I started to really question the global warming problem when it started becoming the default cause behind all sorts of natural phenomena, and of course the cause behind global warming is supposedly human beings. Thus, human beings caused hurricane Katrina.
Ok, that sets off some major red flags in my mind.
After digging into the problem a little bit, I learned enough to know that I'm not convinced that human beings are the primary cause behind global warming. A) There is not a complete consensus, and there is potential for abuse of science on both sides of the fence. Not all naysayers are crackpots. B) Human-created CO2 accounts for less than one third of one percent of all greenhouse gases. I don't know if that's a significant number or not, but it sure doesn't seem as significant the figure often stated -- comparing only human-created C02 with total C02. C) There are alternative causes that do have a great deal of merit, namely the sun and volcanic activity. These alternate or partial causes are very real but seem to glazed over by the consensus. D) The correlation between industrialization and temperature increase seems iffy (fast ups and downs), and sort of ignores past temperature changes in recent history (1000-2000 years is recent in this case). The correlation also shows that temperatures rise prior to the increase in carbon dioxide, which I thought was one of the big reasons that global warming hype sort of died down years ago (I first learned of this particular fact at least 10 years ago).
So there are some questions that don't seem to have concrete answers, and it doesn't feel like all of the possible explanations have been thoroughly exhausted. When I then factor in the weight that I give to both fear and ego, I think it's highly plausible that global warming fear is just that: massive hysteria. Consider the evidence that the average person throws into the pool: "I know there is global warming because the weather is strange this winter/summer/spring/fall." Well, it's no wonder that the global warming theory is so prevalently believed -- the weather is *always* weird this year, and the *fact* that the Earth is currently warming does not mean that it's your fault.
It's important to me that we all be very environmentally aware. I think that reducing pollution and our natural resource requirements is extremely important, both for the future of humanity and for the rest of the critters on the planet. If we didn't cause global warming, though, then this is a major setback for critical thinking and in the worst case could damage the ideology of environmentalism and science. In a somewhat dangerous time when it seems like the average joe is willing to equate science with religion, the "entire scientific community" being completely wrong about something could be very damaging indeed.
Also keep in mind that if any of your friends or relatives have children, then no doubt the kids have all sorts of silly games on their existing computers that they won't want to lose -- or the latest version of proprietary instant messenger software with cute animated smilies might be pretty important. And what about those in your circle who are currently using Microsoft Money or similar for paying bills? Turbo Tax!?? Or people who have some silly hallmark greeting card software? Or people who pay their bills online to websites that require the use of Internet Explorer (I personally have to use IE to pay three of my bills...it's pretty much the only time I have to use it). The parent poster has a good point too about peripherals...there isn't going to be a Linux setup CD in the box with a newly purchased cheapo HP printer, and the NikonView software that came with their new camera isn't going to work (yeah, people actually LIKE that crap). Wine? I don't think so, not for the average joe.
So you should really be asking yourself: "which of my friends or family members is absolutely fed up with using the computer *because* of Microsoft Windows", and send them a CD. You might be surprised to learn that many people aren't terribly unhappy with their computers, even with the extra pain of having to run anti-malware software.
Perhaps what you could do is send them a CD containing the most popular OSS applications that run on Windows. Just getting people to switch to Firefox can make a big difference in their overall experience.
We have to remember that while distributions like Ubuntu are indeed great, they're just operating systems, and not everyone can appreciate a good operating system. The problem with getting regular folks to switch operating systems is that they really have to *switch* (because they're not going to hassle with a multi-boot). It's like giving somebody a new toolbox for christmas and then saying, "here's the catch, you have to throw out your old toolbox. Oh, and you'll also have to throw out all of your existing tools, but the new box is already loaded up with tools for everything that I think you do...metric only, but seriously, they're great. Merry Christmas."
So, my recommendation: a) when setting somebody WITHOUT a computer up with a new system, get them started with Ubuntu or similar. b) If somebody is fed up with their computer because they're constantly getting hosed by viruses and malware, try to get them to switch. c) If somebody already has a computer and they're using it just fine, leave them alone; the amount of change they might have to go through could be a great deal more than you're anticipating, and they might not be more happy in the long run anyhow.
joke/johk/ noun, verb, joked, joking. -noun 1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act: He tells very funny jokes. She played a joke on him.
I think that you're sort of on the right track with your thoughts here, but you make a lot of claims and assumptions that aren't quite correct.
First, Linux is "growing", as in "getting better", yes - especially the distributions you mentioned. However, what these distributions are doing is becoming more home-PC-friendly. They are essentially becoming more like Windows. Despite its shortcomings (and I am no big fan), Windows is an operating system that any boner on the planet can install and use. Linux distributions like Ubuntu want to provide this same experience, but without all of the shortcomings of Windows. As an Ubuntu user myself, I don't think it's quite there yet. Using just the default software selection and features though, yeah it's real close.
Second, there are more user types than the ones you list. I think you actually left out what is probably the largest user group: ordinary home users. These people use the computer for the web, email, personal finances, school reports, media, and maybe the occasional game. These people are *very* important, because they are just savvy enough to use a computer, but dumb enough that even the simplest of problems or a procedure with more than three steps can bring them down. The operating system must dumb itself down to cater to this crowd, while still providing a robust, secure experience. Not easy.
Third, your assumptions about what business users want are a bit off. While the claim that business users don't trust things that are free is pretty common, that's really not the reason they're not jumping all over free software. The problem here is twofold: first they want to use the software that they've invested large sums of money in, both in purchase/support costs and customization costs. Most often this software will be running on Windows, and that's just the way it is. Secondly, the business world can be more efficient when everybody is running the same basic software, such as Microsoft Office. While software of this type can often import and export to other formats, they are not fully feature-compatible, which can be important when you're doing something like change tracking in a legal document that's flying around between two or more organizations.
Fourth, I believe that you're mixing up the needs of hardcore gamers and business users. It's the gamers that could get away with Windows 98 forever. The giant improvements from Win9x to NT are more important to business users who can't afford to have things break. A gamer will benefit also (as will all user groups), but as long as the game runs fast, that's all that matters. These guys are constantly screwing around with the system anyhow. At any rate, I don't think that serious gamers are as giant a force as ordinary users and business users when it comes to OS dominance, especially with consoles having come along so far. The PC Gaming section of your local game shop is no doubt a pretty small portion of the store by now.
What holds back Linux on the desktop the most at this point is that most home and business users don't care about the operating system or know enough to know why they should care about the operating system. They just want to run this or that program. Security problems? Hey, it's just part of running a computer, that's why I bought Norton Awesome Internet Security Defender Virus Malware Spyware Destructionator 2006.
