In all honesty, I would rather keep email the way it is. This "stamp" based approach will not work; either nobody will adopt it, or it will become popular and a bunch of other stamping businesses will crop up looking to make some money. I would rather just continue with my current spam filters, which kill 95% of the spam that hits my machine -- the other 5% does not amount to anything terrible.
I think you would have to be authorized to Centmail's SMTP servers. Pwned accounts are not such an issue either, if you buy blocks of 500 "stamps" ahead of time and are not automatically billed for it; spammers would only get a small number of stolen stamps at a time, and that would at least slow them down.
The real issue is that it will not remain charitable for long. If it becomes popular, rival for-profit services will start cropping up, and we will wind up with a situation similar to SSL, where there are dozens of different authorities competing with each other, some with different levels of trustworthiness, some charging different amounts, etc.
The idea is that a Centmail signature attached to a message would automatically reduce the message's spam likelihood; if enough people adopt Centmail, then receivers would be increasingly able to require a Centmail signature on mail, and killfile mail that lacks such a signature.
In theory, great. In practice, I predict it spiraling out of control as different parties try to "get in on the action" and see a chance to turn a profit instead of just giving the money to charity.
"the difference between your strawman and the crime of rape."
Let me repeat myself: Is it not violent to be shot in the head just because you are willing to be shot? This is not a strawman; you said that rape must be violent because the victim is not willing to have sex, and I am asking if, by that logic, a being shot is only violent when you are not willing to be shot.
"I would personally resist a rapist with my last ounce of strength. The fact that some people might be too scared to do so does not reduce the violence of the encounter in any way, shape or form."
Except, of course, that we consider it to be "rape" when a 15 year old has sex with a 25 year old, even when the 15 year old was not forced to do so. The fact that you automatically associate "rape" with something that involves fear, trauma, or a lack of willingness only demonstrates that statutory rape is a misnomer and that we need to find a new name for the crime.
So instead, since some fraction will reoffend, we should not allow any of the offenders to enjoy their freedom?
Let's talk about firearms, since you brought it up. What makes it logical to prevent someone who was convict of some nonviolent, statutory sexual offense -- just for example, someone who was convicted of possessing child pornography -- from owning a gun? Why is that so much more obvious than preventing them from owning a car or a knife?
Say some 15 year old had sex with a 20 year old; are you sure the 15 year old would be emotionally harmed by the experience? The law in most states would call that "rape."
"I would argue that having your body penetrated against your will is an inherently violent act."
Suppose someone is suicidal and willingly takes a gunshot to the head -- does that mean he was not killed violently? You cannot say that it is violent just because the victim did not want it to happen.
"You don't regard it as a violent act to have something penetrate your body against your will?"
If you:
Do not fight, shout, shove, or resist in any way
Are not being threatened with a weapon of some sort
Were not poisoned or endangered
Then no, it is not violent. Violent crimes involve violence of some sort. A lack of violence makes the crime non-violent. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and it seems pretty fair to set the threshold of a "violent crime" to be "violence was involved." This is not to say that it is perfectly fine to rape someone -- violence is not the sole factor in determining whether or not something was wrong -- but I absolutely would separate a violent rape from a non-violent rape.
"You could argue that sex offenders should have longer sentences"
Bingo. If sex offenders are so likely to recommit their crimes, then give them life sentences. I did not mean to say that they should be held longer than their sentence; they should have their rights restored after their sentence is served, and not live in fear of being arrested again just because they use a computer. If we are not willing to give sex offenders life sentences, then we should not start complaining about them logging on to Facebook when they get out of prison.
Look, if a person is a child predator and cannot be trusted with their rights, then leave them in prison for the rest of their life. Prisons are not just there as punishments; they are there to keep dangerous people separated from the rest of society. Keep the people who are likely to repeatedly molest children in prison, and you won't have to have politicians try to figure out what a "social network" is.
If they are so likely to commit their crime again, then keep them in jail. Why on earth would you allow someone out of jail if you expected them to commit their crime over and over again?
Not when we use the word "rape" to describe a 15 year old consenting to have sex with a 20 year old. You can try to argue semantics and claim that a 15 year old is not competent to give consent, but even so, it is not a violent crime. Rape of the variety that involves a gun pointed at someone's head is a violent crime, and I would not dispute that, but rape that involves no weapon or fighting is just not something I would call "violent."
