Article

2004-03-05 -Short Attention Span Theater-

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Posted by Frank Martin 2004-03-05 6:38:06 PM|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 How do you keep such a system from becoming a target for hacking and scams?
Don't ask Bill Gates. He hasn't yet figured out how to protect the present systems.

Posted by GK 2004-3-5 7:15:19 PM|| 2004-3-5 7:15:19 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 fone shude be free to

Posted by HalfEmpty 2004-3-5 7:29:09 PM|| 2004-3-5 7:29:09 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle.
that is the stupider thing i ever herd and will cost very valuble time. i see chainey all over this. i agree with you half and bong should be free to.

Posted by muck4doo 2004-3-5 7:42:10 PM|| 2004-3-5 7:42:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 One problem with the proposal is that the latest internet worms set up the infected PC as a zombie spam server. Would like it if you became infected by one of these beasties and it sent out several thousand emails on your account before you could cleanse yourself of it? That could get rather expensive -- and that is just the current state in the spam wars.

Posted by Bill 2004-3-5 7:56:33 PM|| 2004-3-5 7:56:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 If I could bill Microsoft a buck for every junk email I find in my in-box, I guarantee the ladies and gents would find a way to stop spam YESTERDAY.

Posted by Garrison 2004-3-5 8:07:47 PM|| 2004-3-5 8:07:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Hmmm... Arrison strikes me as a classic marketeer. Hey, it can work - if you peddle it right... Who'd a thunk it? If, 25 yrs ago, someone had told you they were gonna make a huge friggin' fortune selling bottled water - what would you have said?

[rant]
We have (at least) 2 issues at play here:

1) Paying for email. This is the true killer app that made the Internet - it is the jugular. I suggest to Gates, et al, that they are spitting in the wind to advocate charging for something that has been free (ignoring, at this point, all of the costs of being connected; machine, ISP, etc.) since its inception. The answer isn't to punish regular users - it's to punish the abusers. Now bringing the costs back into the point, just as with tele-marketing BS - we pay for our connection and should NOT have to put up with assholes abusing it, much less pay extra to keep them at bay or keep them from slowing the entire system down by flooding it with total fucking crap. "Abuse" your legislators about their failure to stomp the shit out of Internet abusers, if you want to stop the BS effectively. Hang judges that can't grasp this simple concept: it's OUR connection. spammers and tele-marketers have no "right" to use it. Period.

2) What OS developers fail to provide, in the opinions of some people...

a) I find it amusing to read criticisms of MS* regards the innumerable functions some users believe, for reasons that I can't quite wrap my mind around, their OS should do that it doesn't do now. There is a concept (Actually it's a misconception, IMHO.) at work here that I strenuously object to: do everything for me - for a pittance. Yes, a pittance - your OS didn't cost you much, relative to the rest of the s/w and h/w and fees required to be connected. This reminds me of the view of Gov't in the minds of the LLL crowd... Same flawed absurd presumptions at work.

b) What you believe is an obvious need / missing function is, if you think about it rationally and a significant number of other users agree with you, an obvious business opportunity - a niche market that the evil M$ must've missed. Duh. I'm glad that they're not the omniscient evil-doers (Can you say chainney? I knew you could.) they are portrayed to be... I predict the RMFM** OS is some way off.

c) No program is perfect. Period. Ever. Every program has bugs. No program can do everything. Infinte Functionality = Infinite Code = Infinite Cost. Doh! Windows is well over a million (last I heard was 1.45M+) lines of code. Can you even program your VCR? If so, you just may be the exception - a semi-Geek, congratulations. But does anyone anywhere actually believe that they could write a million lines (or less... how about just 1000 lines?) of perfect never-fail does-everything code?

Rhetorical Summary:
Do any of us really appreciate just how many levels of shoulders we all stand upon just to read RB?

I sure do. How about you? When's the last time you actually thought to appreciate all of the technical largesse at your fingertips - and the pittance it actually costs you to employ it? To fail to do so is actually the hallmark of Arabs... "Yeah, so what? What have you done for me lately? Okay, what about today? Okay, what about the last 5 minutes?" F**kin Duh, people.

