments about the intelligence of the Slashdot crowd, as some of them can appear to be pretty stupid at times, all in all, they're smarter than the average e-mail recipient. The Slashdot crowd is, amazingly enough, too smart to click on shit-mail. Unfortunately, even with it's huge following, the Slashdot crowd is only a small fraction of the e-mail recipients. It's these other people that don't know any better. I'm making up numbers here, but for every 1 million shit-mails sent out, 10 people buy something. Until you educate these people to not buy this crap through shit-mail and just search the internet for it, they will continue to click on shit-mail. Besides education, there are only two other options. Remove the shit-mail, or remove the idiots clicking on the shit-mail.
You must be at least 10% smarter than this equipment in order to use it safely.
" The problem is that much of the spam out there is sent illegally. There is no care for who wants in or not with these guys. Sending from a remote, infected machine takes care of sending from your own server and being identified. So, we don't get mail from mailserver.com, but we get mail from every infected computer on XO's broadband and other ISPs that don't seem to care about the spam out there."
The main reason why spam is so persistent is because they're making money from it, even with the legislation and all the programs designed to counter-act the 'spam problem'. Want to stop spam? Stop their money. Their money comes from the companies that pay the spammers to send out this crap. Punish those companies and the spam will go away. They're easy enough to track. You can identify them just by buying something from one of their shit-mails. They didn't pay the spammers with cash in some back alley. There is a money trail there. Pass legislation that would fine these companies heavily enough that spam is no longer a good idea, financially. They listen to their bottom line. You could even cut them deals in exchange for identifying spammers.
Now, the bigger problem I see is privacy vs. free speech. You have the right to stand in Central Park and shout whatever you like for as long as you like. You can't do anything about the idiots standing on the corner wearing sandwich boards. But spam, and tele-marketing for that matter too, come directly into your home. This is your home we're talking about, the only place where your privacy should be guaranteed. If the idiot with the sandwich board steps on your property, you can call the cops on him. If you're neighbors is making so much noise that it's disturbing you and your other neighbors, you call the cops on him, just the same. Spam reaches you in your home, where privacy prevails over free-speech. You have the right to free-speech in my home, but I can throw your ass out as soon as you start irritating me.
"Yeah, right. And there's this swamp land you might want to buy."
Not that I disagree with you about the effectiveness of the CAN-SPAM Act, but Florida, which just so happens to be one giant fucking swamp, is supposedly the second hottest real-estate market in the United States.
"Hell, I don't even like it when a family member get's ahold of my address and adds it to their inane ('joke of the day'/sappy inspirational message) cc list."
Agreed. I've lost contact with friends after telling them to stop sending me worthless crap because they're too lazy to understand why they may need an e-mail list of people that want to receiver their worthless crap, rather than just sending it to everyone in their address book. I actually send nasty replies now, especially for 'warnings' that almost always a hoax, and usually 3 or 4 years old at that.
"When I get email I think about where I have bought stuff from recently, to make sure I didn't forget to opt out of something."
As someone else in this discussion mentioned, time is your most valuable resource. You can't get it back, end of story. Thinking about who you may have forgotten to opt out of takes a bit of time and is, generally speaking, irritating. Remove the thinking and use a website like sneakemail.com and save yourself some time. By creating a new disposable e-mail address every time you create a new account with an online reseller, you remove all the guesswork. You receive a spam, and you know it's from one of two places. A) A mass-mailing using random e-mail addresses, or B) An e-mail sent to you from someone you have given your e-mail address to in the prcoess of doing business. Most spam of the 'A' type are blocked before you even see them. Even Yahoo! has gotten to the point where I only see about one of these a month. The spam of type 'B' will be labeled with the name of who you gave your e-mail address to. You know where the spammer got your e-mail address. The business either sold it, or had it stolen. If you wish to continue doing business with this person, you can contact them about the problem, or you delete the disposable address and never hear from them again.
Personally, I no longer have to deal with spam. Not even my bank has my real e-mail address. Neither does Slashdot for that matter.
From what I hear, the sex depicted in the modified game was a blowjob. I'm thinking maybe Hilary Clinton has some major issues with oral sex after the whole intern ordeal. Apparently, she has something against blow jobs. I bet she doesn't spit or swallow.