It is easier and more politically expedient to lay the blame on "hackers." You know, "hackers" who can just sit down and within 5 minutes completely take over bank and government systems. Obviously, we are powerless to stop "hackers," despite all of our best efforts, so it is their fault, not the fault of a company that had extremely poor security practices. In no way can the company that decided to hook its systems up to the Internet without spending the money on serious security, or to allow a radio connection to its security critical systems without taking the time to research the implications of doing so, be held liable when someone asks that company's computers for a copy of some confidential information and the servers comply and hand over the copy.
I think more to the point is that a lot of people place the blame on "hackers" when they hear about these blunders, rather than on companies that had poor security practices. People seem to think that a "hacker" is someone who can sit down, instantly bypass any security system, and then steal information -- and the innocent companies did everything they could to stop it from happening. Nobody has any concept of the common textbook mistakes that these companies cannot find the money to correct, or just how many times these companies have ignored the warnings of security experts because it was easy and cheaper to do so.
"Where the customer agrees to a contract where he can have internal use of the binaries, but he doesn't get the code (whether or not it goes into escrow or some other arrangement is another matter) - I fail to see how the FSF can reasonably classify that a 'social problem'."
The original problem, and the whole reason the FSF was started, was that proprietary license agreements were making it increasingly difficult for people to program as a hobby (e.g. to be a hacker). If programming as a hobby were to completely vanish, then there would be an unbreakable separation between professional programmers and "common folk," and the barrier to entry for programming would be very high (you would need to have a formal education in CS, which is not something everyone can have). This may not seem like a big deal to you, but that was sort of separation that used to exist between those who were literate and those who were not.
In general, the "social problem" is exactly that: the separation between those who are able to write programs, and those who are not. The world is intellectually divided, and software is among the most extreme examples of that division. You might say that most people are not interested, but keep in mind that most people would be content with being illiterate and unable to do math; would you support an attempt to prevent certain people from ever learning how to read or add? I might say that, as a literate person, I choose not to allow anyone else to see what I write, and if they want to know what I write, they have to hear me read it back to them (or perhaps they would have to receive an audio recording of some sort).
Really, it depends on your view of the world. If you view software as a sort of extreme case of math, an abstract concept that can be studied and explored by anyone, then you will probably take a freedom-oriented position like that of the FSF or BSD (the BSD guys are not interested in protecting freedoms for their users, just in granting those freedoms). If you view software as more of a sort of property, a special case of engineering where you are giving units to people based on your designs, then you will probably treat source code the same way that engineers treat block diagrams, blueprints, and other design documents -- withholding those documents is not a problem unless your product is highly specialized, so the only reason to make source code available to consumers is generosity.
"to call the ability to release binaries without source 'a social problem' is where zealotry enters the scene."
It is not about the ability to release proprietary software; it is doing so that is the problem. There are plenty of things that we all have the ability to do, but doing so would be a problem. For example, I have the ability to use my neighbor's front lawn as a toilet, but most people would agree that doing such a thing would be a problem, and if mass numbers of people were doing so, and thought that it was perfectly fine, then we would call it a "social problem."
Sadly, it would take mass numbers of consumers boycotting the most popular movies in order for this to have any effect. Most people do not actually care about this issue -- they do not care about their right to make a backup copy because they do not make backup copies, and they do not see this as having broader implications. The MPAA knows this, and that is why they continue to bully people who do care.
Did I say it "had to be" released? I just said that if you release it, then you should not obstruct those various freedoms. I do not want to release my bank account details -- so it is entirely irrelevant.
"Just because it can be released to the world - doesn't mean it has to be"
I agree 100%. If you don't want to release it, don't release it. All I said was that if you do release it, you should not take certain freedoms away from people.
"By their reasoning - my employer - that pays me to write/debug their software, keeping me gainfully employed and feeding and educating my children - is causing a social problem by doing so? It's his software...he paid for it - why should he be made to release it for free? (And don't say the zealots wouldn't if they could - re-read the rhetoric above if you're thinking otherwise)"
It depends on whether or not he is distributing the software to others. If he is not distributing it, if he just pays you to write and debug software for internal uses, then no, it is not a social problem (excepting the case where the software is of such great value to society that keeping it hidden from the world does us a disservice -- but I doubt that is the case). The social problem is when an individual or corporation decides to release its software in a manner that obstructs people from using, modifying, or sharing the software (the FSF also includes "studying" in that list).
