Read the article? Are you Mad!? I personally hate that shoes, boots, whatever, when bought, must consistently be re-laced before they can be effectively worn. I know that their lacing is usually loose in stores so that people can try them on faster, but I want an accurate feel for the shoe when I get in there!
It is very true that if the government were "better managed", we wouldnt have nearly as much debt, and things like space stations wouldnt be in the sorry state they are in today with as much as 40 billion $$ thrown at them. But "Government" is management. You can't have the government be 'under better management', unless you want to reduce the elected leaders of the U.S. to positions with all the glamor and power that comes with middle management in any business. And that is done in many places. A 'Puppet government' is set up controlled by some other power, be it a dictator or a nation. And when that happens, often there have been great leaps in developement, things really get going, and they are the envy of the world. Not that you'd want to live in such a place. Not that anyone would. Yes the government would run more efficiently under the rule of some all-powerful dictator. No fucking SHIT. Of Course if we had some Space-Hitler sending us off we'd be a lot better off in developement of the space program, but I personally prefer things to be shitty vs having Space Hitler around.
Sure, it would be nice for the government to not fuck things up, to sell the majority of its old systems rather than trashing them, to try and get the businesses they hire to do things better, but that is not going to happen.
It is up to Private Businesses and Citizens to make the advances that need to be made. The government is elected by the people, it should be the powerless middle management Of the people For the people. When citizens, by themselves, accomplish things, the government doesnt waste money to do the same thing anymore.
Go out and DO something! If you want a space station for under 40 billion dollars, go get all of N'Sync together and build yourself a space station for under 40 billion dollars. The technology to get into space was INCREDIBLE 40 years ago. Right now it's just pretty darn neat. Go make the technology used to get into space be dull boring uninteresting shit. Then the government will stop spending 40 billion dollars on that, and work on something else that doesnt really matter.
Even if you somehow find something non-arbitrary, and use that, you still arbitrarily decided to use something non-arbitrary. Just because you decided to use the size of the universe before the big bang as your basic unit of measure doesnt mean that England did. Everything is arbitrary.
Getting information from someone who got their information only through ShowEQ is using show EQ. You can't benifit from something and not use it. Just because it isnt running in your RAM
Cannot selectively enforce trademark? That's like saying you can't selectively enforce slander. If You have enough of a problem with a certain person using your mark of trade to pursue legal action, you may do so. There is nothing in the law for trademark that says you _must_ go after every person you see using your trademark. CNN doesnt go after Saturday Night Live for using their logo [-- that is an EXAMPLE. Take that to mean that I dont know the specifics of that case but you can still understand my implications. ie: Don't say "But NBC has a deal with CNN" or "But that's parody". You can see my POINT whether or not the example is truely accurate] But they still retain the right to go after anyone else they want to.
Though they can't neccessarily do anything about it (and should _not_ be able to enforce this) in countries where 'Windows' is not a trademark, that doesnt change that "Windows" is a specific product name, and calling something "Windows Backup" instead of "Backup for Windows" certainly does imply Microsoft endorsement->something which they do not have. They can't claim it has nothing to do with it, since they are making this product specifically for the product. "Oh, but windows is a generic term!" it doesnt matter if 'Windows' is a generic term or not when your product only works with and is specifically designed for that one[out of so many other possible] thing with that name which actually happens to be trademarked. If I made a golfclub called "Cup"[and trademarked it], and somebody else made a golfclub bag called "Cup Holder" you wouldnt expect that to hold up, would you? They're both generic terms, but "Golfclub" is a hell of a lot more generic than "Cup", which in this case refers specifically to a certain type of club. This program does not back up a graphical interface for another program(a 'window'), It backs up data using Microsoft Windows, and does absolutely nothing else. There can be no claim made that they are using Windows as a generic term, so they are infringing on Microsoft's mark of trade. [Not a legally qualified 'Trademark', just a mark of trade.] MS should win this one. And I use debian, which I love.
