I dunno about that, although I suppose 'feels' is fairly subjective. We use Thinkpads at work...probably newer models, I don't know, mine's a T400...but it definitely feels like a cheap piece of shit to me. I know from the travel I've done with it already that it's fairly sturdy...but it _feels_ far inferior to my newer personal laptop, which is an HP dv6t (though about on par with my old Dell -- which was from their business line, a Vostro 1000.) If I squeeze my HP, it's fairly solid; if I squeeze the Thinkpad, it bends visibly and feels like it's going to crack. I'm actually somewhat astonished the plastic hasn't cracked already (and I've only had the thing a couple months.)
Like what? When was there ever a console that would stack? I've never seen one...maybe you could claim the original X-box, but that's all I can think of and even that wouldn't work all that well. Most of the others I know of, for CDs or cartridges, were all top-loading....
Tell that to the people who received aid from Occupy Sandy when FEMA and the Red Cross were nowhere to be found; or to the people who have had thousands of dollars of debt erased by Rolling Jubilee. Or those facing foreclosure who had their homes saved by Occupiers.
I get it, you don't think political activism can ever bring change and nothing I say will change your mind....but OWS has done quite a lot of good with real, concrete action as well:
We engaged and educated a large number of people about political issues that the mainstream media refuses to cover.
We provide food and some semblance of shelter to many who had neither.
And above all we did what any political action must - make noise and make change. We've purchased and abolished millions of dollars of debt. We've stopped home foreclosures. We filled (and continue to fill) the gaps of mainstream disaster relief organizations. We provided networking and training for activists. And we altered the political discourse of the nation.
And even if we'd accomplished nothing, who cares? It wasn't "on someone else's dime" -- nobody was forced to pay for a thing related to occupy, except for the police's repression. Everything else was donated by supporters.
First, way to take partial, out of context quotes. The first point you make I've already responded tip of you actually read what I posted.
Secondly....Nothing is spontaneous. Obviously you're not going to get hundreds of people out just by....Not doing anything. So yea, the idea was published by adbusters. That doesn't make it astroturf. First, anyone who was there, anyone who spent more than five seconds looking at it knows that. Astroturfers generally try to hide who is behind the campaign. Secondly, they published an idea...that's all. They didn't pay people to attend, not did they provide any material support for the event. What they did is pretty much equivalent too creating a Facebook event.
Finally, if the park is fully public, why was the nypd able to force everyone out at the request of the property developer and with the help of private security? That's why OWS later moved to union square and other parks before the permanent occupation finally dissolved.
Zucotti park wasn't planned. I was there on day one, originally the plan was to occupy Wall Street itself...but the entire area around it for several blocks was barricaded by the NYPD requiring a corporate ID to walk down the public streets...So we marched for a while until coming across Zucotti, at which point people basically decided "screw it, let's camp here!"
Lawyers wouldn't have made that decision. Zucotti is private property, while there is case law on the books protecting coming on sidewalks for protests.
As for occupy having a fully formed website....big Fuckin deal, so does everything these days. Not hard to find a college kid to buy a domain and install WordPress. Please tell me what corporations were funding the dozen student orgs I did that for in college....because we sure could have used that money....and why the hell did I pay for all those out of my own pocket?
I personally use the dvorak layout and love it, and I think it's certainly much easier to use and far lower stress. However, aside from individual cases, every study I'm aware of has concluded that dvorak doesn't actually improve to typing speeds. So while I personally think you should try it anyway, it might not help with this particular goal.
That may be the biggest market right now, but that doesn't mean there aren't significant areas where this may be useful. Independent podcasts would be a great one -- currently most of those don't have any transcriptions available, but there are a number that I personally would follow if I could read them instead of listening. Conferences are another great one. Generally you'll get partial transcriptions of keynote speeches and that's about all they can do. A service like this might make full transcriptions of all sessions possible (I've been to numerous conferences where they record hundreds of sessions but don't transcribe anything at all.) News reports is also a great one. I frequently read transcriptions from Democracy Now!. Those could probably be done faster and cheaper than with this, and they're usually rush transcripts anyway and tend to contain a few minor inaccuracies, so that's not a huge problem.
Perhaps part of the reason audio transcription is such a limited market is precisely because it's so expensive and difficult. This kind of idea could change that and open up entire new market segments.
You do realize what these lists ACTUALLY are, right? Yes, they include rapists and molesters. They also include people who got drunk and pissed in the bushes that one time on college, or went streaking, or skinny-dipping (basically any form of public nudity) or sent topless pictures of themselves to their significant other when they were 17......
