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FEC Permits Anonymous SMS Spam
crm114 writes "The Washington Post is running a story about the Federal Election Commission's decision today to waive the requirement that SMS broadcast messages indicate their origin..." And it'll only cost you ten cents to read each one. For what it's worth, you can read the agenda item which describes the issue before the FEC. It's rather interesting because it includes drafts of two possible responses by the FEC, depending on which way the commissioners actually voted at today's meeting. Although the company seeking the opinion suggested alternatives like providing a toll-free phone number in the message (preserving the spirit of the campaign finance disclosure rules), the FEC doesn't appear to have taken them up on it.
Dispute the charge. If the telcos get enough gripes, this problem with solve itself. Just answering the phone costs the telco at least $5.
Don't buy SMS equipment. If its going to suck why buy it?
Duh. Besides getting TXT messages on a 7x2 LCD display is not what I call fun anyways. In the same time you can enter a relatively useful message you could have called the dude and been done with.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Looks like it's time to start coding SpamAssassin for SMS!
I'm glad I don't have any of those devices...
Wyatt
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
Oh no, candidates are going to aggravate and thus isolate the 12-16 year old female demographic! The elections will be in turmoil!!!
Oh waaaaiiiiiit. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I roam around the world quite a bit. So now I have to pay for SPAM that I did not even want? You have got to be kidding me.
Me wonders who is in control of the government. The people or big business!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I'm joking folks, but perhaps its time for some old fashioned usenet community policing?
Dear Senator Jacka$$,
Thank you for your recent communication to my cellphone. While I appreciate your message, "WNT2BYurVOTE", especially it's efforts at minimizing my time, I would like to refer you to the enclosed copy of my the bill I received from my wireless carrier.
Also enclosed you will find an invoice charging you the $.10 I was charged for the reception of this unsolicited message. While I understand [Insert Political Party Here]'s fundraising isn't what it used to be, I still think this is reprehensible behavior.
Lastly, you'll notice the bill includes a $30,000 handling fee for the disposal of your message.
Thank you for your time, and if you really need to buy votes, please try Florida.
Only in America can we scream bloody murder about how much politicians pay for commercials but allow our legislators to make US pay for THEIR commercials on our mobile devices!!!
Un-FREAKING-real!!!
My $.10 thank you very little!!!
MMMmmmmmm....erotic cakes!!! Homer J. Simpson - Treehouse of Horror VI
at least not in florida the ballots are too confusing
I can hardy wait to start receiving spam from the penis enlargement party.
My phone had a nice easy e-mail option on it, but because the e-mail address was the phone number for all the subbscribers on the network it was easy for spammers to guess it. So I had the option turned off.. I am not paing XXcents per spam.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
In this case, it's obvious who is paying for the message. "This text message is paid for by you under your terms of services."
A hack is just an idiom waiting for wider use.
Certainly here in the UK, the calling party pays for calls and text messages and it costs nothing to receive either. As a result, mobile (cellphone) numbers are handed out freely to all and sundry, with mobile phones being used much more conspicuously by everyone aged eight upwards.
While it does not justify spamming, the idea that SMS spamming where the receiving party actually has to pay for the junk is one that wouldn't be tolerated here, and shouldn't be tolerated in the US or anywhere else.
If it was voted the other way the title would have been - "FEC votes to through SMS privacy out the window, by attaching your id to each message......"
as much as spam sucks.. people will still bitch either way...
If you read the article, you would notice that this is not really a big deal:
It was a request for a advisory decision as to if SMS messages were exempt from displaying a disclaimer, i.e. 'Paid for by the RNC'.
Some media is exempt, and they wanted to know if SMS's are included in that exemption.
It does not give PACs any additional rights as far as Spaming goes, it just says that they don't have to put the full disclaimer in their message.
I don't know about you, but I don't currently get any SMS spam, and this decisions isn't going to change that.
Dear FEC:
FEC YOU!