"It's not freedom - it's communism."
How is what the FSF encourages communism? At no point did anyone say that the government should control software companies, or any companies. Seriously, ad hominem attacks are fine when you are 12 and do not know any better; oh wait, this is slashdot, you probably are 12.
Funny, I routinely read and compose emails on subway trains (no Internet connection), Greyhound buses (no Internet connection), Amtrak (no Internet connection), and airplanes (no Internet connection). The only reason webmail is popular is that people do not like taking the time to configure an email program to connect to their POP3/IMAP server.
They are being told to go to websites that are "hostile" to intelligent design, and post material that in support of it -- not necessarily original material. They are not required to take part in an actual discussion. If posting material that everyone on a forum can be expected to disagree with, and then not bothering to stay around to defend your views any further than that, does not quality as "trolling," then I do not know what does.
You must be new here; on Slashdot, we are all capable of installing Linux and getting a printer working without breaking a sweat. But we won't tell you how, because learning how to do figure it out yourself that is more important that just having us tell you what to do.
The latter makes business sense; they could then contact the spouse with, "Hi, we noticed that your spouse is purchasing firearms in response to your infidelity; can we interest you in buying Kevlar vests and firearms as well?"
Well, about a decade elapsed between the first C++ "standard" and C++98; it has been a little more than a decade and C++0x is almost done. Serious programming languages are updated from time to time; Fortran is still updated every so often, as is Ada, so why no C++ as well? A lot of companies are committed to C++, and there are billions of lines of C++ code in production right now.
You might as well have made the same argument about a standardize iostreams library -- after all, what about platforms that use record based IO?
Nothing will work on 100% of platforms. For platforms that have no multithreading support, the code should just enter an error state (or throw an exception) if an attempt to spawn a new thread is made. For platforms that have unusual thread models...too bad, find a way to make those models fit into what the C++ standard calls for, or just don't support that particular feature and throw an exception when a program tries to use it. The C++ standard is meant to work for the general case, and the general case is neither DOS nor protothreads.
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In all honesty, I would rather keep email the way it is. This "stamp" based approach will not work; either nobody will adopt it, or it will become popular and a bunch of other stamping businesses will crop up looking to make some money. I would rather just continue with my current spam filters, which kill 95% of the spam that hits my machine -- the other 5% does not amount to anything terrible.
I think you would have to be authorized to Centmail's SMTP servers. Pwned accounts are not such an issue either, if you buy blocks of 500 "stamps" ahead of time and are not automatically billed for it; spammers would only get a small number of stolen stamps at a time, and that would at least slow them down.
The real issue is that it will not remain charitable for long. If it becomes popular, rival for-profit services will start cropping up, and we will wind up with a situation similar to SSL, where there are dozens of different authorities competing with each other, some with different levels of trustworthiness, some charging different amounts, etc.
The idea is that a Centmail signature attached to a message would automatically reduce the message's spam likelihood; if enough people adopt Centmail, then receivers would be increasingly able to require a Centmail signature on mail, and killfile mail that lacks such a signature.
In theory, great. In practice, I predict it spiraling out of control as different parties try to "get in on the action" and see a chance to turn a profit instead of just giving the money to charity.
"the difference between your strawman and the crime of rape."
Let me repeat myself: Is it not violent to be shot in the head just because you are willing to be shot? This is not a strawman; you said that rape must be violent because the victim is not willing to have sex, and I am asking if, by that logic, a being shot is only violent when you are not willing to be shot.
"I would personally resist a rapist with my last ounce of strength. The fact that some people might be too scared to do so does not reduce the violence of the encounter in any way, shape or form."
Except, of course, that we consider it to be "rape" when a 15 year old has sex with a 25 year old, even when the 15 year old was not forced to do so. The fact that you automatically associate "rape" with something that involves fear, trauma, or a lack of willingness only demonstrates that statutory rape is a misnomer and that we need to find a new name for the crime.
So instead, since some fraction will reoffend, we should not allow any of the offenders to enjoy their freedom?