"Organic" beef is often $10/lb at places like food co-ops. In fact most organic meats are $10 a pound or more here.
While I can appreciate the better taste of these meats and like to support local farmers and ranchers, I think it's pretty outrageous to pay that much. I get ground beef for $1.99 - $2.99/lb. I don't worry as much about safety after the crackdowns in the industry a decade or two ago. I do make an effort to at least buy meat raised and processed in the US.
Initially the logo said "ID," which lead some people, myself included, to think it was an acronym or short for "identification." Way back then a lot of people also started writing the name as "iD." I don't think it was ever officially iD though. Looks like on the Wolf 3D box, for instance, they had ID Software, but references in the game say id Software.
Anyhow, I remember writing iD Software quite a lot when referring to the company during the pre-doom days, and probably even after that out of habit. Just a dorky misrepresentation that took off for some reason.
It's funny, I can picture the logo itself as iD, clear as day. I couldn't find it actually drawn that way though.
You've got it backwards, and a lot of news sources are screwing this up too, so don't feel bad:)
The issue at hand is not stripping DRM from iTunes songs, but allowing other companies to use Apple's DRM scheme such that their music will play on iTunes/iPod without a contract with Apple.
There is no DRM stripping going on here. It is in fact a way to *apply* DRM. Yay.
I also make software decisions for my organization, and like you, I will not be upgrading any machines to Windows Vista.
However, I realize that we are bound to Windows for the long term. Previous plans to switch to competitive (preferably OSS) software have always concluded that the initial bump is too high and too wide to overcome without dedicating considerable resources throughout the company. We wouldn't see a positive return for a long time, although eventually there will be a (relatively speaking) small one. In other words, the hassle is a tangent that is not in line with the goals of the company, and the payoff is minor enough that the effort is not considered to be worthwhile. Inevitable poor analogy: I have to mow a large lawn with a crappy little lawn mower. My time is valuable to me, and a new lawn mower would save time and over the long term pay off. However, a nice lawnmower is so immediately expensive that I really don't want to afford it now, and can't afford the effort of saving for it. The end goal is that the lawn look nice, which will occur whether it takes me an hour with a nice mower or four hours with a crappy mower. Thus I'll just continue mowing the lawn with my crappy lawn mower and not worry about it.
Ok, so I've taken the long road to get to my point: you're in a Windows shop, as am I. Neither of us will be upgrading to Vista, but it is inevitable that we will begin running Vista on new machines. It is inevitable that we will eventually have a majority of our machines running Vista. I don't know about you, but I've been installing the release candidates to get an idea of what I'll be seeing in the future. (and trying to optomistic about the obvious flaws in these beta releases..."what do you mean you can't find a driver for my CDROM drive? It's a CDROM drive, just fucking read it!")
It's also interesting to me to think back on my initial impressions of past MS operating systems. The only one that I actually *liked* and *upgraded to* was Windows 2000. A Windows OS that was hardware, software, and support friendly in terms of business use. When I first experienced Windows XP I hated it. I hated it for years. However, now I would much rather support our majority of XP machines than our minority of Win2K machines. Is XP a better operating system? Well, now that I've gotten over the realization that it isn't the best thing since sliced bread, I can say "yeah, it's a bit better."
Nowadays I don't pay much attention to hype and analyst bullshit, other than for personal amusement. I look at the features that I'll eventually be supporting and try to plan on how they'll affect me both negatively and positively.
Ah, ok. It looks like that's 250 jobs throughout the entire organization, which encompasses much more than just MySpace. Three hundred developers working on MySpace alone would be pretty insane.
Question to corporation: How many software engineers does it take to create a Myspace?
Answer: Three hundred. Three to do the programming, three for QA, and 294 to lay off right before Christmas.
Seriously, do you have a cite for that 300 figure? Most of the concepts behind software like MySpace are fairly trivial, with scalability being the most difficult hurdle. It seems like a reasonable number of developers would be twenty to thirty times fewer than 300.
Weird little article. Somehow it's lumping Vista and Office 2007 into one beast. While there will be some benefit to having Vista and Office 2007, neither is required by the other. Also in these numbers are backend services utilized primarily by Office, not Vista itself. It's really not correct to combine all Microsoft software into one cost, and then call it "the cost of running Vista."
The article also assumes that organizations upgrade operating systems. These are the kinds of assumptions that are easy when you're trying to come up with a high dollar figure. Perhaps some organizations do keep all of their operating systems at the same level, but really most outfits can operate just fine with a mixture of Win2K, XP, and eventually Vista. While each OS adds a little something handy from an administration point of view, the basic required GPO structure exists as far back as Win2K. Thus, in organizations like mine, OS upgrades simply do not happen.
Without any actual need to upgrade or mass-migrate to Vista, there is also no need to purchase new hardware soley for running Vista. Machines have an anticipated lifecycle, after which they are replaced. Additional machines are added as necessary. You put the current operating system on the new machines (well, you might wait for a service pack before deploying the latest OS, but that's besides the point). So the difference between buying a new or replacement machine that will run XP or Vista is nil. This was a cost you were going to incur and were planning for and has nothing to do with Vista.
The prices mentioned in the article are a bit out of whack, too. Firstly, a new machine is not $1500 - $2000 unless there is some specific need to purchase an expensive machine. Listing Vista's requirements as a means of jacking up the cost of a PC isn't appropriate because VISTA DOESN'T EXIST. Perhaps Microsoft was counting on the "average" PC being capable of running Vista by the time Vista was ready? No, they're dumb and they never think about things like that. Well, guess what, standard PCs now come with 1GB of RAM. Standard PCs come with 256MB video cards. Standard PCs come with giant hard drives. I've been paying almost the exact same cost for new machines in my organization for about 8-9 years. Between $900-1100, monitor included, will get you a machine that will last for 5 years of business use. Right now that machine happens to be an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1GB PC4200, MSI nVidia mobo, Geforce 7300GS 256MB, DVDRW, 120GB SATA, wireless keyboard/mouse, and 17" LCD monitor. And that includes Windows XP, BTW. That's coming in at *under* $1000. This machine will be retired in 2010 or 2011. Five years ago I would have paid the same price for what was a good machine five years ago.
The licensing costs from the article are a bit more on target, but again they assume that you're buying retail Vista and that you're suddenly switching over to MS Office. If you're getting your OS pre-installed or under corporate licensing you're not paying nearly that much. Assuming you're already an MS Office organization, then you're paying software assurance and you come out in a similar position as when you used to be able to buy upgrade versions (although with SA you tend to pay more than the old system).