Signed,
Poot Rootbeer
I just reamed ATT Wireless's ass last week for sending me SMS spam, for features I already have no less.
I thought there was a law somewhere that made it illegal to advertise to a consumer when that consumer paid for the communication medium, ala fax spamming. You can bet your ass that any politician that spams me will receive a bill instead of a vote.
My cell phone is the one thing that I haven't had to deal with solicitations on (except for that little ATTWS incident). LISTEN TO ME - I DO NOT WANT TO BE MARKETED TO. I don't care that you think your product/service/political party/penis pills are better than the rest, I don't fucking want them, and if I did, I would contact you on my own.
Wouldn't it be nice to get the cell numbers of these people that decided this was a good idea? I've got some stuff they just have to know about right away to improve their sex lives, enlarge their breasts, and make money overnight by working from home.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
You (the receiver) have to pay for incoming SMS message? What country are you in?
Political urban legends never die. They just move over to Slashdot and infest the minds of right wingers.
Al Gore never claimed he invented the Internet. Read and weep.
Boy, it sure would be a shame of thousands of /.'ers happened to come across the cell phone numbers of the people involved in this, and they were flooded with calls that were billed at their expense...yep, sure would be a shame...
I can see why the FEC voted as it did. A standard disclosure statement like:
takes up 74 characters, nearly half the 160-character limit. That doesn't leave much room for a message. However, it raises a larger question: is SMS a useful medium for campaign messages to begin with?You can't fit much of a political message into 160 characters. Those that will fit, like "I Like Ike," are generally only effective if presented by a human being. Seeing a person wear an "I Like Ike" button is a much more powerful message than receiving an anonymous "I Like Ike" message on your phone.
And as the article points out, wireless devices are a personal and private medium for most consumers. They should not be turned into roaming, vibrating billboards, especially since the owners of the devices will be forced to read the advertisements.
This is another rule change that will only benefit the power that be.
For example, a conniving political party can determine busy poll times in hotly contended contests and spam potential voters as they enter the polling place. This is remarkably in contrast to the traditional ban of political advertising at or in polling places on election day.
We (the U.S.) are moving farther and farther away from any semblance of democracy.
--Zen Mastuh (posting anonymously because I lost my damn cookie...)They've just stunted the growth of another potential consumer market by virtue of their ignorance. Who the hell is gonna pay anything for SMS without relatively secure guarantees that it'll be spam-free? Email is free, and people are already pissed off enough about that.
I fail to see how this decision will affect the volume of SMS spam in any significant way. All that this decision means is that any political parties which send out election propoganda will not have to say who sponsored the ad. Spammers who are not politicians have never had any such requirement, so they are not affected. Political spam seems to me to be a very small part of the general spam problem.
If you want to see regulation of SMS spam, you would need to look to the FCC or Congress, not the FEC.
kinda like the way God took the initiative in creating spammers.
I thought SMS stood for Systems Management Server.
-Anonymous Network Admin weenie
Everyone gets spam all the time everywhere they go. If you're going to be one of those stuck up snobs that just has to get SMS service to feel cool, then you should be able to put up with spam there too.
- flurffmeister [ kingsofchaos.com/recruit.php?uniqid=4r3zz9fs ]
Someone needs to set up a website so we can accumulate all of the SMS Addresses of the various political parties. And then we can start sending them a few SMS messages of our own. If even .01% of the slashdot readers took the time to send some automated messages I bet the laws would change pretty quick. Probably need to establish a political party who's only goal is to stop SMS message spam.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Let's ask Vint Cerf:
"While it is not accurate to say that VP Gore invented Internet, he has played a powerful role in policy terms that has supported its continued growth and application, for which we should be thankful."
(Remember, only the Republican party and the Corporate media says Gore "invented the Internet.")
I work for ATT Wireless, if you don't think it's right to pay for receiving spam text messages you should sign up. There is no fee for receiving sms or e-mail messages on your tdma or gsm phone like other carriers. I don't know how they expect to mass spam sms customers, we're sure as hell not going to let them use our network for it.