Let's talk about firearms, since you brought it up. What makes it logical to prevent someone who was convict of some nonviolent, statutory sexual offense -- just for example, someone who was convicted of possessing child pornography -- from owning a gun? Why is that so much more obvious than preventing them from owning a car or a knife?
Say some 15 year old had sex with a 20 year old; are you sure the 15 year old would be emotionally harmed by the experience? The law in most states would call that "rape."
"I would argue that having your body penetrated against your will is an inherently violent act."
Suppose someone is suicidal and willingly takes a gunshot to the head -- does that mean he was not killed violently? You cannot say that it is violent just because the victim did not want it to happen.
If you:
Then no, it is not violent. Violent crimes involve violence of some sort. A lack of violence makes the crime non-violent. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and it seems pretty fair to set the threshold of a "violent crime" to be "violence was involved." This is not to say that it is perfectly fine to rape someone -- violence is not the sole factor in determining whether or not something was wrong -- but I absolutely would separate a violent rape from a non-violent rape.
"You could argue that sex offenders should have longer sentences"
Bingo. If sex offenders are so likely to recommit their crimes, then give them life sentences. I did not mean to say that they should be held longer than their sentence; they should have their rights restored after their sentence is served, and not live in fear of being arrested again just because they use a computer. If we are not willing to give sex offenders life sentences, then we should not start complaining about them logging on to Facebook when they get out of prison.
Look, if a person is a child predator and cannot be trusted with their rights, then leave them in prison for the rest of their life. Prisons are not just there as punishments; they are there to keep dangerous people separated from the rest of society. Keep the people who are likely to repeatedly molest children in prison, and you won't have to have politicians try to figure out what a "social network" is.
If they are so likely to commit their crime again, then keep them in jail. Why on earth would you allow someone out of jail if you expected them to commit their crime over and over again?
Not when we use the word "rape" to describe a 15 year old consenting to have sex with a 20 year old. You can try to argue semantics and claim that a 15 year old is not competent to give consent, but even so, it is not a violent crime. Rape of the variety that involves a gun pointed at someone's head is a violent crime, and I would not dispute that, but rape that involves no weapon or fighting is just not something I would call "violent."
It is easier and more politically expedient to lay the blame on "hackers." You know, "hackers" who can just sit down and within 5 minutes completely take over bank and government systems. Obviously, we are powerless to stop "hackers," despite all of our best efforts, so it is their fault, not the fault of a company that had extremely poor security practices. In no way can the company that decided to hook its systems up to the Internet without spending the money on serious security, or to allow a radio connection to its security critical systems without taking the time to research the implications of doing so, be held liable when someone asks that company's computers for a copy of some confidential information and the servers comply and hand over the copy.
I think more to the point is that a lot of people place the blame on "hackers" when they hear about these blunders, rather than on companies that had poor security practices. People seem to think that a "hacker" is someone who can sit down, instantly bypass any security system, and then steal information -- and the innocent companies did everything they could to stop it from happening. Nobody has any concept of the common textbook mistakes that these companies cannot find the money to correct, or just how many times these companies have ignored the warnings of security experts because it was easy and cheaper to do so.
"Where the customer agrees to a contract where he can have internal use of the binaries, but he doesn't get the code (whether or not it goes into escrow or some other arrangement is another matter) - I fail to see how the FSF can reasonably classify that a 'social problem'."
The original problem, and the whole reason the FSF was started, was that proprietary license agreements were making it increasingly difficult for people to program as a hobby (e.g. to be a hacker). If programming as a hobby were to completely vanish, then there would be an unbreakable separation between professional programmers and "common folk," and the barrier to entry for programming would be very high (you would need to have a formal education in CS, which is not something everyone can have). This may not seem like a big deal to you, but that was sort of separation that used to exist between those who were literate and those who were not.