So let's see here: replacing aging machines with new machines, which you were going to do anyhow, costs you maybe $150 in new OS costs if you're going the OEM route. It costs you nothing in additional MS Office licensing, because you were already paying for the seat. You're going to get MS Office 2007 as part of your SA, but let's assume it costs you $350 per seat over the long run, because I like making shit up. I'm coming up with $500 in software costs, of which only $150 has to do with Vista, although you would have paid roughly the same amount for Windows XP, which you would have needed anyhow. Even if Vista costs PC manufacturers more than XP, I'm not coming up with a figure anywheres near thousands of dollars.
"Do legs hinder or help people in their effort to train for and win the fifty-yard dash?"
Throughout the ages, human beings have relied on their legs for moving about. From walking to running to hopping, the human leg has indeed proven itself a most valuable and celebrated mobility-enabling appendage. It should come as no startling realization, then, to learn that most human sports are derived from activities that demonstrate the prowness of the leg. And perhaps no sport showcases the raw power of the leg than the fifty-yard-dash.
Oops, it's not supposed to be about the fifty-yard dash, but the importance or unimportance of the leg to training for and successfully running the fifty-yard dash. Good thing I already graduated from college, where I learned quickly that most professors can't write worth a damn anyhow. Perhaps that's the true objective of the SAT writing test - can you quickly write on any subject in such a way as to appeal to a narrow audience? If so, you can make it through the university system without much effort.
Agreed. Whether we're talking about an episode or an expansion, these concepts have been around for a long time. I'm not sure why anybody would think that something new is happening. It would simply be a throwback to the old days if companies started producing cheaper, shorter "episodes" instead of one big game with cheaper, shorter expansion packs.
While you might sell more units initially if you release a short single player game for $20, it gives players a whole lot of gameplay to decide that they don't really want to buy any more episodes. Do you come out ahead of the old $60, no refunds model? Assuming that your company is working on producing the same amount of content regardless, it seems safer lock fewer people in to the bigger price tag. You'd also be subject to more criticism, as now what would have been one game review turns into three, and it's not terribly common for reviews to get better as the length of time a game series has been on the market increases.
For me personally, I'd probably get pretty sick of waiting for episodes and would probably stop after one or two, UNLESS the game was really good and fit the episode model. To me that means a game that's not so engaging that I'm going to be pissed off having to wait six months for the next episode, but entertaining enough that it's replayable and I'll gladly pick up the next episode when it comes out. Games like Serious Sam fit this model....interestingly enough, it's similarly entertaining to old time games like Duke Nukem / Keen which were released as episodes.
Or we take all of this data and logical explanation and ask whether the correlation is strong enough to give us an accurate causation. I don't think you'll find many skeptics who deny the data itself - yes, it's warm now.
It is important to wonder if the verifiable human-created CO2 in the atmosphere, which accounts for only one third of one percent of all greenhouse gasses, is indeed responsible for major climate change. It doesn't seem likely, but without a good basis of comparison I am willing to believe it is possible. If this is indeed true then we might be screwed, because our craving for energy is not going to dissappear.
It's also important to recognize other changes that correlate with the recent warming trend that may provide an answer or partial answer: volcanic activity and the sun come to mind.
I think it's important also to realize that there are some well-respected scientists who do not believe that humans are the source of global warming. Not many, but they're out there and they're not all conspiracy/anti-conspiracy freaks.
Finally, there are plausible conspiracy sources on both sides of the argument. On one side, scientists who rely on public funding may knowingly or accidentally jump to conclusions that result in publication and future funding. On the other side, scientists being funded by industry are *always* going to be highly suspect. I'd be more willing to believe the publically funded scientist, but suspect that both sides are tainted to a degree. We all, as human beings, are well aware of the tendancy to defend an assumption to the death, regardless of the validity of opposing arguments.
The one upside of this debate is that reducing pollution and environmental destruction is a good thing. If global warming turns out to not be human caused, but we put forth an effort to reduce our impact on the environment because we thought it was human caused, well, I'm still happy about that. There is a downside to this, though, which is that we may be able to do *something* regardless of the cause, but without knowing the true cause we might be doing the wrong something.
I recognize in myself that I have a tendancy to be immediately skeptical of any bandwagon movement, some of which turn out to be completely valid and true. I don't think that my skepticism is unwarranted, however. Oh, and I voted for Gore much in part because of his past environmentalism.
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I always check the reviews before buying a game, and that silly little number does impact me. I am much more likely to buy a game with a score above 9 from the magazine and a similar user score than a game that scores below 9 in both categories. I tend to rely more on the player review numbers though, and ultimately use them to make my final decision. Actual player comments are also very nice. The whiners and the fanboys are easy to filter out, and a lot of people leave good comments about core game features that will have an impact on me. If I see the same complaints or cheers about an aspect of the game from several people, I tend to take those opinions very seriously. Likewise if I read a dozen comments about the game crashing and two comments about how the game never crashes and is awesome, then I'm going to assume the game has some issues and I might wait for the first round of patches. (I guess I'm mostly referring to gamespot, because it happened to be the game site that I found first however long ago and I don't feel like following multiple sites)
Here's an embarassing thing to admit: if I've been looking forward to a game and it gets an 8.9, I actually feel disappointed and I might take a few weeks to make a decision. But if that game gets a 9.0, I'm much more inclined to run out and grab it. Yeah, it's dumb. It's just like I know that $49.99 is only a penny away from $50, but it feels a lot more like $40.
One thing I realized as I was typing this is that while I'll look at the points the reviewer gives a game, I rarely ever read a professional review. They're simply too wordy and glossy. I'd rather just read some player comments about how "it sucks ass that you can't ride the donkey in multiplayer mode" than to try to discern these tidbits from the professional review.
"She said precinct workers began calling the board's officers at 6:15 a.m. to report that the cards -- which function like ATM cards and are handed to each voter as he or she arrives at the polls -- had not been delivered. Voters are supposed to insert their cards into the electronic voting machines so that the correct ballot will appear on screen. Without the cards, the voting machines cannot work."
If they were able to remember to deliver paper ballots to the polls, then they should be expected to be able to remember to deliver voter cards.
Old: piece of paper.
New: piece of plastic.
This has little to do with newfangled technology. It's just a transition period while everyone adjusts to the new system. I'm sure that by the next election there will be a sticky note on somebody's desk that reads: "Remember to deliver plastic cards to polls."
This would interest me as well. I had to take part in a legal action against an (ex)employee once in which I had to produce all sorts of logs as evidence. I work for a regulated company and am thus all too familiar with validation concepts relating to the control of electronic records. Since the logs I produced were just text with a virtually non-existant degree of authenticity, I figured that they would be considered weak evidence and that I would at the least have a lot of explaining to do in terms who has access to them, etc. But nope, the lawyers and the system were perfectly happy with these files that I could have completely falsified.
Perhaps that's the difference between a case involving a high priced defense attorney, and the average case with average defense.