Erm... geeze, that's very darn harsh... In Australia at least, SMS only costs the SENDER money, it's free to receive them.
Although there are the cases where you request information from a service, and they cost (I assume), although they are things you've explicitely asked for... how can it be legal to charge someone to receive messages on their phone they don't want?
I have received a couple of pieces of spam SMS here... but they didn't cost me anything to read and delete them straight away...
This decision has nothing to do with anonymous SMS. It only waives the requirement that a political message tells who paid for it.
The first paragraph of the article:
"A decision by federal election regulators to exempt text-based wireless ads from campaign disclosure rules has critics warning that consumers could find their mobile phones subject to a flood of political spam as campaign 2002 kicks into high gear."
Here in Argentina SMS is free for receiving messages, but not for sending. I guess in most of Europe this is the same.
:)
But think it like this, maybe if SPAM takes time and money intead of just time, then it could be seen as something really bad for everyone and then it could be used less because anyone sending it will be seen as evil?
Anyway, the only SPAM I have is from my phone company and not very often.
In Australia (and I gather everywhere else where mobiles are popular except the US) SMS is regarded as an essential feature by just about anyone under 30.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I only skimmed the material because I got rid of my SMS-capable phone last year and don't have a specific interest in this.
:).
It looked to me like this decision only applied to advertisements embedded in messages from a service users subscribed to. If that's the case, you're not paying any more to receive the ads (IIRC. Like I said, no more SMS) since SMS messages are charged on a per-message basis and you asked to receive the actual message.
As far as the need to disclose the source of the ad, here's a hint: The ad was paid for by whomever it portrays favorably. It was paid for by the opponent of whomever it portrays negatively.
If it pisses you off, unsubscribe from the service. If it really pisses you off, write a letter to the politician responsible for the ad and let them know you'll be voting against them due to their annoying advertising practices. With SMS not really being an established advertising medium that's shown proven results, they might actually stop using it if they get a couple complaints.
I actually wouldn't mind it too much. As it stands I'm not familiar with half the people I see on the ballots. Any bone-headed moves the candidates want to make to lose my vote only makes my day at the polls that much easier
Game... blouses.
On March 9, 1999 during CNN's "Late Edition" show Al Gore said the following "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
It sure looks to me like he clamed to have created the Internet, or am I not understanding the last three words of his quote?
why do you have to pay to recieve calls and sms messages in the states, anyways?
s'free over here on the other side of the pond.
This certainly gets around the rescrictions of campaigning not allowed within 100 feet (or whatever it is) of the polls. Just wait until the SMS messages start flooding the phone system on election day. How will the FEC react when voters are bombarded with SMS spam in the ballot booth.
....."
"Vote for
Right.
From the article ... "The Federal Election Commission (FEC) today approved a New Jersey technology firm's petition to waive disclosure rules for political ads delivered via SMS.
... take note that tech firms don't usually lay out cashola to petition the FEC on obscure rules if they don't see a monetary benefit in the proposition. They want to make money. No doubt have garnered interest from politicians who will pay for their service in the coming election season.
So it's not a politician or "interest group" looking for the FEC ruling. It's a provate business.
No doubt the NJ tech firm is seeing dollar signs in being a conduit for delivery of political messages via SMS. For all the naysayers who contend that SMS political spamming will never happen
"On March 9, 1999 during CNN's "Late Edition" show Al Gore said the following "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Create means invent. Get over it. Gore told a whopper here.
This is not a lie of the republicans, or of the mythical "corporate media"
For those of us who don't have one of those cell phones implanted in our ass, WTF is SMS?
The left-wing knee-jerk pro Gore argument relies on the idea "he did not invent it. He created it".
It does not take a right wing republican to see through this. Just anyone with sense is all.
