The law does not say it's OK to spam. Just because it doesn't contain the blanket prohibition you apparently desired does not mean it approves or legitimizes spam.
Nothing in this Act shall be construed to have any effect on the lawfulness or unlawfulness, under any other provision of law, of the adoption, implementation, or enforcement by a provider of Internet access service of a policy of declining to transmit, route, relay, handle, or store certain types of electronic mail messages.
In other words, you can continue to block spam, and the spammers cannot claim that this law legitimizes their actions.
Congress wisely chose a minimally intrusive measure. We already have good spam blocking techniques, but the ability of spammers to falsify information and abuse relays and proxies has limited the effectiveness of these techniques. This law removes some of a spammer's camouflage and brings him into more direct confrontation with anti-spam defenses. If this law proves inadequate, maybe a harsher, more intrusive law will be considered. But first we should learn what the effect of CANSPAM, in combination with anti-spam defenses, will be.
This law wisely bans practices that are clearly wrong and can be proven in court. While you might wish for a ban on unsolicited bulk email, it would be harder to prove a violation of such a ban, since the defendant would naturally claim that the email was solicited. Likewise, people could easily be falsely accused under that ban.
...it OVERRIDES state laws that were stronger...
Congress is supposed to regulate interstate commerce. This is a national, if not international problem, and must be addressed on a national level. While it's commendable that some states took the lead in developing anti-spam legislation, it is not in the US's best interests to have a patchwork of different state laws governing interstate commerce. Congress was right to override the state laws.
... and you sure as hell know they aren't going to actually ENFORCE the law...
...it's quite easy for spammers to adapt to the law to comply with it.... spammers cover their tracks far too well...
But these are two opposite courses of action. Spammers who comply with the law lose all their ability to cover their tracks. Without relay abuse and proxy abuse, it becomes easy to blackhole their IP ranges. I don't think they can stay in business. Spammers who cover their tracks will rack up more violations of this new law. The law allows five years imprisonment for many of the track-covering tactics that spammers use. I don't know how many counts a typical spammer would be charged with, but I think it's enough to motivate the FBI and US Attorneys.
And it wouldn't be too hard for the FBI to find spammers, even the ones covering their tracks. At some point, they have to touch the real world in order to make money. That leaves a paper trail that can be subpoenad. It doesn't matter how many open relays or proxies a spammer uses if he, or his accomplice, sells things and charges credit cards.
I can't tell whether the FBI will enforce this law vigorously. But Congress has given them the weapon they need.
If that were a desirable ability, we could put hydraulic lift rams on existing vehicles. We don't because, in fact, it's hard to do and not particularly useful.
Exactly. Modern tanks kill from miles away. A fighting vehicle/robot that relied on hydraulic arms for combat would be destroyed before it got anywhere near a modern tank. It's simply an anthropomorphic fantasy that makes no sense in the world of high explosives.
Did you read the law? It does not say it's OK to spam. It bans the vast majority of spam and prescribes harsh penalties. It allows up to one year imprisonment for sending spam with false headers, which is pretty much all the spam I get. Without false headers, spam becomes impractical for lots of reasons. And what is your basis for claiming that there is no enforcement? The Justice Department doesn't usually publicize investigations until they're over. It will take months for investigators to start tracking down spammers and building solid cases against them.
This is a good, strong, well-designed law. For some reason the groupthink on slashdot claims it is "weak". I'd urge everyone to actually read the law before commenting on it.
A friend of mine has the same view on lisp. He's a lisp fanatic but doesn't use it for anything real. He feels there is something fundamentally wrong in the lisp community that has prevented it from buiding good standard libraries. Some combination of NIH, elitism and ego.
but it's generally better to program defensively anyway. All it takes is for some bozo to change your if condition and all of a sudden you're segving all over your customer's important data.
I'm not sure I agree. If speed is important, and you know the pointer isn't NULL due to earlier checks which the scan tool can't see, you might not want to throw in extra checks. Of course, you'd need a clear way to document the perimeter of checked-ness.
If speed's not important, why not use Perl or Java or something? High level languages protect against this kind of mistake. Of course you may be using C simply to use libraries that are only available for C.
Lots of people are complaining about the presumed impact of this display on the environment. While I couldn't reach the site, someone quotes the FAQ as saying that the total energy cost for the display is $156. In California, that's less than the cost of running two headless PC's for a year. So maybe you could run 4 PC's for that in Tennessee. Does that put it in perspective yet?
I think some people had a negative reaction to the display, and tried to rationalize it with a fimsy argument about environmental impact.