I actually agree with you, and am glad to see that you were modded up.
If a copy protection scheme can prevent casual copying which would apply to the vast majority of the players, then it seems like it would be beneficial to the company. I've obtained games illegally and you know, it can be so frustrating and time consuming that it's usually better to just pony up the fifty bucks. It also *feels* wrong to go searching torrent sites loaded with porn links to find games and cracks. If games could be casually copied by simply making a copy of a CD, then it would be trivial for friends to make copies for friends, and it wouldn't feel as wrong to do. Even worse, it would be trivial to distribute ISOs of the game online without downloaders having to jump through any hoops to get it installed and running.
On the other hand, I don't like copy protection schemes that are invasive. In fact I can't stand them, and for those games that I have legally purchased I will still go looking for cracks to run them. Unfortunately it seems like this is becoming the norm as copy protection schemes try harder and harder to not just prevent casual copying, but all copying, which is a wasted effort that is bad for game companies and consumers both.
I would also say that it would be nice to be able to make backup media. However this isn't as necessary a requirement as it was back in the floppy days. With reasonable effort, it's not hard to make sure that nothing happens to a CD or DVD for the few months that a person will be playing a game, or even a couple years for a better game. How about a system where the manufacturer will send replacement media for a minimal fee, and/or in exchange for the broken media?
The one thing that chaps my ass more than anything about this whole copy protection business is that even though all this software has protection, we STILL can't return software to the store. Sure some places will let you, sometimes for a fee, but for the most part software is a no-returns item. So did I rush out and buy Oblivian when it came out, especially having loved Morrowind? Nope, I remember what a hog Morrowind was, so even though my machine was above the minimum requirements, I downloaded a cracked copy from the net to try it out. Guess what? It was unplayable, even at 640x480. Sure I could look around and move a bit, but combat was not possible when framerates would drop to 5 or less. Had I ran out to buy it I would have no recourse other than to ebay it for a loss. I guess I should have tried the demo...oh...wait... Had it run well I would have bought it. I feel the same about music purchasing. If I honestly like something for more than a few listens, I *will* be motivated to buy the actual product, and do so.
Since I'm blabbering, I might also mention that it can really suck for a family to have to purchase a copy of certain types of games for every computer in the home so that people can play together over the LAN. I'll never forget Total Annihilation and the countless hours I spent playing it with my family. Nor will I forget that only *ONE COPY* of the game was required for everyone to play. Good times.
Or imagine that you accidentally illegally sold enough software to buy yourself an airplane and a Lamborghini, do you really deserve to be locked up for six years?
This was a deliberate, willful act, showing complete disregard for personal responsibility within our society. Not only did he take advantage of corporations, but no doubt thousands of people who didn't know that the software they purchased was not legitimate. I know it sounds strange to those of us "in the know", but many of my collegues and friends have asked me over the years about these amazing deals they've found on software. I would also imagine that this person was a heavy spammer, in which case he played a role in the ongoing destruction of a communication system that was at one time simple, cheap, and beneficial to all.
While the rest of us scratch it out at real jobs or run our own legitimate businesses, driving around in Honda Civics and trying to stay ahead of the bills, this guy was essentially living it up.
I agree that our justice system is extremely flawed, but it's the only one we've got. Until it is fixed, we still have to maintain a system in which people are punished for their crimes. Six years sounds pretty hard, even considering the actual amount of time he'll problably spend is much less. I'm not sure what a better solution would be though. Six years of hardcore community service? Well, if I was the type of person with low enough ethics to consider making millions of dollars illegally, I might feel a little better about pursuing the action if I knew that I probably wouldn't serve any time behind bars. Sure it would suck to sell off my Hummer, my Lamborghini, my personal airplanes, and my fighter-jet simulator to pay restitution, but somehow I don't see that stopping me.
If he had stopped at paying off his wife's medical bills, I would feel more compassion, and the legal system probably would have too. The one shining bright spot of our system is that it is designed to consider each case individually. I'm very much against three strike systems and ridiculously high minimum sentences.
A program accepting its own code as input is not as paradoxical as it sounds, although it may conjure up feelings of dread rooted in memories of the halting problem proof back in college.:) A bug analyzer may find bugs within its own source code. A compiler can be used to compile its own source code. etc.
Does a lot of spam come from zombie machines though? Certainly a lot of spam comes from open relays, and a certain amount comes from inept web hosts (although I've leased servers, and most datacenters get very suspicious when your email traffic picks up). But how much spam comes from infected PCs with so many ISPs now blocking outgoing requests to port 25?
I run a small project web hosting company with about 30 customers. We used to offer outgoing SMTP services, and still do (password required), but the majority of our customers are now unable to use it. We now recommend that everyone use their ISP's outgoing mail server. Another issue we ran into was a whole lot of mail gets rejected if reverse DNS entries aren't configured properly, and this would also be a problem for zombie machines. Perhaps I'm thinking of zombie machines as hijacked PCs and the real problem is hijacked servers.
I would assume, and I recognize that I could be completely incorrect, that most spam today comes from mass mailing companies. These companies of course use devious methods to deliver messages, from targeting open relays to abusing web hosts to running servers in "anything goes" data centers.
The reason I don't think that the motivation is the same as virus writers is that almost all spam, aside from phishing attempts and obvious goofs, has a link to an actual website selling something. If I were a virus writing kind of guy and wanted to send out a zillion junk messages, they wouldn't be advertisements for viagra because I'd want some kind of recognition.
If I had to bet, my money would be on the low percentage success rate. That is, it's cheap to send a million emails, and if only a tiny percent of those messages result in a sale, it's probably worthwhile financially. Spam *must* be a money game. It just doesn't make sense to me otherwise. Consider how the web is also being overrun by "spammers": bogus block sites, bogus search sites, bogus link sites, all designed to make money off a tiny little click through rate.
Wouldn't it be nice if some elite group of movie-style good guy hackers got together to knock the shit out of spammers? I'm not sure if there's any other solution but to knock them out. Legislation is minimal help, but only in certain countries. Anti-spam software is a band-aid and doesn't lessen much the financial burden of spam. Unless everybody in the world all at once decides to switch email protocols, I don't know if this will ever stop. It's obscene.
I don't really even use personal email anymore. I don't care to keep on top of my filters so I just don't bother. I remember a time when I checked my email multiple times every hour. Now I check it once a week to see if something came in from an address that I've got a routing rule for. "Downloading 393 messages....one of which is legit." Fun.
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I started to really question the global warming problem when it started becoming the default cause behind all sorts of natural phenomena, and of course the cause behind global warming is supposedly human beings. Thus, human beings caused hurricane Katrina.
Ok, that sets off some major red flags in my mind.