Lots of ways to end up on these lists. Some are not even in your control.
Bradley Manning broke the law. Wikileaks did not. They had no obligation to keep that information secret, and are protected (even as a non-US entity) by the first amendment protections for free speech and a free press. Same reason it was legal for the NYT to publish the "Pentagon papers" in the 70s even though they remained classified until last year.
The US government has itself stated the same thing. If what Wikileaks did was illegal, they would have been prosecuted. They were not.
Not sure if you are aware, but the concept of bank cards does exist and is used quite extensively in the US; the difference is just that it's become something usually deployed alongside regular credit card systems. For example, I only have one card, my bank card. It's compatible with both the visa and the star networks. When I use it at an ATM, it uses the star (bank) network; when I use it online it uses the visa network. When I use it at a store I have the option of using either network. Star network requires a pin number, takes the money immediately from my checking account, and offers very little protection from fraudulent transactions. The visa network requires just a signature (and many stores don't even do that for small purchases), usually takes the money out of the same account immediately (though some purchases take a day or two) and I'm pretty much 100% protected from fraudulent charges. Some stores will refuse visa because of the extra fee, in which case I can still use the same card from the same account...but I always prefer visa because those fees provide me with extra protection.
My mother is your stereotypical baby boomer who can't figure out tech...can't figure out how to connect a new monitor to a desktop; asks me every time I'm home what the difference is between an app and a mobile site....and she's been using Ubuntu for a few years now. Of course, even though the menu is at the top, all the icons are different, all the names are different...she still can't understand that is not Windows.
Thing is, people like that see computers as an appliance where they've been trained on certain tasks. Replicate those tasks and you're good to go. In her case, she uses thunderbird instead of outlook express, open office, and still has Firefox. And that's all she uses. And now I don't have to worry about making sure antivirus or a firewall is running and up to date (she'll never get that, and it's amazing how she can somehow end up with those disabled every time.) So she can't go buy any random software and install it. Doesn't matter. She wouldn't be able to do that on Windows either, and she'd need me to even know that she wanted to in the first place.
When she used Windows I was fixing the pc every time I came home. With Linux, I haven't touched the thing since I set it up a couple years ago. For people like that (and their family geeks,) it actually is a better choice.
These aren't regular proxy servers. They're web proxies. Just a regular web server running one of the standard web proxy scripts -- used to use cgiproxy, then phpproxy, now it looks like he's switched to Glype proxy. It's just a generic web server running a generic PHP script -- I fail to see how that is cause for a ban.
They're not regular proxy servers; just an apache server hosting PHP proxy and some other CGI web proxy scripts. I don't believe there's any way to use them to proxy spam.
Double confirmation of opt-in, two methods to unsubscribe at the top of every message, legitimate content, low volume, and no tracking features (all messages are plain text).
I've been a subscriber since 2005 (just looked that up for a different comment; I never delete email) and this list is as far from spam as you can get. Shit, I've replied to those messages and gotten a response from him personally (Still have those too.)
If you still think this is spam, then apparently by your definition I have literally never received an email that wasn't. He provides a great service and runs a clean list. I'm a huge fan if you haven't noticed...
Been on the list since late 2005 and I never delete an email, so I can confirm.
You subscribe at his website and you get a confirmation request email. You confirm, and it sends another message confirming that you've been added. The content is legitimate, the volume is fairly low, every email gives two unsubscribe methods in the first paragraph of the message (click a link or reply with unsubscribe) and all messages are plain text.
Hence the words "frequent contributor" at the top.
I've been using his service for at least six years. It's as far from spam as you can get. Certainly far less spammy than the emails from newegg or Amazon (which is among the worst!) or any of the others that have no problem at all getting through spam filters. Multiple ways to unsubscribe right at the top of every message, verified opt-in, low volume, no embedded tracking features (all plain text), and legitimate content.
So what the hell else do you want? Should he start collecting phone numbers and personally call each subscriber to confirm before sending each message???
I'm on this particular mailing list, so I can confirm that he makes unsubscribing quite easier. Easier than any other list I've ever been on in fact. Every email has the following text as the first paragraph:
[You are receiving this because you subscribed to the Circumventor distribution list. To unsubscribe from this list, click here: http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/cv-unsub.html or reply with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject.]
RTFS. Hotmail confirmed that the portion of users marking it as spam was extremely small.