I was hoping for interesting discussion of cheap ways to control a lot of I/O points, logistics of storing and setting up such a display, etc.
You're thinking of a half-wave rectifier - just one diode in series. A full-wave rectifier will output 0=__/\/\/\.
Given a 60hz input, there will be 120 peaks per second at the output. In other words, the output has a DC offset, a strong 120hz wave, and some harmonics.
Well said. There ought to be a higher threshold for "ask slashdot". Maybe something like the kuro5hin queue could send these questioners back to the drawing board before wasting everyone's time. The thing is, it's an interesting question (it usually is) but without some basic facts we're just blowing smoke. On second thought, most slashdotters would be blowing smoke anyway.
They do have authority to arrest the seller in Holland. They probably don't use it very often. Remember, Dmitri Sklyarov fell under US jurisdiction because Elcomsoft sold from Russia into the US.
If they want to sell to US residents, they have to link up with the US financial system somewhere, which provides the legal and investigatory basis to pursue them. And I wouldn't assume that any net-connected country would try to shelter these people. I expect that the industrialized world will follow the US and outlaw spam.
If you repeal copyright, 30% of the economy vanishes the next morning.
OK, apply that logic in reverse. Let's pass a law that companies can own days of the year. On June 1, for example, AOL might have the right to control all commerce, charging what taxes or fees they see fit. If they charge too much, people will wait till June 2, when IBM's laws will govern. Think of the expansion of the economy! Employment for lawyers, enforcement agents, marketers advocating a particular day to go shopping. Thing how much revenue will flow to these day-owners.
If that system were in place and someone proposed its elimination, would you protest on the grounds of damage to the economy?
Seriously though: If I work for a month on a piece of code, why shouldn't I have exclusive rights to it if I want?
Because your employer owns it. And before you dismiss that as a flip, irrelevant comment, realize that it's the common case, and the case you invoked, of an individual owning significant code, is rare. Shouldn't we think more about the common case in determining rules?
The reality is that most creators of intellectual property must work for an employer to support themselves, and must give up the rights to that property. Except where the law prohibits it (California), employers often claim all IP of an employee, whether done at work or not. And since the default is for IP to be restricted, it leads to a lot of duplicated effort and a lot of great creations buried.
IP has a role to play, but in debating its future we should focus on the reality of how it works rather than idealized visions of a creator protecting his creation.
Another way to put it: advertisements should be legally binding. If you get a flyer with a giant $24 printed on it for cable service, you should be legally allowed to write on it, "I accept" and mail it in with a check, and it should constitute a contract.
Larger print should override smaller print. So if the small print on the flyer adds fees, it should not count.
All banks process withdrawals before credits, in order of greatest withdrawal to greatest deposit, and all banks ding you as many times as possible along the way.
I think some people are a little too reluctant to consult a lawyer. This doesn't sound like an expensive case to handle, and I doubt Alltel would want to litigate it. You'd probably get a lawyer to write them a letter for $100 or so, and they'd probably send a check.
If they are making billing errors on a large scale, which seems likely, they are getting such letters frequently and probably have an established procedure for handling them. Maybe they'll offer 75% of the amount.
Which raises a question. If you were nailed by the RIAA, and forced to choose between a multi-million dollar settlement and betraying your friends/coworkers, which would you choose? Before getting too heroic, remember that life after bankruptcy might not be fun. Do you know how your friends/coworkers would answer the question?
Even if you're a tight-knit secretive ring that knew each other from childhood, all it takes is one ring member participating in p2p.
Thanks for the link, which I found informative. There is more hope than I realized for this project. However, I must pick a nit. It doesn't look like all the tracks in rides are being released individually through this system. I read this list linked from your link. It looks like they're releasing high-profile tracks, like memorable narration and music. However I noticed that for Pirates they released mixes. It's hard to unmix a mix! OK, if the mix perfectly represents the location and timing you want in your simulation, you can just go with it. But if it has effect X a half second earlier than it is in the ride, it's tough to fix. The page mentions that there are roughly 150 sounds in the system. A single (older) ride typically has 50-100 tracks. So it looks like the majority of tracks are not released.
You're just not getting into the spirit of this thing at all, are you?
I find the idea very appealling, but I have two grave concerns. First, everyone takes away a different impression from a themed attraction, but reconstructing the attraction from those impressions might not be as good as the original. Fan fiction is usually horrible. Second, it's sad to see a lot of work going into something legally encumbered. If the project relies on copyrighted sounds, or other intellectual property of Disney, it could be blocked legally. I think the AT&T vs. Berkeley lawsuit taught a strong lesson on that.