I agree with you. Anarchism will be difficult to pull off, regardless. In our complicated world, it's just far too simple a system. Even in Stephen King's novel, it's likely the anarchist society they had would be replaced by a normal town government eventually.
I believe anarchists may be right when they say 'There is no such thing as a government that's good for the people', even if their idea doesn't function much better.
By definition, courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online:
Anarchy - 1 a : absence of government b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.
Anarchism - 1 : a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups.
Anarchist do not want a world of chaos run by no one. People wanting this and claiming to be anarchists are confused. These are people that are anarchist because it sounds cool. Real anarchists' one major belief is that there is no such thing as a government that is good for the people. They may be right.
In an anarchist society, you would not have chaos, mob rule, and random destruction. You would have a people governed by themselves with commitees, organizations, co-operation, and compromise. "a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government."
I don't see an anarchist society ever happening not because it's a bad idea, but because I don't have faith in people in general to not reach for more power. If you want a good example of an anarchist community, read Stephen King's 'The Stand'. In this novel, the community set up in Colorado is a perfect example of a community governed by themselves.
Anarchists would not be responsible for a bombing, only the confused people that claim to be anarchists, but have no idea what anarchism is.
By definition, courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online:
Anarchy - 1 a : absence of government b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.
Anarchism - 1 : a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups.
Anarchist do not want a world of chaos run by no one. People wanting this and claiming to be anarchists are confused. These are people that are anarchist because it sounds cool. Real anarchists one major belief is that there is no such thing as a government that is good for the people. They may be right.
In an anarchist society, you would not have chaos, mod rule, and random destruction. You would have a people governed by themselves with commitees, organizations, co-operation, and compromise. "a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government."
I don't see an anarchist society ever happening not because it's a bad idea, but because I don't have faith in people in general to not reach for more power. If you want a good example of an anarchist community, read Stephen King's 'The Stand'. In this novel, the community set up in Colorado is a perfect example of a community governed by themselves.
Anarchists would not be responsible for a bombing, only the confused people that claim to be anarchists, but have no idea what anarchism is.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just my two cents, but I belive the music industry executives to be complete and total morons. When will they realize that people will not continue to buy your product when you're overcharging? This is basic economics. If a dairy wanted to charge $20 for a gallon of milk, do you think anyone would buy it? No. There are better ways to support the artist than buying their music. Steal the music, go to their concerts, but their t-shirts.
And here's a hint to the music industry: Collective Licensing. You will continue to be forced to lower your royalties until you reach this.
Voluntary Collective Licensing
Your time as the bully is over.
Aero
I had to deal with PKI a little in the military, as I was getting out as it was coming in, but it still leaves the problem of who decides who should be trusted. Verisign will trust anyone that throws enough cash at them.
As for your opinion of management, and especially middle-management, I agree completely. They way things are and they way things should be are rarely one in the same. How many times do you have to de-funkify the middle management's computers before you have enough evidence that they're part of the problem?
Aero
"Which of course brings us to the problem of authorization. We have a PKI infrastructure thanks to Verisign &Co and it's right in the browsers, so that could be used.
Yes, that just might work."
I'm sensing a little sarcasm there. Now, I don't know a whole lot about PKI infrastructure (heard something about PKI in the military and thought it sounded stupid) and I know enough about Verisign to know that they're not to be trusted, but that doesn't make a difference in my argument. I'm not saying anyone with XYZ authorization certificate should be authorized to run automated programs on your system. Fuck that. That's a horrendously bad idea. I was refering to the software, in this case the browser, connecting to one server at one IP, and receiving it's forced updates from there. What does it take to be authorized to run this code at this point? Either you're at this IP, or you're not. End of story. Full Tilt Poker, as an example, and most anti-virus software can securely update their software without intervention, so why can't a browser or instant messenger?
"As for non-educated users - they aren't the problem. They're the boundary conditions of our work environment as security people. They will not change. Anyone talking about user-education needs to realize that it's not 1985 anymore, and we've fucking tried it for 20 years. It's not working."
I agree with you, but at the same time, my observations disagree. Training users has failed horribly on the grand scale. But, when I'm teaching a friend of family member how to use the internet to it's potential without getting viruses or spyware, it works. They know what programs to run, what kind of sites to avoid, what things to never execute. I see two factors. Intelligence. Give a shit. If your user doesn't give a shit, training won't matter. If your user doesn't have the intelligence, then he just won't pick it up. I can't see any other way to explain this discrepancy.