Furthermore, do you realize how many users will click the 'spam' button when they fully know it's something they subscribed to simply because they can't be bothered to take half a second to click the prominent unsubscribe link or send a reply? These people are trashing spam filters. And I know they're out there, because I got it all the time in college. Ran a student club with a mailing list of around 400 users (out of 40k+ students)...Email address were collected and added by hand, one at a time. Each message was typed and sent by hand from an officer's personal email account. And each one had an unsubscribe link highlighted in standard font at the bottom of the page. We'd still get a handful of 'this message reported as spam' emails with every single message we sent out. Yea, obviously some users didn't want our mailings, but they definitely opted in and we couldn't have made it easier to opt out...instead they chose to try to have our messages blocked from all users of that email service.
Point being, just because some people report it as spam doesn't mean it is. Also, the percentage reporting it for us would have been orders of magnitude higher than in this case and we still never got blacklisted.
[Quote]Email was meant for a Person to send a message to another person or a small group of people, usually with people that you have some connection too.[/quote]
[Citation needed]
Email is Electronic Mail. You have large mailing lists like these with physical mail; you'd have to be an idiot to have thought something similar wouldn't be developed with email.
FWIW, I'm on that list. And if I was using hotmail or Yahoo I would be PISSED about missing those messages. Been on it since highschool where I used them to bypass the school's web filters (occasionally teachers would even promote these sites because we literally couldn't do our work without them); today I still use them for testing and occasionally at work if, for example, I need a document from scribd (why that is blocked I'll never understand...)
I've been on his list for around six years, and as far as I can tell, everything he says in the article is 100% accurate.
Also worth noting that he submits articles about these things to Slashdot quite regularly. I recall one a few months back where he was first considering this exact experiment. I'd go find it, but I'm posting from my phone.
As a long-time subscriber to his list (at least 6 years), no, he's absolutely not. He provides a fantastic service and does a damn good job of ensuring only those who want the messages are receiving them. And I get less than one message per month from that list. If he's a spammer, so is literally every single person or organization that has ever sent me an email.
Slashdot Mirror
Quick, someone register GuanineQuadruplex.tumblr.com!
xkcd.com/1025/
I dunno about that, although I suppose 'feels' is fairly subjective. We use Thinkpads at work...probably newer models, I don't know, mine's a T400...but it definitely feels like a cheap piece of shit to me. I know from the travel I've done with it already that it's fairly sturdy...but it _feels_ far inferior to my newer personal laptop, which is an HP dv6t (though about on par with my old Dell -- which was from their business line, a Vostro 1000.) If I squeeze my HP, it's fairly solid; if I squeeze the Thinkpad, it bends visibly and feels like it's going to crack. I'm actually somewhat astonished the plastic hasn't cracked already (and I've only had the thing a couple months.)
Like what? When was there ever a console that would stack? I've never seen one...maybe you could claim the original X-box, but that's all I can think of and even that wouldn't work all that well. Most of the others I know of, for CDs or cartridges, were all top-loading....
Tell that to the people who received aid from Occupy Sandy when FEMA and the Red Cross were nowhere to be found; or to the people who have had thousands of dollars of debt erased by Rolling Jubilee. Or those facing foreclosure who had their homes saved by Occupiers.
I get it, you don't think political activism can ever bring change and nothing I say will change your mind....but OWS has done quite a lot of good with real, concrete action as well:
current.com/groups/news-blog/93963203_four-occupy-offshoots-making-a-difference.htm
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"
We engaged and educated a large number of people about political issues that the mainstream media refuses to cover.
We provide food and some semblance of shelter to many who had neither.
And above all we did what any political action must - make noise and make change. We've purchased and abolished millions of dollars of debt. We've stopped home foreclosures. We filled (and continue to fill) the gaps of mainstream disaster relief organizations. We provided networking and training for activists. And we altered the political discourse of the nation.
And even if we'd accomplished nothing, who cares? It wasn't "on someone else's dime" -- nobody was forced to pay for a thing related to occupy, except for the police's repression. Everything else was donated by supporters.
First, way to take partial, out of context quotes. The first point you make I've already responded tip of you actually read what I posted.
Secondly....Nothing is spontaneous. Obviously you're not going to get hundreds of people out just by....Not doing anything. So yea, the idea was published by adbusters. That doesn't make it astroturf. First, anyone who was there, anyone who spent more than five seconds looking at it knows that. Astroturfers generally try to hide who is behind the campaign. Secondly, they published an idea...that's all. They didn't pay people to attend, not did they provide any material support for the event. What they did is pretty much equivalent too creating a Facebook event.