After digging into the problem a little bit, I learned enough to know that I'm not convinced that human beings are the primary cause behind global warming. A) There is not a complete consensus, and there is potential for abuse of science on both sides of the fence. Not all naysayers are crackpots. B) Human-created CO2 accounts for less than one third of one percent of all greenhouse gases. I don't know if that's a significant number or not, but it sure doesn't seem as significant the figure often stated -- comparing only human-created C02 with total C02. C) There are alternative causes that do have a great deal of merit, namely the sun and volcanic activity. These alternate or partial causes are very real but seem to glazed over by the consensus. D) The correlation between industrialization and temperature increase seems iffy (fast ups and downs), and sort of ignores past temperature changes in recent history (1000-2000 years is recent in this case). The correlation also shows that temperatures rise prior to the increase in carbon dioxide, which I thought was one of the big reasons that global warming hype sort of died down years ago (I first learned of this particular fact at least 10 years ago).
So there are some questions that don't seem to have concrete answers, and it doesn't feel like all of the possible explanations have been thoroughly exhausted. When I then factor in the weight that I give to both fear and ego, I think it's highly plausible that global warming fear is just that: massive hysteria. Consider the evidence that the average person throws into the pool: "I know there is global warming because the weather is strange this winter/summer/spring/fall." Well, it's no wonder that the global warming theory is so prevalently believed -- the weather is *always* weird this year, and the *fact* that the Earth is currently warming does not mean that it's your fault.
It's important to me that we all be very environmentally aware. I think that reducing pollution and our natural resource requirements is extremely important, both for the future of humanity and for the rest of the critters on the planet. If we didn't cause global warming, though, then this is a major setback for critical thinking and in the worst case could damage the ideology of environmentalism and science. In a somewhat dangerous time when it seems like the average joe is willing to equate science with religion, the "entire scientific community" being completely wrong about something could be very damaging indeed.
Agreed.
Also keep in mind that if any of your friends or relatives have children, then no doubt the kids have all sorts of silly games on their existing computers that they won't want to lose -- or the latest version of proprietary instant messenger software with cute animated smilies might be pretty important. And what about those in your circle who are currently using Microsoft Money or similar for paying bills? Turbo Tax!?? Or people who have some silly hallmark greeting card software? Or people who pay their bills online to websites that require the use of Internet Explorer (I personally have to use IE to pay three of my bills...it's pretty much the only time I have to use it). The parent poster has a good point too about peripherals...there isn't going to be a Linux setup CD in the box with a newly purchased cheapo HP printer, and the NikonView software that came with their new camera isn't going to work (yeah, people actually LIKE that crap). Wine? I don't think so, not for the average joe.
So you should really be asking yourself: "which of my friends or family members is absolutely fed up with using the computer *because* of Microsoft Windows", and send them a CD. You might be surprised to learn that many people aren't terribly unhappy with their computers, even with the extra pain of having to run anti-malware software.
Perhaps what you could do is send them a CD containing the most popular OSS applications that run on Windows. Just getting people to switch to Firefox can make a big difference in their overall experience.
We have to remember that while distributions like Ubuntu are indeed great, they're just operating systems, and not everyone can appreciate a good operating system. The problem with getting regular folks to switch operating systems is that they really have to *switch* (because they're not going to hassle with a multi-boot). It's like giving somebody a new toolbox for christmas and then saying, "here's the catch, you have to throw out your old toolbox. Oh, and you'll also have to throw out all of your existing tools, but the new box is already loaded up with tools for everything that I think you do...metric only, but seriously, they're great. Merry Christmas."
So, my recommendation: a) when setting somebody WITHOUT a computer up with a new system, get them started with Ubuntu or similar. b) If somebody is fed up with their computer because they're constantly getting hosed by viruses and malware, try to get them to switch. c) If somebody already has a computer and they're using it just fine, leave them alone; the amount of change they might have to go through could be a great deal more than you're anticipating, and they might not be more happy in the long run anyhow.
joke /johk/ noun, verb, joked, joking.
-noun
1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act: He tells very funny jokes. She played a joke on him.
The motivation here is obvious: Microsoft is trying to find a way get its hands on the source code for this new "Linux" technology.
I think that you're sort of on the right track with your thoughts here, but you make a lot of claims and assumptions that aren't quite correct.
First, Linux is "growing", as in "getting better", yes - especially the distributions you mentioned. However, what these distributions are doing is becoming more home-PC-friendly. They are essentially becoming more like Windows. Despite its shortcomings (and I am no big fan), Windows is an operating system that any boner on the planet can install and use. Linux distributions like Ubuntu want to provide this same experience, but without all of the shortcomings of Windows. As an Ubuntu user myself, I don't think it's quite there yet. Using just the default software selection and features though, yeah it's real close.
Second, there are more user types than the ones you list. I think you actually left out what is probably the largest user group: ordinary home users. These people use the computer for the web, email, personal finances, school reports, media, and maybe the occasional game. These people are *very* important, because they are just savvy enough to use a computer, but dumb enough that even the simplest of problems or a procedure with more than three steps can bring them down. The operating system must dumb itself down to cater to this crowd, while still providing a robust, secure experience. Not easy.
Third, your assumptions about what business users want are a bit off. While the claim that business users don't trust things that are free is pretty common, that's really not the reason they're not jumping all over free software. The problem here is twofold: first they want to use the software that they've invested large sums of money in, both in purchase/support costs and customization costs. Most often this software will be running on Windows, and that's just the way it is. Secondly, the business world can be more efficient when everybody is running the same basic software, such as Microsoft Office. While software of this type can often import and export to other formats, they are not fully feature-compatible, which can be important when you're doing something like change tracking in a legal document that's flying around between two or more organizations.
Fourth, I believe that you're mixing up the needs of hardcore gamers and business users. It's the gamers that could get away with Windows 98 forever. The giant improvements from Win9x to NT are more important to business users who can't afford to have things break. A gamer will benefit also (as will all user groups), but as long as the game runs fast, that's all that matters. These guys are constantly screwing around with the system anyhow. At any rate, I don't think that serious gamers are as giant a force as ordinary users and business users when it comes to OS dominance, especially with consoles having come along so far. The PC Gaming section of your local game shop is no doubt a pretty small portion of the store by now.
What holds back Linux on the desktop the most at this point is that most home and business users don't care about the operating system or know enough to know why they should care about the operating system. They just want to run this or that program. Security problems? Hey, it's just part of running a computer, that's why I bought Norton Awesome Internet Security Defender Virus Malware Spyware Destructionator 2006.
"Organic" beef is often $10/lb at places like food co-ops. In fact most organic meats are $10 a pound or more here.