In the corporate workplace, my gameplan is this. Educate them. See if they fuck it up. Educate them again. See if they fuck up again. If they do, lockdown. They run nothing not authorized by the sysadmin, they download nothing not authorized, they transfer nothing unauthorized, they bring in nothing from home that's not authorized. They use dictated software. Every system is the same. Same OS, same software, same versions. Every user has a folder on their system. If you save something outside of this folder, don't expect it to be there the next day. It'll be wiped clean. Users will bitch and complain, but you will have given them two chances. The management should support you, as you tried it their way.
Aero
"And here I was, thinking that automatic program execution without end-user involvement was the #1 security problem of our days..."
You're quite close, Mr. Tom.
That would be unauthorized automatic program execution without end-user involvement is a security problem of our day. I don't know about it being #1, as non-educated click-happy end-users seems to rank right up there as well.
Aero
That doesn't mean the end-user pays any attention to it. Force it. Make it so that they have the best security everytime they run the program. Problem solved.
Aero
or (b) delete it if it didn't let me disable the phone-home option.
But that's the beauty of it. If the advanced user could disable it, and the regular end-user could leave it enabled, then what does it matter? You're paranoid? So disable it. If you're willing to rely on the Mozilla foundation, leave it enabled. I can't think of a better group to leave it in the hands of.
Why is this do difficult? If you're smart enough to defend yourself, leave it disabled. If you would prefer others do it for you, leave it enabled.
It's that simple. All we need is someone to code it.
Aero
As someone else pointed out, the quickess of the patch doesn't matter because the end-user who's not the average slashdotter won't know there's a patch and won't install it. So why not forced security?
I play poker at Fulltiltpoker.com. Every time I want to play, the software connects to their server, checks for any updates, and then asks me to login. Granted, the poker software client is not as complicated as a web browser, but how difficult would it be make Firefox check and install updates every time the user ran the program? I imagine it would be pretty simple. Have this enabled by default, and the active security-aware users can disable it if they would rather do it themselves or are if they're paranoid. Think it might cost too much time to check every single time you run the program? Simply solved, a line of code telling it skip the check if it's checked in the past 12 hours.
One of the simplest ideas in security is that if the end-user has to do it themselves, like not opening random e-mail attachments, then it's likely going to get fucked up. It's that simple. Take it out of their hands.
For those of you that are paranoid about Firefox contacting servers on it's own, how do you think it knows when there are updates? It certainly didn't find out through telepathy.
Just my two cents.
Aero
Someone mod the parent up. That's a fucking hiliarious clip.
If I had to venture a guess as to why there are no serious open-source grammar checkers, I'd say it's because most of the open-source coders mastered basic grammar in elementary school before they mastered programming in high school. Why would they spend their own time writing a program that they don't need? If you feel the need for a better grammar checker, perhaps you should work on your grammar.
Most grammar is common sense. Start with that.
Aero
I received an e-mail today about this job posting. They're looking for an experienced web developer, but an expert in slashcode would likely be able to get the job as it would be pretty useful.
It's also a great excuse to relocate to Las Vegas, but you don't have to.
Aero
I don't know about most people, but my everyday keychain weighs a bit with only 5 or 6 keys on it. Is the physical interface between the key and the ignition going to be able to support that weight, or will it just be a few weeks before your USB ignition is broken from the strain and your key falls out every time you hit a bump or go around a corner?
I'm sure most of the slashdot crowd has seen a USB port that's been strained a little too much and is a bit flaky because of it.
"Spam is worse than junk mail. With junk mail, it's the companies who have to pay for the paper, envelope, and postage. The more letters they send, the more money they have to pay. Plus they all clearly identify who sent it. The usps also is able to oversee the entire system (in the usa at least). With spam, there is no material cost or postage. It costs just as much to send 100 emails as 1,000,000. there is anonymity; spoofed addresses, spam zombies, and open relays make covering one's tracks child's play. In addition, there's nobody you can complain to.