If there were no public domain, things would be a lot easier for me. With so many independent artists, so many non-independent artists, so many free musics just being distributed because they are nice to listen to and so many indes who have had their music blatantly stolen and placed on filesharing programs while they have no one to turn to, and no way for others to know that their music ISNT really free. With all those, it would be a lot easier if everyone was controlled by the RIAA, and no music was free. As it is now, I think I'm legally obligated to spend six months trying to locate and contact the original artist of a song I see on Gnutella, secure direct confirmation from him that it is okay for me to download his music, and then actually see if it's any good. See, there's this 'fair use' thing, and everyone here respects that. It says that if I own a song but think CDs are annoying low-capacity shitplatters, I can get online and download that song and I'll still be okay legally. The problem with that is it means (oh, shit..) people can share copywrited works on filesharing programs. Then comes my problem. I'm on gnutella and I'm searching for random shit that's got a good beat. I see an artist I've never heard of, so I figure it's an independent artist sharing their music and I download it. It kicks ass, I get more, I love it all. Just to be sure, I check out stores, but I find nothing. A year later I mention it to a friend and he says it's actually an artist that was all the rage 5 years ago. So all that great free music I've been listening to wasnt actually free, wasnt actually independent, and according to the law I'm supposed to pay a fine to the uncle of the left nut of the record company that merged with the local label that represented the artist five years ago. This means that I'm in the wrong, all because your stupid public domain shit made me think that what I was downloading was actually okay for me to download even though I didnt own a CD I've never heard of.
Iraqi Science Guy: "We have developed the new 'Thermonuclear Anthrax Bomb'!" Subversive Iraqi Geek: "Imagine beowulf cluster of these!"
US Newscaster: "The idea behind the 'Thermonuclear Anthrax Cluster Bomb' is to take a lot of less powerful diseases, like the kind availible to the home consumer, and make them work together like one big disease."
The Office of Homeland Security: "The site 'Slashdot.org' appears to be planning terrorist actions. They say that they have a force at least as powerful as the Iraqi military."
GWB: "Terrorist Regimes, Dictators developing weapons of mass destruction, Internet users, and other evil-doers, must be stopped!"
Slashdot: "Here's a copy of the letter we got demanding that we turn over our server logs, and our responce. Post comments below." Slashdot Poll: "The government's responce to our November 22nd posting on information warfare is:
A violation of our rights!
Perfectly acceptable considering the situation in Iraq
No surprise.
The perfect excuse for the DDOS attack I just started!
CowboyNeal is hiding in a mountain cabin somewhere in the northwest
The Office of Homeland Security: "Slashdot is encouraging a massive DDOS attack in responce to recent charges against it." US Newscaster: "33% of inside sources have told us that terrorist leader CowboyNeal is hiding out in a mountain cabin somewhere in the northwest, though some have been quoted as saying "I'm in Canada, you insensitive clod!"."
Bin Ladin: "The recent uhh.. DDOS attacks.. are a great sign from.. what the hell is this shit? I thought I told you freaks to blow up buildings!"
Lord Bitman: "People who claim not to take this post seriously take this post way too seriously"
Nanotechnology is the only way for the future. Every time someone comes out with a faster, smaller, larger[capacity-wise] anything, somebody proclaims that this leap means that Moore's law is going to break in 2 years. That is Never going to happen, and here's why: Nanotechnology is going to redefine what we think of as a computer. People think that 128-bit encryption isnt strong enough? You havent seen "not strong enough" yet. Once nanotechnology is in full force, how long do you think any encryption is going to stand up once we have the ability to make millions of specialized computers in a matter of weeks/days/hours/minutes? Moore's law wont ever break because nanotechnology is going to change the Gigahertz race into a thing where engineers find ways of getting proccessors to work together better. Nanotechnology is going to build things smaller, build them faster, give us data about things even smaller, thus allowing us to keep going smaller/faster/cheaper forever. Smaller may not always be true, Faster may not always, technically, be true, but once "Nanotechnology" is more than a buzzword you're going to have more proccessors in your computer than you have proccesses, and Moore's law isnt going to die until the engineers just decide not to go any further-> even if they start manipulating quantum states or some shit like that, some asshole is just going to use nanotechnology to make analog computers. The only problem is that once consumer electronics can display graphics at resolutions which are twice as good as the human eye can theoretically distinguish, and can render those graphics in real time giving each of those vexels the full priority of their own terrahertz proccessor, eventually someone's going to notice that there is absolutely nothing gained from better hardware (at least as far as the general consumers are concerned) Of course, all of us here who try and make money programming or designing hardware are going to be out of a job (not to mention dead by several decades), since the sloppy, shitty, buggy code all written by machines, will go unnoticed by all, since it'll all be proccessed too fast to be noticed when the system hangs before another proccess finds out about the error and corrects it. Once the technology exists to create a computer for each possible combination in a 128-bit key, how long do you think your encryption is really going to hold up? Long enough for six million more computers to be built?
Then God will kill us all, just like he did the last time we built real computers.