A little perspective can go a long way: that subscription to DDGirls costs more.

* Of course all Non-Microsoft OS's are perfect and provide all of the desired functions and never, ever, have problems or fail to anticipate and please all users. Where, pray tell, can I get a copy of the Wet Dream OS? It should be free, of course. Uh, um, yeah, right... wotta load. You write it, I'm bizzy.

** RMFM: Read My Fucking Mind
[/rant]

Posted by .com 2004-3-5 9:17:23 PM|| 2004-3-5 9:17:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 It's called a âfilterâ Bill, give a call to your Microsoft Outlook developers, they can tell you all about it.

I wouldn't bet on that.

The solution to spam is simple: the death penalty. I'm only half kidding; I emptied my junk folder Wednesday morning, and again this evening. In the day and a half in between, SpamAssassin had caught over 1,000 pieces of junk.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2004-3-5 9:27:09 PM|| [http://www.kloognome.com] 2004-3-5 9:27:09 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Dump the problem on Al Gore. It's his fault. He invented the Internet. Make him fix it. Chainey had nothing to do with it.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2004-3-5 9:54:23 PM|| 2004-3-5 9:54:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 So what's the source of this missive? It just links back to Rantburg.

Especially since it lacks a defined source, this smacks of urban legend to me. I think I've heard this somewhere before.

Posted by Barbara Skolaut 2004-3-5 10:09:43 PM|| 2004-3-5 10:09:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 BTW, along the lines of my post, when was the last time you folks hit the RB tip jar? Hard enough to make it sing? Fred has written the best blogging software on the Internet, hands down, and lets us all use it on the Honor System - bearing the shortfall himself...

Fred - Lol! I'll toss in another $50 for some custom article sorts, such as articles with most recent comments first, etc. Whaddya say? True personalization... I'll leave cookies on and my IP addy is, oh - nevermind - you already know, heh heh... $75? *snicker* ;->

Posted by .com 2004-3-5 10:24:53 PM|| 2004-3-5 10:24:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 source: CNN
Americas One stop shopping center for Urban legends

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/05/spam.charge.ap/index.html

While I dont care myself for microsoft, I can understand why many people like other alternatives, like one little feature that I really like in Linux OS distros - THEY GIVE ME THE SOURCE CODE SO I CAN FIX IT MYSELF, IF NEED BE.

and they dont hit me for 200 bucks for each and every desktop in my house every 2 years.

Posted by Anonymous 2004-3-5 10:53:09 PM|| 2004-3-5 10:53:09 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Brave, Anonymous. So let's summarize your post in rounder terms...

1) Your time and effort are worth less than the evil M$ code.

2) You don't make mistakes.

3) You have a team of people constantly upgrading and maintaining your custom kernal.

Cool! Knock yourself out. Don't let M$ ever get another penney - that's how you vote in the Capitalist Maketplace.

Can everyone here send you their kernal mods wish list? Will you charge them for the work? Just wondering...

Posted by .com 2004-3-5 11:29:14 PM|| 2004-3-5 11:29:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Grrr... I programmed myself into a corner on the article/comment sort thing. I haven't added it because of the amount of code I'll have to tear out and rebuild...

Lemme see what I can do.

Posted by Fred 2004-3-6 12:06:07 AM|| 2004-3-6 12:06:07 AM|| Front Page Top

#14 Boy oh boy do I understand! Been there / done that myownself - more times than I wanna admit to.

IMHO, what this means, of course, is a nice slow modularization process so that nothing is changed except that 75% + of every script is included code. Then, I'll wager, it will be a shitload easier to make such changes and avoid the corners! I know, I know, you've been there / done that too, I'm sure!

I have an app I wrote for Aramco in ASP with 230 main-dir scripts and 134 include files! - I had to stop after about 5 months into it and do exactly what I'm suggesting! Heh!

I'll still hit the tip jar regularly - whether you find the time or not. RB is awesome and feels like home. Thanx for letting me visit!

Posted by .com 2004-3-6 12:27:53 AM|| 2004-3-6 12:27:53 AM|| Front Page Top

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