Finally, if the park is fully public, why was the nypd able to force everyone out at the request of the property developer and with the help of private security? That's why OWS later moved to union square and other parks before the permanent occupation finally dissolved.
Zucotti park wasn't planned. I was there on day one, originally the plan was to occupy Wall Street itself...but the entire area around it for several blocks was barricaded by the NYPD requiring a corporate ID to walk down the public streets...So we marched for a while until coming across Zucotti, at which point people basically decided "screw it, let's camp here!"
Lawyers wouldn't have made that decision. Zucotti is private property, while there is case law on the books protecting coming on sidewalks for protests.
As for occupy having a fully formed website....big Fuckin deal, so does everything these days. Not hard to find a college kid to buy a domain and install WordPress. Please tell me what corporations were funding the dozen student orgs I did that for in college....because we sure could have used that money....and why the hell did I pay for all those out of my own pocket?
$75 per month for 50mbps down and 25 up in New England :)
I personally use the dvorak layout and love it, and I think it's certainly much easier to use and far lower stress. However, aside from individual cases, every study I'm aware of has concluded that dvorak doesn't actually improve to typing speeds. So while I personally think you should try it anyway, it might not help with this particular goal.
That may be the biggest market right now, but that doesn't mean there aren't significant areas where this may be useful. Independent podcasts would be a great one -- currently most of those don't have any transcriptions available, but there are a number that I personally would follow if I could read them instead of listening. Conferences are another great one. Generally you'll get partial transcriptions of keynote speeches and that's about all they can do. A service like this might make full transcriptions of all sessions possible (I've been to numerous conferences where they record hundreds of sessions but don't transcribe anything at all.) News reports is also a great one. I frequently read transcriptions from Democracy Now!. Those could probably be done faster and cheaper than with this, and they're usually rush transcripts anyway and tend to contain a few minor inaccuracies, so that's not a huge problem.
Perhaps part of the reason audio transcription is such a limited market is precisely because it's so expensive and difficult. This kind of idea could change that and open up entire new market segments.
You do realize what these lists ACTUALLY are, right? Yes, they include rapists and molesters. They also include people who got drunk and pissed in the bushes that one time on college, or went streaking, or skinny-dipping (basically any form of public nudity) or sent topless pictures of themselves to their significant other when they were 17......
Lots of ways to end up on these lists. Some are not even in your control.
Bradley Manning broke the law. Wikileaks did not. They had no obligation to keep that information secret, and are protected (even as a non-US entity) by the first amendment protections for free speech and a free press. Same reason it was legal for the NYT to publish the "Pentagon papers" in the 70s even though they remained classified until last year.
The US government has itself stated the same thing. If what Wikileaks did was illegal, they would have been prosecuted. They were not.
Not sure if you are aware, but the concept of bank cards does exist and is used quite extensively in the US; the difference is just that it's become something usually deployed alongside regular credit card systems. For example, I only have one card, my bank card. It's compatible with both the visa and the star networks. When I use it at an ATM, it uses the star (bank) network; when I use it online it uses the visa network. When I use it at a store I have the option of using either network. Star network requires a pin number, takes the money immediately from my checking account, and offers very little protection from fraudulent transactions. The visa network requires just a signature (and many stores don't even do that for small purchases), usually takes the money out of the same account immediately (though some purchases take a day or two) and I'm pretty much 100% protected from fraudulent charges. Some stores will refuse visa because of the extra fee, in which case I can still use the same card from the same account...but I always prefer visa because those fees provide me with extra protection.
My mother is your stereotypical baby boomer who can't figure out tech...can't figure out how to connect a new monitor to a desktop; asks me every time I'm home what the difference is between an app and a mobile site....and she's been using Ubuntu for a few years now. Of course, even though the menu is at the top, all the icons are different, all the names are different...she still can't understand that is not Windows.
Thing is, people like that see computers as an appliance where they've been trained on certain tasks. Replicate those tasks and you're good to go. In her case, she uses thunderbird instead of outlook express, open office, and still has Firefox. And that's all she uses. And now I don't have to worry about making sure antivirus or a firewall is running and up to date (she'll never get that, and it's amazing how she can somehow end up with those disabled every time.) So she can't go buy any random software and install it. Doesn't matter. She wouldn't be able to do that on Windows either, and she'd need me to even know that she wanted to in the first place.
