Slashdot Mirror
Meet the Spammers
DaveAtFraud writes: "It took a little digging to find an on-line copy of this article that I first saw in my treeware daily newspaper. Thanks to the Salt Lake City Tribune for having it on-line. According to the Spamhaus project, a handful of people are responsible for 90% of the spam that clogs you in box. This is your chace to hear from them and what they have to say is quite interesting. If you don't think the filters and blacklists work, one spammer whines, "My operating costs have gone up 1,000 percent this year, just so I can figure out how to get around all these filters." Stopping spam is simply a matter of economics. When its uneconomical to send spam, people will stop sending it."
"These people will go to the lowest depths," said Cowles, of Bowling Green, Ohio.
I just loaded this Slashdot page and got an ad for a Microsoft product. So who is the lower, the spammer or the fool who sells out his principles for a quick buck (or in this case, probably a lot of bucks?)
Goodbye Slashdot, your credibility is gone. Hope the money was worth it.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I hate new laws. All of them. Look at the anti-racketeering laws passed to fight the mob. Next thing you know these Asset Forfiture laws are used to seize all of the possessions of people (any people, not mobsters!) who are merely just accused of a crime. Disgusting.
Pass an anti-spam law, and next thing you know the bizarrest things will be prosecuted with it. Imagine this scenario. Small protest group uses an ad-based email list-server. Somebody writes a manifesto for the group, and since it was sent out on the list-server it gets an ad attached. Someone else, we'll call him John, likes the manifesto and remails it to his large email list of people, accidently leaving the ad attached. Bam. John is a criminal. He has mass distributed a commercial advertisement without meeting the requirements of the spam law, and now is eligible for $100 per mail or 2 years in jail. They might not be able to bust the protesters for being unamerican but they can bust them for stuff like this!
You people are hypocrites of the highest order. You bitch about the laws that the music industry seeks out to protect thier industry, and think absolutely nothing about demanding lots of laws from congress to protect the purity of your communication medium. Technical solutions! Come up with technical solutions if you're so proud of your fucking Open Source Movement! We don't need to give the governments of the world another method to stick people in jail or levy massive fines at them!
Odds are, anybody who says, "There should be a law ... " is a closet facist.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
I'm not distorting what you said. I dare you to show me where I did.
You distorted what he said when you said the following :
The point is, you seem to believe the journalist has to do your thinking. That's not right. Our job is to present you the facts as unadulterated as possible, report what other people said, trying to preserve their point of view, and let YOU choose who to believe and what to make of the information. Anything else is the worst kind of manipulation, and I'm surprised any slashdotter would support that.
That's not what he said. He said a journalist should present an unbiased view of both sides of the story rather than one. You've manipulated what he was advocating : you're insisting that he was advocating refuting everything the spammer said. Rather, he was advocating an interview which presented the spammers' quotes, an anti-spammers quotes, and then independent verification of the facts. You know, responsible journalism.
But then, you probably don't know.
Your argument to wait for Part III is weak. Part III is titled "Next -- PART III: Spam Countermeasures". The chances of this third section having an interview with the "spam stalker" is slim to none, and Slim just left town. We know this because the "stalker" has already had to angrily defend herself because she was not interviewed for the article.
If you're a journalist, so is Michael Sims.
Seriously, when he posted "don't take the word of spammers verbatim" I think he meant "get the other side of the story and publish them in parallel" not "fucking ignore these people". It's a matter of interpretation, which is usually the best place for someone like me to jump in and start pointing fingers.