No, no.. we dont need justification for these things any more. I remember quite clearly that laws have recently been passed stating that we dont need probable cause. That means "We can pass anything we want now and we dont need to explain our reasoning"
What we need isnt 1 of everything, it's compatability. I am personally sick of looking around for various config files//installation paths which I'm used to having in certain places, whenever I try out a new distro. For the second one I've just given up, I'm sticking with Debian and doing most things completely with package managers. The result is that I have lots of dependencies installed for no reason. Yeah, I'm lazy and not the most savvy user. The point is it annoys me. If distros can't keep required files in the same place, the least they can do is have a standard-formatted database of where it is keeping the files, and keep that database in a certain place. Even a little thing like the difference between/etc/X11/XF86Config and/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 makes compatability a problem. We dont need 1 Window manager, we need consistent features between them, so that programs dont mis-assume something and try to, for example, place themselves where they used to be when the window manager has already done that, resulting in it being placed in an entirely different place every time. We dont only need a more stable X, but a more recoverable one, and one with more on-the-fly reconfiguration ability. Linux users seem to focus so much on uptime- not having to re-boot -that they dont seem to notice that in order to get many things done you have to close down all the programs you use to work. Hell, we need screen for X. I just started using screen, that thing kicks some ass. We need to be able to get back to the console even if X crashes and is no longer accepting input. We need ways to keep working not just keep our "uptime" high. Who the hell cares about uptime? How long has it been since you had to re-start X? That number matters more. Your working uptime. Not everybody likes the same look and feel. Some people like their start-menu, some people dont. The ability to have a consistent look and feel is important. If you want your system to look a certain way, you should be able to make it look and work that way without much work, and you should be able to switch back and forth like that so that whoever was using it before you can pick up where they left off- Linux is a multi-user system. It should stay that way. Not just a more complete manual is needed, but a rehashing of what we already have. Sure, open-everything is nice, but a lot of the resources out there are just plain messy we need an editor. We've got lots of driver support, but not enough, it's true. It also doesnt help that most of the time "installing a driver" involves compiling one. Linux wont get anywhere as a widespread desktop unless it can work well for idiots. That's the real problem: Many people are idiots. Linux users seem to have gotten the idea that computers shouldnt be made for idiots. The truth is: Macs are easy to use, and many people _should_ be using Macs. I like Linux. I like Open Software. But we wont get anywhere until it works well for utter morons. [ Does this count as flamebait because of the obvious troll responces?:) ] Yeah, free software does have that problem of not easy to make a living off of. No solution there, but even though it sucks, we've come pretty far. Maybe we'll be good some day:)
Try to get an order out on the forum, which says that they cannot delete the logs in question until an actual decision can be made. This is probably easier and faster to get than the actual logs, and can possibly get you some extra time. Look up information on similar cases or laws. Police//FBI might not have any sympathy, but for new types of crime like this, it would be best to let all involved know about precedent and who is really responcible jurristiction-wise. Get a lawyer if you want, but I'm pretty sure you're fucked. That said, ignore everything I said above.
Nevermind then.. Let's just set up a bunch of those dealies in a giant array which has all the functions of the world's fastest punchcard-based computer!
A pure optical router using analog signals which are passed through a crystal and output at certain locations based purely on their wavelength(wich coresponds to the exact binary data of the full packet) and the path which the light beam is forced to take! HA! Ha HA! MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! >:D
What? It could happen...
Lower-level solution: A new protocal
on
As the Spam Turns
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
not that any of this will happen, but I see a lot of posts mentioning ideas like adding a new standard, a "SPAM" flag to the standard SMTP headers. What about something even lower than that? tcp/ip has plenty of bits left for "future expansion", why not an "Advert" bit? how about a couple different ones- "Main", "Advert", "Stream", just as bits? You know, things that can be knocked out with very little proccessing by routers? That could speed things up a lot.
And now a future timeline: -Terrorist groups note that many routers are dropping "advert" spam before they reach the mail servers, start sending messages with the "advert" bit set, thus avoiding detection by bugs in mail servers -Government catches on, starts paying close attention to posts with the "advert" bit set -Advertising is outlawed after Bush calls the advert bit "evil"
Slashdot Mirror
Read the article? Are you Mad!?
I personally hate that shoes, boots, whatever, when bought, must consistently be re-laced before they can be effectively worn. I know that their lacing is usually loose in stores so that people can try them on faster, but I want an accurate feel for the shoe when I get in there!