Remember it was arpanet, then some committee on govenment opened it up to the public, where it became internet. Would you like to guess who was in charge of the comittee?
here is a hint his initials are A.G.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
From Snopes:
"Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it)
Yes, he did. Creation means these things.,
but that he was responsible for helping to create the environment (in an economic and legislative sense) that fostered the development of the Internet.
The Internet was well in place by the time Gore was on the scene. It was developed by the time he got there. Needless to say, it was also invented AND created by the time he got there: a claim of creation is nothing but a lie.
Al Gore might not know nearly as much about the Internet and other technologies as his image would have us believe
Since he claims that it is his creation, he must know a lot about it!
and he certainly has been guilty of stretching (if not outright breaking) the truth before
Here Snopes is putting "spin" on things. It is not a stretch to claim you did something you never did: it is an outright lie.
but to believe that Gore seriously thought he could take credit for the "invention" of the Internet
In his own words, he did just that. He could get away with if it is satire, but no, he and his left-wing defenders either insist that he did not claim he created it, or claim that he really did create (invent) it.
This disconnection from reality is one of the many reasons Gore lost the election. Other examples include the Love Canal discovery claim, the Love Story inspiration claim (love again), and the lie about listening to a union song when he was a child.... and the song did not exist yet.
So you are saying if Al Gore changed created to renamed in his quote, it would be true?
This is a serious problem in a country were most political ads are negative. If you get an SMS that you think is an unfair attack ad, it would help to know who sent it. I never vote for someone who uses attack ads, even if it means skipping a ballet line.
I don't care who paid for a bumper sticker or button, unless it appears on my car or shirt without my concent.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
This seems perfectly reasonable when the bulk of the cost is met by the roaming voter who receives the call.
It would be unreasonable to expect them to know the name of the person spammed in order to attribute the "Paid for..." appropriately.
Andrew
So Gore took something in existance and gave it the name "internet"? Gore's claim of invention or creation is still a lie: he did not make the thing, he only made its name (according to this story)
It certainly seems like the Federal Communications Commission might have some thing to say about this. Not that I hold out much hope that they'll stand up to it, but you never know....
It is true no matter what he says. Since he's a left-winger of course. If Gore had said that he "built" the Great Pyramid, these nutty apologists would obscure the fact of the lie by saying "you right-wingers are saying Gore claimed he constructed it! He did not! He said he built it! You right wing nazi liars!"
The truth never dies, it just hangs around and frustrates left winger's attempts to rewrite history.
Try to ignore it all you want, but the fact of the matter is, spam is here to stay, and unless you want some internet police to start hovering over every single person on the internet, then there's very few ways to prevent it.
So, if saying that makes me flamebait, then so be it, I'm flamebait.
- flurffmeister [ kingsofchaos.com/recruit.php?uniqid=4r3zz9fs ]
Maybe we misheard, and he really said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the intern net."
(I voted for him anyway.)
The entire argument in Snopes rests on claiming that Gore did not say he created the internet when he plainly did (in a quote Snopes actually puts on their page....big mistake).
This from the same folks who brought you the distinction between the meanings of Is and Is....
or the tactic of lying about not raping a woman back when she was not married by emphatically claiming you did not rape her under her later married name. Thank you president clinton!
"I took the initiative in creating the intern net."
Interns in fish nets! Hubba hubba!
(I voted for Bush instead; the best choice out of the 5 or so running)
Gore said he created THE internet. Not "a" internet. Your example might have some worth except it has no connection to Gore's language.
Did Gore create the internet? He said he did. Of course not.
Did Gore say he created an internet? He did not utter this sentence. It is necessary to say it this way to match your steam engine example. Did he? I really don't know if he invented one. I doubt it, but it is not at issue since he did not claim he invented "an internet". He did nothing less than claim he invented the one the only Internet.
Now I can be reminded on my phone that there are thousands of horny bitches just waiting for me!
The term Internet for the network was first used in 1974. How many years is this before Albert W. Gore Jr. got into Congress?