I took a quick look at both sites (only one of which worked) and didn't see the obvious: where are they getting data? They need a plan showing ride track, figures, effects and show lighting. They may also need speed profile data - I believe the Toad vehicles are dual-speed, actuated by a cam that follows a hump in the floor. Are they simply going to fudge the geometry based on recollections? Guests do not get a good feel for how a ride is built by riding it. And yet, I think even the unremembered details contribute to the overall impression.
Audio tracks are also an issue. For the simulation to feel right, they have to be localized to the location of the speaker. A tape recording made in the ride usually sounds like muck, and would probably violate copyright as well.
In the absence of a convincing plan, I guess that this will be an impressionistic reconstruction that misses a lot of the detail. Really, there is no way, either technically or legally, to do a good job without the cooperation of Disney.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, you can continue to block spam, and the spammers cannot claim that this law legitimizes their actions.
Congress wisely chose a minimally intrusive measure. We already have good spam blocking techniques, but the ability of spammers to falsify information and abuse relays and proxies has limited the effectiveness of these techniques. This law removes some of a spammer's camouflage and brings him into more direct confrontation with anti-spam defenses. If this law proves inadequate, maybe a harsher, more intrusive law will be considered. But first we should learn what the effect of CANSPAM, in combination with anti-spam defenses, will be.
Congress is supposed to regulate interstate commerce. This is a national, if not international problem, and must be addressed on a national level. While it's commendable that some states took the lead in developing anti-spam legislation, it is not in the US's best interests to have a patchwork of different state laws governing interstate commerce. Congress was right to override the state laws.
Again, I ask you to support this assertion.
But these are two opposite courses of action. Spammers who comply with the law lose all their ability to cover their tracks. Without relay abuse and proxy abuse, it becomes easy to blackhole their IP ranges. I don't think they can stay in business. Spammers who cover their tracks will rack up more violations of this new law. The law allows five years imprisonment for many of the track-covering tactics that spammers use. I don't know how many counts a typical spammer would be charged with, but I think it's enough to motivate the FBI and US Attorneys.
And it wouldn't be too hard for the FBI to find spammers, even the ones covering their tracks. At some point, they have to touch the real world in order to make money. That leaves a paper trail that can be subpoenad. It doesn't matter how many open relays or proxies a spammer uses if he, or his accomplice, sells things and charges credit cards.
I can't tell whether the FBI will enforce this law vigorously. But Congress has given them the weapon they need.
Exactly. Modern tanks kill from miles away. A fighting vehicle/robot that relied on hydraulic arms for combat would be destroyed before it got anywhere near a modern tank. It's simply an anthropomorphic fantasy that makes no sense in the world of high explosives.
Did you read the law? It does not say it's OK to spam. It bans the vast majority of spam and prescribes harsh penalties. It allows up to one year imprisonment for sending spam with false headers, which is pretty much all the spam I get. Without false headers, spam becomes impractical for lots of reasons.
And what is your basis for claiming that there is no enforcement? The Justice Department doesn't usually publicize investigations until they're over. It will take months for investigators to start tracking down spammers and building solid cases against them.
This is a good, strong, well-designed law. For some reason the groupthink on slashdot claims it is "weak". I'd urge everyone to actually read the law before commenting on it.
A friend of mine has the same view on lisp. He's a lisp fanatic but doesn't use it for anything real. He feels there is something fundamentally wrong in the lisp community that has prevented it from buiding good standard libraries. Some combination of NIH, elitism and ego.
I'm not sure I agree. If speed is important, and you know the pointer isn't NULL due to earlier checks which the scan tool can't see, you might not want to throw in extra checks. Of course, you'd need a clear way to document the perimeter of checked-ness.
If speed's not important, why not use Perl or Java or something? High level languages protect against this kind of mistake. Of course you may be using C simply to use libraries that are only available for C.
Lots of people are complaining about the presumed impact of this display on the environment. While I couldn't reach the site, someone quotes the FAQ as saying that the total energy cost for the display is $156. In California, that's less than the cost of running two headless PC's for a year. So maybe you could run 4 PC's for that in Tennessee. Does that put it in perspective yet?
I think some people had a negative reaction to the display, and tried to rationalize it with a fimsy argument about environmental impact.
I was hoping for interesting discussion of cheap ways to control a lot of I/O points, logistics of storing and setting up such a display, etc.
You're thinking of a half-wave rectifier - just one diode in series. A full-wave rectifier will output 0=__/\/\/\.
Given a 60hz input, there will be 120 peaks per second at the output. In other words, the output has a DC offset, a strong 120hz wave, and some harmonics.