Wouldnt these measurements be more effected by the planet's Density than its actual size?
It is very true that if the government were "better managed", we wouldnt have nearly as much debt, and things like space stations wouldnt be in the sorry state they are in today with as much as 40 billion $$ thrown at them.
But "Government" is management. You can't have the government be 'under better management', unless you want to reduce the elected leaders of the U.S. to positions with all the glamor and power that comes with middle management in any business.
And that is done in many places. A 'Puppet government' is set up controlled by some other power, be it a dictator or a nation. And when that happens, often there have been great leaps in developement, things really get going, and they are the envy of the world.
Not that you'd want to live in such a place.
Not that anyone would.
Yes the government would run more efficiently under the rule of some all-powerful dictator. No fucking SHIT.
Of Course if we had some Space-Hitler sending us off we'd be a lot better off in developement of the space program, but I personally prefer things to be shitty vs having Space Hitler around.
Sure, it would be nice for the government to not fuck things up, to sell the majority of its old systems rather than trashing them, to try and get the businesses they hire to do things better, but that is not going to happen.
It is up to Private Businesses and Citizens to make the advances that need to be made. The government is elected by the people, it should be the powerless middle management Of the people For the people.
When citizens, by themselves, accomplish things, the government doesnt waste money to do the same thing anymore.
Go out and DO something! If you want a space station for under 40 billion dollars, go get all of N'Sync together and build yourself a space station for under 40 billion dollars.
The technology to get into space was INCREDIBLE 40 years ago. Right now it's just pretty darn neat. Go make the technology used to get into space be dull boring uninteresting shit.
Then the government will stop spending 40 billion dollars on that, and work on something else that doesnt really matter.
Even if you somehow find something non-arbitrary, and use that, you still arbitrarily decided to use something non-arbitrary. Just because you decided to use the size of the universe before the big bang as your basic unit of measure doesnt mean that England did. Everything is arbitrary.
Getting information from someone who got their information only through ShowEQ is using show EQ. You can't benifit from something and not use it. Just because it isnt running in your RAM
Cannot selectively enforce trademark? That's like saying you can't selectively enforce slander. If You have enough of a problem with a certain person using your mark of trade to pursue legal action, you may do so. There is nothing in the law for trademark that says you _must_ go after every person you see using your trademark. CNN doesnt go after Saturday Night Live for using their logo [-- that is an EXAMPLE. Take that to mean that I dont know the specifics of that case but you can still understand my implications. ie: Don't say "But NBC has a deal with CNN" or "But that's parody". You can see my POINT whether or not the example is truely accurate] But they still retain the right to go after anyone else they want to.
Though they can't neccessarily do anything about it (and should _not_ be able to enforce this) in countries where 'Windows' is not a trademark, that doesnt change that "Windows" is a specific product name, and calling something "Windows Backup" instead of "Backup for Windows" certainly does imply Microsoft endorsement->something which they do not have. They can't claim it has nothing to do with it, since they are making this product specifically for the product. "Oh, but windows is a generic term!" it doesnt matter if 'Windows' is a generic term or not when your product only works with and is specifically designed for that one[out of so many other possible] thing with that name which actually happens to be trademarked. If I made a golfclub called "Cup"[and trademarked it], and somebody else made a golfclub bag called "Cup Holder" you wouldnt expect that to hold up, would you? They're both generic terms, but "Golfclub" is a hell of a lot more generic than "Cup", which in this case refers specifically to a certain type of club. This program does not back up a graphical interface for another program(a 'window'), It backs up data using Microsoft Windows, and does absolutely nothing else. There can be no claim made that they are using Windows as a generic term, so they are infringing on Microsoft's mark of trade. [Not a legally qualified 'Trademark', just a mark of trade.]
MS should win this one.
And I use debian, which I love.
If there were no public domain, things would be a lot easier for me. With so many independent artists, so many non-independent artists, so many free musics just being distributed because they are nice to listen to and so many indes who have had their music blatantly stolen and placed on filesharing programs while they have no one to turn to, and no way for others to know that their music ISNT really free. With all those, it would be a lot easier if everyone was controlled by the RIAA, and no music was free. As it is now, I think I'm legally obligated to spend six months trying to locate and contact the original artist of a song I see on Gnutella, secure direct confirmation from him that it is okay for me to download his music, and then actually see if it's any good.
See, there's this 'fair use' thing, and everyone here respects that. It says that if I own a song but think CDs are annoying low-capacity shitplatters, I can get online and download that song and I'll still be okay legally. The problem with that is it means (oh, shit..) people can share copywrited works on filesharing programs.