While I can appreciate the better taste of these meats and like to support local farmers and ranchers, I think it's pretty outrageous to pay that much. I get ground beef for $1.99 - $2.99/lb. I don't worry as much about safety after the crackdowns in the industry a decade or two ago. I do make an effort to at least buy meat raised and processed in the US.
I just tried to SoD demo and ID SOFTWARE appears, as does id Software. No iD software. 1992.
http://www.mobygames.com/company/id-software-inc/l ogos
Initially the logo said "ID," which lead some people, myself included, to think it was an acronym or short for "identification." Way back then a lot of people also started writing the name as "iD." I don't think it was ever officially iD though. Looks like on the Wolf 3D box, for instance, they had ID Software, but references in the game say id Software.
Anyhow, I remember writing iD Software quite a lot when referring to the company during the pre-doom days, and probably even after that out of habit. Just a dorky misrepresentation that took off for some reason.
It's funny, I can picture the logo itself as iD, clear as day. I couldn't find it actually drawn that way though.
You've got it backwards, and a lot of news sources are screwing this up too, so don't feel bad :)
The issue at hand is not stripping DRM from iTunes songs, but allowing other companies to use Apple's DRM scheme such that their music will play on iTunes/iPod without a contract with Apple.
There is no DRM stripping going on here. It is in fact a way to *apply* DRM. Yay.
Yeah, and the content of p2p networks is always consistant.
I also make software decisions for my organization, and like you, I will not be upgrading any machines to Windows Vista.
However, I realize that we are bound to Windows for the long term. Previous plans to switch to competitive (preferably OSS) software have always concluded that the initial bump is too high and too wide to overcome without dedicating considerable resources throughout the company. We wouldn't see a positive return for a long time, although eventually there will be a (relatively speaking) small one. In other words, the hassle is a tangent that is not in line with the goals of the company, and the payoff is minor enough that the effort is not considered to be worthwhile. Inevitable poor analogy: I have to mow a large lawn with a crappy little lawn mower. My time is valuable to me, and a new lawn mower would save time and over the long term pay off. However, a nice lawnmower is so immediately expensive that I really don't want to afford it now, and can't afford the effort of saving for it. The end goal is that the lawn look nice, which will occur whether it takes me an hour with a nice mower or four hours with a crappy mower. Thus I'll just continue mowing the lawn with my crappy lawn mower and not worry about it.
Ok, so I've taken the long road to get to my point: you're in a Windows shop, as am I. Neither of us will be upgrading to Vista, but it is inevitable that we will begin running Vista on new machines. It is inevitable that we will eventually have a majority of our machines running Vista. I don't know about you, but I've been installing the release candidates to get an idea of what I'll be seeing in the future. (and trying to optomistic about the obvious flaws in these beta releases..."what do you mean you can't find a driver for my CDROM drive? It's a CDROM drive, just fucking read it!")
It's also interesting to me to think back on my initial impressions of past MS operating systems. The only one that I actually *liked* and *upgraded to* was Windows 2000. A Windows OS that was hardware, software, and support friendly in terms of business use. When I first experienced Windows XP I hated it. I hated it for years. However, now I would much rather support our majority of XP machines than our minority of Win2K machines. Is XP a better operating system? Well, now that I've gotten over the realization that it isn't the best thing since sliced bread, I can say "yeah, it's a bit better."
Nowadays I don't pay much attention to hype and analyst bullshit, other than for personal amusement. I look at the features that I'll eventually be supporting and try to plan on how they'll affect me both negatively and positively.
Ah, ok. It looks like that's 250 jobs throughout the entire organization, which encompasses much more than just MySpace. Three hundred developers working on MySpace alone would be pretty insane.
Question to corporation: How many software engineers does it take to create a Myspace?
Answer: Three hundred. Three to do the programming, three for QA, and 294 to lay off right before Christmas.
Seriously, do you have a cite for that 300 figure? Most of the concepts behind software like MySpace are fairly trivial, with scalability being the most difficult hurdle. It seems like a reasonable number of developers would be twenty to thirty times fewer than 300.
Weird little article. Somehow it's lumping Vista and Office 2007 into one beast. While there will be some benefit to having Vista and Office 2007, neither is required by the other. Also in these numbers are backend services utilized primarily by Office, not Vista itself. It's really not correct to combine all Microsoft software into one cost, and then call it "the cost of running Vista."
The article also assumes that organizations upgrade operating systems. These are the kinds of assumptions that are easy when you're trying to come up with a high dollar figure. Perhaps some organizations do keep all of their operating systems at the same level, but really most outfits can operate just fine with a mixture of Win2K, XP, and eventually Vista. While each OS adds a little something handy from an administration point of view, the basic required GPO structure exists as far back as Win2K. Thus, in organizations like mine, OS upgrades simply do not happen.
Without any actual need to upgrade or mass-migrate to Vista, there is also no need to purchase new hardware soley for running Vista. Machines have an anticipated lifecycle, after which they are replaced. Additional machines are added as necessary. You put the current operating system on the new machines (well, you might wait for a service pack before deploying the latest OS, but that's besides the point). So the difference between buying a new or replacement machine that will run XP or Vista is nil. This was a cost you were going to incur and were planning for and has nothing to do with Vista.
The prices mentioned in the article are a bit out of whack, too. Firstly, a new machine is not $1500 - $2000 unless there is some specific need to purchase an expensive machine. Listing Vista's requirements as a means of jacking up the cost of a PC isn't appropriate because VISTA DOESN'T EXIST. Perhaps Microsoft was counting on the "average" PC being capable of running Vista by the time Vista was ready? No, they're dumb and they never think about things like that. Well, guess what, standard PCs now come with 1GB of RAM. Standard PCs come with 256MB video cards. Standard PCs come with giant hard drives. I've been paying almost the exact same cost for new machines in my organization for about 8-9 years. Between $900-1100, monitor included, will get you a machine that will last for 5 years of business use. Right now that machine happens to be an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1GB PC4200, MSI nVidia mobo, Geforce 7300GS 256MB, DVDRW, 120GB SATA, wireless keyboard/mouse, and 17" LCD monitor. And that includes Windows XP, BTW. That's coming in at *under* $1000. This machine will be retired in 2010 or 2011. Five years ago I would have paid the same price for what was a good machine five years ago.
The licensing costs from the article are a bit more on target, but again they assume that you're buying retail Vista and that you're suddenly switching over to MS Office. If you're getting your OS pre-installed or under corporate licensing you're not paying nearly that much. Assuming you're already an MS Office organization, then you're paying software assurance and you come out in a similar position as when you used to be able to buy upgrade versions (although with SA you tend to pay more than the old system).