When she used Windows I was fixing the pc every time I came home. With Linux, I haven't touched the thing since I set it up a couple years ago. For people like that (and their family geeks,) it actually is a better choice.
These aren't regular proxy servers. They're web proxies. Just a regular web server running one of the standard web proxy scripts -- used to use cgiproxy, then phpproxy, now it looks like he's switched to Glype proxy. It's just a generic web server running a generic PHP script -- I fail to see how that is cause for a ban.
They're not regular proxy servers; just an apache server hosting PHP proxy and some other CGI web proxy scripts. I don't believe there's any way to use them to proxy spam.
Double confirmation of opt-in, two methods to unsubscribe at the top of every message, legitimate content, low volume, and no tracking features (all messages are plain text).
I've been a subscriber since 2005 (just looked that up for a different comment; I never delete email) and this list is as far from spam as you can get. Shit, I've replied to those messages and gotten a response from him personally (Still have those too.)
If you still think this is spam, then apparently by your definition I have literally never received an email that wasn't. He provides a great service and runs a clean list. I'm a huge fan if you haven't noticed...
Been on the list since late 2005 and I never delete an email, so I can confirm.
You subscribe at his website and you get a confirmation request email. You confirm, and it sends another message confirming that you've been added. The content is legitimate, the volume is fairly low, every email gives two unsubscribe methods in the first paragraph of the message (click a link or reply with unsubscribe) and all messages are plain text.
Hence the words "frequent contributor" at the top.
I've been using his service for at least six years. It's as far from spam as you can get. Certainly far less spammy than the emails from newegg or Amazon (which is among the worst!) or any of the others that have no problem at all getting through spam filters. Multiple ways to unsubscribe right at the top of every message, verified opt-in, low volume, no embedded tracking features (all plain text), and legitimate content.
So what the hell else do you want? Should he start collecting phone numbers and personally call each subscriber to confirm before sending each message???
I'm on this particular mailing list, so I can confirm that he makes unsubscribing quite easier. Easier than any other list I've ever been on in fact. Every email has the following text as the first paragraph:
[You are receiving this because you subscribed to the Circumventor distribution list.
To unsubscribe from this list, click here:
http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/cv-unsub.html
or reply with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject.]
RTFS. Hotmail confirmed that the portion of users marking it as spam was extremely small.
Furthermore, do you realize how many users will click the 'spam' button when they fully know it's something they subscribed to simply because they can't be bothered to take half a second to click the prominent unsubscribe link or send a reply? These people are trashing spam filters. And I know they're out there, because I got it all the time in college. Ran a student club with a mailing list of around 400 users (out of 40k+ students)...Email address were collected and added by hand, one at a time. Each message was typed and sent by hand from an officer's personal email account. And each one had an unsubscribe link highlighted in standard font at the bottom of the page. We'd still get a handful of 'this message reported as spam' emails with every single message we sent out. Yea, obviously some users didn't want our mailings, but they definitely opted in and we couldn't have made it easier to opt out...instead they chose to try to have our messages blocked from all users of that email service.
Point being, just because some people report it as spam doesn't mean it is. Also, the percentage reporting it for us would have been orders of magnitude higher than in this case and we still never got blacklisted.
[Quote]Email was meant for a Person to send a message to another person or a small group of people, usually with people that you have some connection too.[/quote]
[Citation needed]
Email is Electronic Mail. You have large mailing lists like these with physical mail; you'd have to be an idiot to have thought something similar wouldn't be developed with email.
FWIW, I'm on that list. And if I was using hotmail or Yahoo I would be PISSED about missing those messages. Been on it since highschool where I used them to bypass the school's web filters (occasionally teachers would even promote these sites because we literally couldn't do our work without them); today I still use them for testing and occasionally at work if, for example, I need a document from scribd (why that is blocked I'll never understand...)
I've been on his list for around six years, and as far as I can tell, everything he says in the article is 100% accurate.
Also worth noting that he submits articles about these things to Slashdot quite regularly. I recall one a few months back where he was first considering this exact experiment. I'd go find it, but I'm posting from my phone.
As a long-time subscriber to his list (at least 6 years), no, he's absolutely not. He provides a fantastic service and does a damn good job of ensuring only those who want the messages are receiving them. And I get less than one message per month from that list. If he's a spammer, so is literally every single person or organization that has ever sent me an email.