Then comes my problem. I'm on gnutella and I'm searching for random shit that's got a good beat. I see an artist I've never heard of, so I figure it's an independent artist sharing their music and I download it. It kicks ass, I get more, I love it all. Just to be sure, I check out stores, but I find nothing.
A year later I mention it to a friend and he says it's actually an artist that was all the rage 5 years ago. So all that great free music I've been listening to wasnt actually free, wasnt actually independent, and according to the law I'm supposed to pay a fine to the uncle of the left nut of the record company that merged with the local label that represented the artist five years ago.
This means that I'm in the wrong, all because your stupid public domain shit made me think that what I was downloading was actually okay for me to download even though I didnt own a CD I've never heard of.
It's gone to a higher juristiction now, Nobody likes duplication of effort.
"Okay, we've locked in the coordinates we have from our records on the first moon landing, now.. DEAR GOD IT'S A GIANT EYE!! AAAAAAAAA!"
Quite.
I don't want to think of the poster as an idiot...
Either that's a lie, or you're just plain stupid.
Subversive Iraqi Geek: "Imagine beowulf cluster of these!"
US Newscaster: "The idea behind the 'Thermonuclear Anthrax Cluster Bomb' is to take a lot of less powerful diseases, like the kind availible to the home consumer, and make them work together like one big disease."
The Office of Homeland Security: "The site 'Slashdot.org' appears to be planning terrorist actions. They say that they have a force at least as powerful as the Iraqi military."
GWB: "Terrorist Regimes, Dictators developing weapons of mass destruction, Internet users, and other evil-doers, must be stopped!"
Slashdot: "Here's a copy of the letter we got demanding that we turn over our server logs, and our responce. Post comments below."
Slashdot Poll: "The government's responce to our November 22nd posting on information warfare is:
A violation of our rights!
Perfectly acceptable considering the situation in Iraq
No surprise.
The perfect excuse for the DDOS attack I just started!
CowboyNeal is hiding in a mountain cabin somewhere in the northwest
The Office of Homeland Security: "Slashdot is encouraging a massive DDOS attack in responce to recent charges against it."
US Newscaster: "33% of inside sources have told us that terrorist leader CowboyNeal is hiding out in a mountain cabin somewhere in the northwest, though some have been quoted as saying "I'm in Canada, you insensitive clod!"."
Bin Ladin: "The recent uhh.. DDOS attacks.. are a great sign from.. what the hell is this shit? I thought I told you freaks to blow up buildings!"
Lord Bitman: "People who claim not to take this post seriously take this post way too seriously"
Nanotechnology is the only way for the future. Every time someone comes out with a faster, smaller, larger[capacity-wise] anything, somebody proclaims that this leap means that Moore's law is going to break in 2 years. That is Never going to happen, and here's why:
Nanotechnology is going to redefine what we think of as a computer. People think that 128-bit encryption isnt strong enough? You havent seen "not strong enough" yet. Once nanotechnology is in full force, how long do you think any encryption is going to stand up once we have the ability to make millions of specialized computers in a matter of weeks/days/hours/minutes? Moore's law wont ever break because nanotechnology is going to change the Gigahertz race into a thing where engineers find ways of getting proccessors to work together better. Nanotechnology is going to build things smaller, build them faster, give us data about things even smaller, thus allowing us to keep going smaller/faster/cheaper forever.
Smaller may not always be true, Faster may not always, technically, be true, but once "Nanotechnology" is more than a buzzword you're going to have more proccessors in your computer than you have proccesses, and Moore's law isnt going to die until the engineers just decide not to go any further-> even if they start manipulating quantum states or some shit like that, some asshole is just going to use nanotechnology to make analog computers.
The only problem is that once consumer electronics can display graphics at resolutions which are twice as good as the human eye can theoretically distinguish, and can render those graphics in real time giving each of those vexels the full priority of their own terrahertz proccessor, eventually someone's going to notice that there is absolutely nothing gained from better hardware (at least as far as the general consumers are concerned)
Of course, all of us here who try and make money programming or designing hardware are going to be out of a job (not to mention dead by several decades), since the sloppy, shitty, buggy code all written by machines, will go unnoticed by all, since it'll all be proccessed too fast to be noticed when the system hangs before another proccess finds out about the error and corrects it.
Once the technology exists to create a computer for each possible combination in a 128-bit key, how long do you think your encryption is really going to hold up? Long enough for six million more computers to be built?