So let's see here: replacing aging machines with new machines, which you were going to do anyhow, costs you maybe $150 in new OS costs if you're going the OEM route. It costs you nothing in additional MS Office licensing, because you were already paying for the seat. You're going to get MS Office 2007 as part of your SA, but let's assume it costs you $350 per seat over the long run, because I like making shit up. I'm coming up with $500 in software costs, of which only $150 has to do with Vista, although you would have paid roughly the same amount for Windows XP, which you would have needed anyhow. Even if Vista costs PC manufacturers more than XP, I'm not coming up with a figure anywheres near thousands of dollars.
Ok so the ar
A better prompt may have been:
"Do legs hinder or help people in their effort to train for and win the fifty-yard dash?"
Throughout the ages, human beings have relied on their legs for moving about. From walking to running to hopping, the human leg has indeed proven itself a most valuable and celebrated mobility-enabling appendage. It should come as no startling realization, then, to learn that most human sports are derived from activities that demonstrate the prowness of the leg. And perhaps no sport showcases the raw power of the leg than the fifty-yard-dash.
Oops, it's not supposed to be about the fifty-yard dash, but the importance or unimportance of the leg to training for and successfully running the fifty-yard dash. Good thing I already graduated from college, where I learned quickly that most professors can't write worth a damn anyhow. Perhaps that's the true objective of the SAT writing test - can you quickly write on any subject in such a way as to appeal to a narrow audience? If so, you can make it through the university system without much effort.
Agreed. Whether we're talking about an episode or an expansion, these concepts have been around for a long time. I'm not sure why anybody would think that something new is happening. It would simply be a throwback to the old days if companies started producing cheaper, shorter "episodes" instead of one big game with cheaper, shorter expansion packs.
While you might sell more units initially if you release a short single player game for $20, it gives players a whole lot of gameplay to decide that they don't really want to buy any more episodes. Do you come out ahead of the old $60, no refunds model? Assuming that your company is working on producing the same amount of content regardless, it seems safer lock fewer people in to the bigger price tag. You'd also be subject to more criticism, as now what would have been one game review turns into three, and it's not terribly common for reviews to get better as the length of time a game series has been on the market increases.
For me personally, I'd probably get pretty sick of waiting for episodes and would probably stop after one or two, UNLESS the game was really good and fit the episode model. To me that means a game that's not so engaging that I'm going to be pissed off having to wait six months for the next episode, but entertaining enough that it's replayable and I'll gladly pick up the next episode when it comes out. Games like Serious Sam fit this model....interestingly enough, it's similarly entertaining to old time games like Duke Nukem / Keen which were released as episodes.
Or we take all of this data and logical explanation and ask whether the correlation is strong enough to give us an accurate causation. I don't think you'll find many skeptics who deny the data itself - yes, it's warm now.
It is important to wonder if the verifiable human-created CO2 in the atmosphere, which accounts for only one third of one percent of all greenhouse gasses, is indeed responsible for major climate change. It doesn't seem likely, but without a good basis of comparison I am willing to believe it is possible. If this is indeed true then we might be screwed, because our craving for energy is not going to dissappear.
It's also important to recognize other changes that correlate with the recent warming trend that may provide an answer or partial answer: volcanic activity and the sun come to mind.
I think it's important also to realize that there are some well-respected scientists who do not believe that humans are the source of global warming. Not many, but they're out there and they're not all conspiracy/anti-conspiracy freaks.
Finally, there are plausible conspiracy sources on both sides of the argument. On one side, scientists who rely on public funding may knowingly or accidentally jump to conclusions that result in publication and future funding. On the other side, scientists being funded by industry are *always* going to be highly suspect. I'd be more willing to believe the publically funded scientist, but suspect that both sides are tainted to a degree. We all, as human beings, are well aware of the tendancy to defend an assumption to the death, regardless of the validity of opposing arguments.
The one upside of this debate is that reducing pollution and environmental destruction is a good thing. If global warming turns out to not be human caused, but we put forth an effort to reduce our impact on the environment because we thought it was human caused, well, I'm still happy about that. There is a downside to this, though, which is that we may be able to do *something* regardless of the cause, but without knowing the true cause we might be doing the wrong something.
I recognize in myself that I have a tendancy to be immediately skeptical of any bandwagon movement, some of which turn out to be completely valid and true. I don't think that my skepticism is unwarranted, however. Oh, and I voted for Gore much in part because of his past environmentalism.
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I always check the reviews before buying a game, and that silly little number does impact me. I am much more likely to buy a game with a score above 9 from the magazine and a similar user score than a game that scores below 9 in both categories. I tend to rely more on the player review numbers though, and ultimately use them to make my final decision. Actual player comments are also very nice. The whiners and the fanboys are easy to filter out, and a lot of people leave good comments about core game features that will have an impact on me. If I see the same complaints or cheers about an aspect of the game from several people, I tend to take those opinions very seriously. Likewise if I read a dozen comments about the game crashing and two comments about how the game never crashes and is awesome, then I'm going to assume the game has some issues and I might wait for the first round of patches. (I guess I'm mostly referring to gamespot, because it happened to be the game site that I found first however long ago and I don't feel like following multiple sites)
Here's an embarassing thing to admit: if I've been looking forward to a game and it gets an 8.9, I actually feel disappointed and I might take a few weeks to make a decision. But if that game gets a 9.0, I'm much more inclined to run out and grab it. Yeah, it's dumb. It's just like I know that $49.99 is only a penny away from $50, but it feels a lot more like $40.
One thing I realized as I was typing this is that while I'll look at the points the reviewer gives a game, I rarely ever read a professional review. They're simply too wordy and glossy. I'd rather just read some player comments about how "it sucks ass that you can't ride the donkey in multiplayer mode" than to try to discern these tidbits from the professional review.
"She said precinct workers began calling the board's officers at 6:15 a.m. to report that the cards -- which function like ATM cards and are handed to each voter as he or she arrives at the polls -- had not been delivered. Voters are supposed to insert their cards into the electronic voting machines so that the correct ballot will appear on screen. Without the cards, the voting machines cannot work."
If they were able to remember to deliver paper ballots to the polls, then they should be expected to be able to remember to deliver voter cards.
Old: piece of paper.
New: piece of plastic.
This has little to do with newfangled technology. It's just a transition period while everyone adjusts to the new system. I'm sure that by the next election there will be a sticky note on somebody's desk that reads: "Remember to deliver plastic cards to polls."
This would interest me as well. I had to take part in a legal action against an (ex)employee once in which I had to produce all sorts of logs as evidence. I work for a regulated company and am thus all too familiar with validation concepts relating to the control of electronic records. Since the logs I produced were just text with a virtually non-existant degree of authenticity, I figured that they would be considered weak evidence and that I would at the least have a lot of explaining to do in terms who has access to them, etc. But nope, the lawyers and the system were perfectly happy with these files that I could have completely falsified.
