There's a big difference between MSFT giving away IE for free, and giving away Windows/Office for free. When MSFT cut off Netscape's air supply by giving away IE, it suffered no actual revenue loss; IE was only a feature of the OS which you did pay for, dearly.
Microsoft can afford to give away Windows and Office only to the extent that it can tolerate a plummeting stock price, or as long as it retains enough cash for stock buybacks large enough to support the stock price. Since a significant portion of Microsofties' compensation is in MSFT stock (at least it was -- is this still true?), dropping stock price caused by negative revenue growth could gut the company's talent pool -- hello, Google!
Partially answering my own question; this might work with some sort of seeding. Create X number of accounts purely as spambait; post them in fora all over the web, login to free pr0n sites etc; and send 0 legit email to them. Emails for V1a.g.r4 come pouring in, producing a 100% bad cohort. Now create Y number of "good" accounts, post them nowhere on the web, send them (from other email accounts set up for the purpose) a variety of known good email messages, and filter the incoming content allowing only those messages you've sent. Now you have the 100% good cohort.
That gives you endpoints for your curve. Are there any math geeks reading tonight that can tell me if having just the endpoints would be good enough to extrapolate the middle? Calibrating the middle percentiles seems harder, since you can't control the number of spams you'd receive.
How hard it is to spoof 1 million IP addresses during a bulk transfer? That would appear to be a way to defeat this system, since the system assumes a particular batch of spam will originate from a single IP address.
How does one initialize this system? Spam is determined by user reputation, yet user reputation is determined by quantity of spam received. Am I missing something? The logic seems circular.
The article states "Levin and other researchers... have published calculations showing the possibility of 'micro-environments' where water could linger, but the idea remains controversial". Has anyone ever produced such a 'micro-environment' in a lab, and then tried to store water in it?
What the heck is a micro-environment, anyway? Am I being too cynical in thinking that it's an environment, just with a sexed-up name?
"... most people (scientists and non-scientists alike) forget that a physical inability to form words doesn't mean an intellectual inability to understand them...." Or to think the thoughts that the words will eventually become.
With my younger two kids, when each was somewhere around 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 years, I found an opportunity to ask, "You have lots to say but the words don't come, is that right?" Agreement. "That must be really hard to endure." Big, big agreement, mixed with apparent relief.
Taco just addressed the entire/. audience yesterday and assured us Slashdot isn't going to hell. So how many of these stupid articles on pseudo-science do we have to endure before he admits Something Must Be Done?
Slashdot Mirror
Not even misleading -- just plain wrong. I just set up a Hotmail account with Firefox 2.0 and it works fine. WTF?
Gaaah! My eyes!! The goggles do nothing!!1!
I can't be the only one who read the title as "Beer cans optimize bottlenecks?" and wondered WTF?
Microsoft can afford to give away Windows and Office only to the extent that it can tolerate a plummeting stock price, or as long as it retains enough cash for stock buybacks large enough to support the stock price. Since a significant portion of Microsofties' compensation is in MSFT stock (at least it was -- is this still true?), dropping stock price caused by negative revenue growth could gut the company's talent pool -- hello, Google!
That gives you endpoints for your curve. Are there any math geeks reading tonight that can tell me if having just the endpoints would be good enough to extrapolate the middle? Calibrating the middle percentiles seems harder, since you can't control the number of spams you'd receive.
How hard it is to spoof 1 million IP addresses during a bulk transfer? That would appear to be a way to defeat this system, since the system assumes a particular batch of spam will originate from a single IP address.
How does one initialize this system? Spam is determined by user reputation, yet user reputation is determined by quantity of spam received. Am I missing something? The logic seems circular.
mod parent troll
The article states "Levin and other researchers... have published calculations showing the possibility of 'micro-environments' where water could linger, but the idea remains controversial". Has anyone ever produced such a 'micro-environment' in a lab, and then tried to store water in it?
What the heck is a micro-environment, anyway? Am I being too cynical in thinking that it's an environment, just with a sexed-up name?
She probably panicked. End-users do all sorts of irrational stuff under far less stress than this surprise would elicit.
With my younger two kids, when each was somewhere around 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 years, I found an opportunity to ask, "You have lots to say but the words don't come, is that right?" Agreement. "That must be really hard to endure." Big, big agreement, mixed with apparent relief.
Taco just addressed the entire /. audience yesterday and assured us Slashdot isn't going to hell. So how many of these stupid articles on pseudo-science do we have to endure before he admits Something Must Be Done?
It's enough to make me go do my job for a while.
Ever buy bottled water?