Then God will kill us all, just like he did the last time we built real computers.
No, no.. we dont need justification for these things any more. I remember quite clearly that laws have recently been passed stating that we dont need probable cause. That means "We can pass anything we want now and we dont need to explain our reasoning"
well.. time, I mean. Not space.
What we need isnt 1 of everything, it's compatability. /etc/X11/XF86Config and /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 makes compatability a problem. :) ] :)
I am personally sick of looking around for various config files//installation paths which I'm used to having in certain places, whenever I try out a new distro. For the second one I've just given up, I'm sticking with Debian and doing most things completely with package managers. The result is that I have lots of dependencies installed for no reason. Yeah, I'm lazy and not the most savvy user. The point is it annoys me. If distros can't keep required files in the same place, the least they can do is have a standard-formatted database of where it is keeping the files, and keep that database in a certain place. Even a little thing like the difference between
We dont need 1 Window manager, we need consistent features between them, so that programs dont mis-assume something and try to, for example, place themselves where they used to be when the window manager has already done that, resulting in it being placed in an entirely different place every time.
We dont only need a more stable X, but a more recoverable one, and one with more on-the-fly reconfiguration ability. Linux users seem to focus so much on uptime- not having to re-boot -that they dont seem to notice that in order to get many things done you have to close down all the programs you use to work. Hell, we need screen for X. I just started using screen, that thing kicks some ass. We need to be able to get back to the console even if X crashes and is no longer accepting input. We need ways to keep working not just keep our "uptime" high. Who the hell cares about uptime? How long has it been since you had to re-start X? That number matters more. Your working uptime.
Not everybody likes the same look and feel. Some people like their start-menu, some people dont. The ability to have a consistent look and feel is important. If you want your system to look a certain way, you should be able to make it look and work that way without much work, and you should be able to switch back and forth like that so that whoever was using it before you can pick up where they left off- Linux is a multi-user system. It should stay that way.
Not just a more complete manual is needed, but a rehashing of what we already have. Sure, open-everything is nice, but a lot of the resources out there are just plain messy we need an editor.
We've got lots of driver support, but not enough, it's true. It also doesnt help that most of the time "installing a driver" involves compiling one. Linux wont get anywhere as a widespread desktop unless it can work well for idiots. That's the real problem: Many people are idiots. Linux users seem to have gotten the idea that computers shouldnt be made for idiots. The truth is: Macs are easy to use, and many people _should_ be using Macs. I like Linux. I like Open Software. But we wont get anywhere until it works well for utter morons. [ Does this count as flamebait because of the obvious troll responces?
Yeah, free software does have that problem of not easy to make a living off of. No solution there, but even though it sucks, we've come pretty far. Maybe we'll be good some day
If two objects which warp space so much that nothing can ever collide with them collide, what the bloody fuck happens?
Software!
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! !
:)
And now I type this sentance to avoid the filter
Many people are also just ignoring e-mail and switching to using IM-only.
Try to get an order out on the forum, which says that they cannot delete the logs in question until an actual decision can be made. This is probably easier and faster to get than the actual logs, and can possibly get you some extra time.
Look up information on similar cases or laws. Police//FBI might not have any sympathy, but for new types of crime like this, it would be best to let all involved know about precedent and who is really responcible jurristiction-wise.
Get a lawyer if you want, but I'm pretty sure you're fucked. That said, ignore everything I said above.
Nevermind then..
Let's just set up a bunch of those dealies in a giant array which has all the functions of the world's fastest punchcard-based computer!
A pure optical router using analog signals which are passed through a crystal and output at certain locations based purely on their wavelength(wich coresponds to the exact binary data of the full packet) and the path which the light beam is forced to take! HA! Ha HA! MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
>:D
What? It could happen...
not that any of this will happen, but I see a lot of posts mentioning ideas like adding a new standard, a "SPAM" flag to the standard SMTP headers. What about something even lower than that? tcp/ip has plenty of bits left for "future expansion", why not an "Advert" bit? how about a couple different ones- "Main", "Advert", "Stream", just as bits? You know, things that can be knocked out with very little proccessing by routers?
That could speed things up a lot.
And now a future timeline:
-Terrorist groups note that many routers are dropping "advert" spam before they reach the mail servers, start sending messages with the "advert" bit set, thus avoiding detection by bugs in mail servers
-Government catches on, starts paying close attention to posts with the "advert" bit set
-Advertising is outlawed after Bush calls the advert bit "evil"