I agree with you that spam is worse than junk mail because of the costs involved, but it's still in the same category. Yes, they are partially anonymous, as you can't tell who sent you what. But there is an easy, although more involved, way to find out who is sending the e-mails. The spam is advertising products and providing a link to a website to purchase said crap. You can't sell things anonymously very easily. You identify the seller of the crap, err.. goods. You make it illegal for them to support spammers with legislation or prosecute them for obstruction of justice should they refuse to identify who they paid to send out the spam. These people did not transfer money by slipping someone a wad of cash in a showbar. There's a trail of transactions to follow. If these sellers are using illegal means to transfer money to the spammers, then it's just more weight to use against them to make them cooperate. You don't have to threaten them with jail time, just fine them so hard that it is, financially, a poor business choice.
Anyone seen the newest cop show on TV, Wanted? It's a great show, but I predict the next new cop show will be all about hunting down spammers. Maybe I can sell that idea to Dick Wolf.
"They must be using models from the ugly tree corp of America in your area then either that or their not your type. Personally being distracted in the the first place is the annoying thing not how long it takes me to look away."
Actually, I live less than a block away from the headquarters of Venus Swimwear. They use the most impressive models I have ever seen on a billboard, but I'm only distracted 4 times a year when they change the billboard for the new season, even though I drive by it everyday.
Amusingly enough, the winter billboard still sports a woman in a bikini.
"giving spam an air of legitimacy
And TV, Billboard, Radio , Film and Hommy Tilfiger Logos on cloths don't have exactly the same effect?
I'm not saying I support spam, just that spam is another form of advertising. If other forms of advertising come unsolicited from companies. Why is spam any worse than someone wearing a krappa t-shirt, drinking a can of Koke and eating a MukDonalds, why is spam any worse than traditional junk mail?"
Fundamentally, spam is the same as junk mail. It intrudes upon your personal space and requires you to take the time to discard it. Logo's on t-shirts and billboards are not the same. It only takes an instant to move your eyes away from it, and it need not come into your home.
"Has anyone on here actually ever bought anything from one of these mass market emails? I myself haven't, and I don't know anyone off hand who has. What I wonder is how they stay in business. Money has to be coming in from somewhere."
Now, I don't like to make comments about the intelligence of the Slashdot crowd, as some of them can appear to be pretty stupid at times, all in all, they're smarter than the average e-mail recipient. The Slashdot crowd is, amazingly enough, too smart to click on shit-mail. Unfortunately, even with it's huge following, the Slashdot crowd is only a small fraction of the e-mail recipients. It's these other people that don't know any better. I'm making up numbers here, but for every 1 million shit-mails sent out, 10 people buy something. Until you educate these people to not buy this crap through shit-mail and just search the internet for it, they will continue to click on shit-mail. Besides education, there are only two other options. Remove the shit-mail, or remove the idiots clicking on the shit-mail.
You must be at least 10% smarter than this equipment in order to use it safely.
" The problem is that much of the spam out there is sent illegally. There is no care for who wants in or not with these guys. Sending from a remote, infected machine takes care of sending from your own server and being identified. So, we don't get mail from mailserver.com, but we get mail from every infected computer on XO's broadband and other ISPs that don't seem to care about the spam out there."
The main reason why spam is so persistent is because they're making money from it, even with the legislation and all the programs designed to counter-act the 'spam problem'. Want to stop spam? Stop their money. Their money comes from the companies that pay the spammers to send out this crap. Punish those companies and the spam will go away. They're easy enough to track. You can identify them just by buying something from one of their shit-mails. They didn't pay the spammers with cash in some back alley. There is a money trail there. Pass legislation that would fine these companies heavily enough that spam is no longer a good idea, financially. They listen to their bottom line. You could even cut them deals in exchange for identifying spammers.
Now, the bigger problem I see is privacy vs. free speech. You have the right to stand in Central Park and shout whatever you like for as long as you like. You can't do anything about the idiots standing on the corner wearing sandwich boards. But spam, and tele-marketing for that matter too, come directly into your home. This is your home we're talking about, the only place where your privacy should be guaranteed. If the idiot with the sandwich board steps on your property, you can call the cops on him. If you're neighbors is making so much noise that it's disturbing you and your other neighbors, you call the cops on him, just the same. Spam reaches you in your home, where privacy prevails over free-speech. You have the right to free-speech in my home, but I can throw your ass out as soon as you start irritating me.
"Yeah, right. And there's this swamp land you might want to buy."
Not that I disagree with you about the effectiveness of the CAN-SPAM Act, but Florida, which just so happens to be one giant fucking swamp, is supposedly the second hottest real-estate market in the United States.