Well said. There ought to be a higher threshold for "ask slashdot". Maybe something like the kuro5hin queue could send these questioners back to the drawing board before wasting everyone's time. The thing is, it's an interesting question (it usually is) but without some basic facts we're just blowing smoke. On second thought, most slashdotters would be blowing smoke anyway.
Too bad your comment was modded as a troll.
No they're not. They're opposing region codes, not copy protection. Region codes hurt their business; copy protection helps their business.
They do have authority to arrest the seller in Holland. They probably don't use it very often. Remember, Dmitri Sklyarov fell under US jurisdiction because Elcomsoft sold from Russia into the US.
If they want to sell to US residents, they have to link up with the US financial system somewhere, which provides the legal and investigatory basis to pursue them. And I wouldn't assume that any net-connected country would try to shelter these people. I expect that the industrialized world will follow the US and outlaw spam.
OK, apply that logic in reverse. Let's pass a law that companies can own days of the year. On June 1, for example, AOL might have the right to control all commerce, charging what taxes or fees they see fit. If they charge too much, people will wait till June 2, when IBM's laws will govern. Think of the expansion of the economy! Employment for lawyers, enforcement agents, marketers advocating a particular day to go shopping. Thing how much revenue will flow to these day-owners.
If that system were in place and someone proposed its elimination, would you protest on the grounds of damage to the economy?
Because your employer owns it. And before you dismiss that as a flip, irrelevant comment, realize that it's the common case, and the case you invoked, of an individual owning significant code, is rare. Shouldn't we think more about the common case in determining rules?
The reality is that most creators of intellectual property must work for an employer to support themselves, and must give up the rights to that property. Except where the law prohibits it (California), employers often claim all IP of an employee, whether done at work or not. And since the default is for IP to be restricted, it leads to a lot of duplicated effort and a lot of great creations buried.
IP has a role to play, but in debating its future we should focus on the reality of how it works rather than idealized visions of a creator protecting his creation.
Another way to put it: advertisements should be legally binding. If you get a flyer with a giant $24 printed on it for cable service, you should be legally allowed to write on it, "I accept" and mail it in with a check, and it should constitute a contract.
Larger print should override smaller print. So if the small print on the flyer adds fees, it should not count.
Are you sure? Nations Bank paid a nine million dollar settlement for this practice. And it looks like New York and California have banned it.
I think some people are a little too reluctant to consult a lawyer. This doesn't sound like an expensive case to handle, and I doubt Alltel would want to litigate it. You'd probably get a lawyer to write them a letter for $100 or so, and they'd probably send a check.
If they are making billing errors on a large scale, which seems likely, they are getting such letters frequently and probably have an established procedure for handling them. Maybe they'll offer 75% of the amount.
If the Nevada Gaming Commission certifies certain machines, other governments could demand this certification and piggyback on Nevada's expertise.
These are civil lawsuits. They don't need to prove guilt. They only need a preponderance of evidence.
Which raises a question. If you were nailed by the RIAA, and forced to choose between a multi-million dollar settlement and betraying your friends/coworkers, which would you choose? Before getting too heroic, remember that life after bankruptcy might not be fun. Do you know how your friends/coworkers would answer the question?
Even if you're a tight-knit secretive ring that knew each other from childhood, all it takes is one ring member participating in p2p.
I find the idea very appealling, but I have two grave concerns. First, everyone takes away a different impression from a themed attraction, but reconstructing the attraction from those impressions might not be as good as the original. Fan fiction is usually horrible. Second, it's sad to see a lot of work going into something legally encumbered. If the project relies on copyrighted sounds, or other intellectual property of Disney, it could be blocked legally. I think the AT&T vs. Berkeley lawsuit taught a strong lesson on that.
Still, I wish these recreators the best.
Probably a vagrant set up a warez ftp on the box, or perhaps just used it as a spam relay and moved on.
I took a quick look at both sites (only one of which worked) and didn't see the obvious: where are they getting data? They need a plan showing ride track, figures, effects and show lighting. They may also need speed profile data - I believe the Toad vehicles are dual-speed, actuated by a cam that follows a hump in the floor. Are they simply going to fudge the geometry based on recollections? Guests do not get a good feel for how a ride is built by riding it. And yet, I think even the unremembered details contribute to the overall impression.
Audio tracks are also an issue. For the simulation to feel right, they have to be localized to the location of the speaker. A tape recording made in the ride usually sounds like muck, and would probably violate copyright as well.
In the absence of a convincing plan, I guess that this will be an impressionistic reconstruction that misses a lot of the detail. Really, there is no way, either technically or legally, to do a good job without the cooperation of Disney.