In general, the "social problem" is exactly that: the separation between those who are able to write programs, and those who are not. The world is intellectually divided, and software is among the most extreme examples of that division. You might say that most people are not interested, but keep in mind that most people would be content with being illiterate and unable to do math; would you support an attempt to prevent certain people from ever learning how to read or add? I might say that, as a literate person, I choose not to allow anyone else to see what I write, and if they want to know what I write, they have to hear me read it back to them (or perhaps they would have to receive an audio recording of some sort). Really, it depends on your view of the world. If you view software as a sort of extreme case of math, an abstract concept that can be studied and explored by anyone, then you will probably take a freedom-oriented position like that of the FSF or BSD (the BSD guys are not interested in protecting freedoms for their users, just in granting those freedoms). If you view software as more of a sort of property, a special case of engineering where you are giving units to people based on your designs, then you will probably treat source code the same way that engineers treat block diagrams, blueprints, and other design documents -- withholding those documents is not a problem unless your product is highly specialized, so the only reason to make source code available to consumers is generosity.
"to call the ability to release binaries without source 'a social problem' is where zealotry enters the scene."
It is not about the ability to release proprietary software; it is doing so that is the problem. There are plenty of things that we all have the ability to do, but doing so would be a problem. For example, I have the ability to use my neighbor's front lawn as a toilet, but most people would agree that doing such a thing would be a problem, and if mass numbers of people were doing so, and thought that it was perfectly fine, then we would call it a "social problem."
Sadly, it would take mass numbers of consumers boycotting the most popular movies in order for this to have any effect. Most people do not actually care about this issue -- they do not care about their right to make a backup copy because they do not make backup copies, and they do not see this as having broader implications. The MPAA knows this, and that is why they continue to bully people who do care.
Did I say it "had to be" released? I just said that if you release it, then you should not obstruct those various freedoms. I do not want to release my bank account details -- so it is entirely irrelevant.
"Just because it can be released to the world - doesn't mean it has to be"
I agree 100%. If you don't want to release it, don't release it. All I said was that if you do release it, you should not take certain freedoms away from people.
"By their reasoning - my employer - that pays me to write/debug their software, keeping me gainfully employed and feeding and educating my children - is causing a social problem by doing so? It's his software...he paid for it - why should he be made to release it for free? (And don't say the zealots wouldn't if they could - re-read the rhetoric above if you're thinking otherwise)"
It depends on whether or not he is distributing the software to others. If he is not distributing it, if he just pays you to write and debug software for internal uses, then no, it is not a social problem (excepting the case where the software is of such great value to society that keeping it hidden from the world does us a disservice -- but I doubt that is the case). The social problem is when an individual or corporation decides to release its software in a manner that obstructs people from using, modifying, or sharing the software (the FSF also includes "studying" in that list).
"It's not freedom - it's communism."
How is what the FSF encourages communism? At no point did anyone say that the government should control software companies, or any companies. Seriously, ad hominem attacks are fine when you are 12 and do not know any better; oh wait, this is slashdot, you probably are 12.
Funny, I routinely read and compose emails on subway trains (no Internet connection), Greyhound buses (no Internet connection), Amtrak (no Internet connection), and airplanes (no Internet connection). The only reason webmail is popular is that people do not like taking the time to configure an email program to connect to their POP3/IMAP server.
They are being told to go to websites that are "hostile" to intelligent design, and post material that in support of it -- not necessarily original material. They are not required to take part in an actual discussion. If posting material that everyone on a forum can be expected to disagree with, and then not bothering to stay around to defend your views any further than that, does not quality as "trolling," then I do not know what does.
You must be new here; on Slashdot, we are all capable of installing Linux and getting a printer working without breaking a sweat. But we won't tell you how, because learning how to do figure it out yourself that is more important that just having us tell you what to do.
The latter makes business sense; they could then contact the spouse with, "Hi, we noticed that your spouse is purchasing firearms in response to your infidelity; can we interest you in buying Kevlar vests and firearms as well?"
Well, about a decade elapsed between the first C++ "standard" and C++98; it has been a little more than a decade and C++0x is almost done. Serious programming languages are updated from time to time; Fortran is still updated every so often, as is Ada, so why no C++ as well? A lot of companies are committed to C++, and there are billions of lines of C++ code in production right now.
You might as well have made the same argument about a standardize iostreams library -- after all, what about platforms that use record based IO?
Nothing will work on 100% of platforms. For platforms that have no multithreading support, the code should just enter an error state (or throw an exception) if an attempt to spawn a new thread is made. For platforms that have unusual thread models...too bad, find a way to make those models fit into what the C++ standard calls for, or just don't support that particular feature and throw an exception when a program tries to use it. The C++ standard is meant to work for the general case, and the general case is neither DOS nor protothreads.