"Hell, I don't even like it when a family member get's ahold of my address and adds it to their inane ('joke of the day'/sappy inspirational message) cc list."
Agreed. I've lost contact with friends after telling them to stop sending me worthless crap because they're too lazy to understand why they may need an e-mail list of people that want to receiver their worthless crap, rather than just sending it to everyone in their address book. I actually send nasty replies now, especially for 'warnings' that almost always a hoax, and usually 3 or 4 years old at that.
"When I get email I think about where I have bought stuff from recently, to make sure I didn't forget to opt out of something."
As someone else in this discussion mentioned, time is your most valuable resource. You can't get it back, end of story. Thinking about who you may have forgotten to opt out of takes a bit of time and is, generally speaking, irritating. Remove the thinking and use a website like sneakemail.com and save yourself some time. By creating a new disposable e-mail address every time you create a new account with an online reseller, you remove all the guesswork. You receive a spam, and you know it's from one of two places. A) A mass-mailing using random e-mail addresses, or B) An e-mail sent to you from someone you have given your e-mail address to in the prcoess of doing business. Most spam of the 'A' type are blocked before you even see them. Even Yahoo! has gotten to the point where I only see about one of these a month. The spam of type 'B' will be labeled with the name of who you gave your e-mail address to. You know where the spammer got your e-mail address. The business either sold it, or had it stolen. If you wish to continue doing business with this person, you can contact them about the problem, or you delete the disposable address and never hear from them again.
Personally, I no longer have to deal with spam. Not even my bank has my real e-mail address. Neither does Slashdot for that matter.
Now I have to decide between playing the game on paper or with cards?
Neither.
Disclaimer: No Slashdot discussion (stretching that term) can be considered complete without a link to VGCats.
From what I hear, the sex depicted in the modified game was a blowjob. I'm thinking maybe Hilary Clinton has some major issues with oral sex after the whole intern ordeal. Apparently, she has something against blow jobs. I bet she doesn't spit or swallow.
I agree with you. Anarchism will be difficult to pull off, regardless. In our complicated world, it's just far too simple a system. Even in Stephen King's novel, it's likely the anarchist society they had would be replaced by a normal town government eventually.
I believe anarchists may be right when they say 'There is no such thing as a government that's good for the people', even if their idea doesn't function much better.
Aero
No.
By definition, courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online:
Anarchy - 1 a : absence of government b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.
Anarchism - 1 : a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups.
Anarchist do not want a world of chaos run by no one. People wanting this and claiming to be anarchists are confused. These are people that are anarchist because it sounds cool. Real anarchists' one major belief is that there is no such thing as a government that is good for the people. They may be right.
In an anarchist society, you would not have chaos, mob rule, and random destruction. You would have a people governed by themselves with commitees, organizations, co-operation, and compromise. "a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government."
I don't see an anarchist society ever happening not because it's a bad idea, but because I don't have faith in people in general to not reach for more power. If you want a good example of an anarchist community, read Stephen King's 'The Stand'. In this novel, the community set up in Colorado is a perfect example of a community governed by themselves.
Anarchists would not be responsible for a bombing, only the confused people that claim to be anarchists, but have no idea what anarchism is.
Aero
No.
By definition, courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online:
Anarchy - 1 a : absence of government b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.
Anarchism - 1 : a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups.
Anarchist do not want a world of chaos run by no one. People wanting this and claiming to be anarchists are confused. These are people that are anarchist because it sounds cool. Real anarchists one major belief is that there is no such thing as a government that is good for the people. They may be right.
In an anarchist society, you would not have chaos, mod rule, and random destruction. You would have a people governed by themselves with commitees, organizations, co-operation, and compromise. "a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government."
I don't see an anarchist society ever happening not because it's a bad idea, but because I don't have faith in people in general to not reach for more power. If you want a good example of an anarchist community, read Stephen King's 'The Stand'. In this novel, the community set up in Colorado is a perfect example of a community governed by themselves.
Anarchists would not be responsible for a bombing, only the confused people that claim to be anarchists, but have no idea what anarchism is.
Aero
Someone please explain to me how someone replied to a flamebait comment and talked about pissing on someone and was modded insightful.
Oh, wait..
This is Slashdot.
Aero