Perhaps that's the difference between a case involving a high priced defense attorney, and the average case with average defense.
I actually agree with you, and am glad to see that you were modded up.
If a copy protection scheme can prevent casual copying which would apply to the vast majority of the players, then it seems like it would be beneficial to the company. I've obtained games illegally and you know, it can be so frustrating and time consuming that it's usually better to just pony up the fifty bucks. It also *feels* wrong to go searching torrent sites loaded with porn links to find games and cracks. If games could be casually copied by simply making a copy of a CD, then it would be trivial for friends to make copies for friends, and it wouldn't feel as wrong to do. Even worse, it would be trivial to distribute ISOs of the game online without downloaders having to jump through any hoops to get it installed and running.
On the other hand, I don't like copy protection schemes that are invasive. In fact I can't stand them, and for those games that I have legally purchased I will still go looking for cracks to run them. Unfortunately it seems like this is becoming the norm as copy protection schemes try harder and harder to not just prevent casual copying, but all copying, which is a wasted effort that is bad for game companies and consumers both.
I would also say that it would be nice to be able to make backup media. However this isn't as necessary a requirement as it was back in the floppy days. With reasonable effort, it's not hard to make sure that nothing happens to a CD or DVD for the few months that a person will be playing a game, or even a couple years for a better game. How about a system where the manufacturer will send replacement media for a minimal fee, and/or in exchange for the broken media?
The one thing that chaps my ass more than anything about this whole copy protection business is that even though all this software has protection, we STILL can't return software to the store. Sure some places will let you, sometimes for a fee, but for the most part software is a no-returns item. So did I rush out and buy Oblivian when it came out, especially having loved Morrowind? Nope, I remember what a hog Morrowind was, so even though my machine was above the minimum requirements, I downloaded a cracked copy from the net to try it out. Guess what? It was unplayable, even at 640x480. Sure I could look around and move a bit, but combat was not possible when framerates would drop to 5 or less. Had I ran out to buy it I would have no recourse other than to ebay it for a loss. I guess I should have tried the demo...oh...wait... Had it run well I would have bought it. I feel the same about music purchasing. If I honestly like something for more than a few listens, I *will* be motivated to buy the actual product, and do so.
Since I'm blabbering, I might also mention that it can really suck for a family to have to purchase a copy of certain types of games for every computer in the home so that people can play together over the LAN. I'll never forget Total Annihilation and the countless hours I spent playing it with my family. Nor will I forget that only *ONE COPY* of the game was required for everyone to play. Good times.
Or imagine that you accidentally illegally sold enough software to buy yourself an airplane and a Lamborghini, do you really deserve to be locked up for six years?
This was a deliberate, willful act, showing complete disregard for personal responsibility within our society. Not only did he take advantage of corporations, but no doubt thousands of people who didn't know that the software they purchased was not legitimate. I know it sounds strange to those of us "in the know", but many of my collegues and friends have asked me over the years about these amazing deals they've found on software. I would also imagine that this person was a heavy spammer, in which case he played a role in the ongoing destruction of a communication system that was at one time simple, cheap, and beneficial to all.
While the rest of us scratch it out at real jobs or run our own legitimate businesses, driving around in Honda Civics and trying to stay ahead of the bills, this guy was essentially living it up.
I agree that our justice system is extremely flawed, but it's the only one we've got. Until it is fixed, we still have to maintain a system in which people are punished for their crimes. Six years sounds pretty hard, even considering the actual amount of time he'll problably spend is much less. I'm not sure what a better solution would be though. Six years of hardcore community service? Well, if I was the type of person with low enough ethics to consider making millions of dollars illegally, I might feel a little better about pursuing the action if I knew that I probably wouldn't serve any time behind bars. Sure it would suck to sell off my Hummer, my Lamborghini, my personal airplanes, and my fighter-jet simulator to pay restitution, but somehow I don't see that stopping me.
If he had stopped at paying off his wife's medical bills, I would feel more compassion, and the legal system probably would have too. The one shining bright spot of our system is that it is designed to consider each case individually. I'm very much against three strike systems and ridiculously high minimum sentences.
That was my point.
:) A bug analyzer may find bugs within its own source code. A compiler can be used to compile its own source code. etc.
A program accepting its own code as input is not as paradoxical as it sounds, although it may conjure up feelings of dread rooted in memories of the halting problem proof back in college.
Well, can a compiler be used to compile a new version of itself?
Does a lot of spam come from zombie machines though? Certainly a lot of spam comes from open relays, and a certain amount comes from inept web hosts (although I've leased servers, and most datacenters get very suspicious when your email traffic picks up). But how much spam comes from infected PCs with so many ISPs now blocking outgoing requests to port 25?
I run a small project web hosting company with about 30 customers. We used to offer outgoing SMTP services, and still do (password required), but the majority of our customers are now unable to use it. We now recommend that everyone use their ISP's outgoing mail server. Another issue we ran into was a whole lot of mail gets rejected if reverse DNS entries aren't configured properly, and this would also be a problem for zombie machines. Perhaps I'm thinking of zombie machines as hijacked PCs and the real problem is hijacked servers.
I would assume, and I recognize that I could be completely incorrect, that most spam today comes from mass mailing companies. These companies of course use devious methods to deliver messages, from targeting open relays to abusing web hosts to running servers in "anything goes" data centers.
The reason I don't think that the motivation is the same as virus writers is that almost all spam, aside from phishing attempts and obvious goofs, has a link to an actual website selling something. If I were a virus writing kind of guy and wanted to send out a zillion junk messages, they wouldn't be advertisements for viagra because I'd want some kind of recognition.
If I had to bet, my money would be on the low percentage success rate. That is, it's cheap to send a million emails, and if only a tiny percent of those messages result in a sale, it's probably worthwhile financially. Spam *must* be a money game. It just doesn't make sense to me otherwise. Consider how the web is also being overrun by "spammers": bogus block sites, bogus search sites, bogus link sites, all designed to make money off a tiny little click through rate.
Wouldn't it be nice if some elite group of movie-style good guy hackers got together to knock the shit out of spammers? I'm not sure if there's any other solution but to knock them out. Legislation is minimal help, but only in certain countries. Anti-spam software is a band-aid and doesn't lessen much the financial burden of spam. Unless everybody in the world all at once decides to switch email protocols, I don't know if this will ever stop. It's obscene.
I don't really even use personal email anymore. I don't care to keep on top of my filters so I just don't bother. I remember a time when I checked my email multiple times every hour. Now I check it once a week to see if something came in from an address that I've got a routing rule for. "Downloading 393 messages....one of which is legit." Fun.