Sure, he helped it along. No reason to deny that. But to claim he created it is like claiming that President Jefferson created the United States of American when he "helped it along" greatly with the Lousiana Purchase.
Kind of funny, when Gore lays down a whopper, you get legions committing all sort of historical contortions and semantic acrobatics to claim that it is true. (and the originator of the statement in question lets it stand uncorrected.)
When Bush says something similar, he easily owns up to his mistake, he corrects and accepts correction, and moves on.
I can just imagine Gore walking down an icy sidewalk, and suddenly slipping and falling on his can. He gets up, and insists seriously "I intended to do that". Or Gore if he had made Bush's infamous "Where Wings Take Dream" speech. There'd be hours of spin and insistence from Gore and his defenders that this was a carefully designed quote for the ages.
According to the article, the SMS spams wouldbe limited to political messages only.
Yeah, sure, I can see it now..
Dear registered Democrat voter,
Your support in the upcoming election is crucial. You can't let Jesse Helmes get reelected *again*, can you? Help us get rid of him! Our plan is to send him a kit comprising our patented Herbal Viagra, our Miracle Penis Enlargement pill and our Female Attractor Pheromone After-Shave. Pretty soon the old geezer will be too busy to leave home, and then he'll die of sheer exhaustion.
But we need to test the kit first. That's why we're offering it to you for only $199.99. We figured that as it is, you probably don't get much. Why else would you be a registered Democrat voter?
Don't delay, act now, call 1-800-SMS-SPAM.
See why I have my doubts about the political message only exemption?
P.S. I could have picked Hillary and the Republicans. Nothing personal.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
AT & T Wireless doesn't charge you to receive text messages. What are you going to bill for?
Being a current ATT Wireless employee myself, I know how this is. It's very easy to SPAM cell phones. That's why it's a good thing AWS doesn't charge people to get text messages. Cingular charges $0.10 for each message, sent or received. That can really add up if you're getting quite a lot of SPAM.
That's why I can let my network monitoring utilities go ahead and send me SMS messages.. I don't get charged for them. :-) Other carriers might charge $0.10, but at least one doesn't...
I guess I'll be adopting a personal policy similar to that of the sign on my front door:
"Any politician or lobbying group knocking at this door or leaving campaign material or performing other such intrusions upon the privacy of this resident will AUTOMATICALLY be voted against regardless of the candidate or issue. Respect the privacy of this resident!"
Being a current ATT Wireless employee myself, I know I should be able to rack up "insightful" and "informative" moderations with this post
Well, it's not their cell phone numbers, but they have a toll free number: (800) 424-9530. We all know what toll free numbers mean ... Maybe we can /. a phone that they pay for?
You can verify that this really is their toll free number at their Web site (it's at the bottom).
Ovid
AFAICT, most of the slowdown is doing net lookups of spam listings.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"Good news! You can now use your AT&T Wireless phone to make international calls to over 220 countries. Visit [censored] for rates & info"
Sender: 9263
Sent: August 22, 2002 16:32 PT
It COMPLETELY freaked me out!!! Since I ONLY used the pager/sms as an emergency contact and I rarely get paged (unlike the sysadmin days), my first reaction was anexity and concern for my family. I had to stop being productive today due to At&t insisting on forcing their advertising through a service plan I pay for. Which, by the way, it is something I get charged for, and there is a line item on my bill. But that's not the point - we pay for it even if there is no line for it on the bill. Just because it's "included" doesn't mean I am not paying for the service. I find it deeply insulting that I should pay for a service that does not act as it should and actively seeks to dimish the quality of it's service through captive audience techniques.
I am very upset and harmed by At&t's actions and as such, I wouldn't mind hearing from civil litigation and personal injury rats^H^H^H^H^H laywers on how I may persue this matter and seek restitiution for the harm they have caused me:
- personal trauma
- loss of work
- theft of service
- telecom fruad
- bait & switch
Since government action has removed any hope of my ever being able to obtain lawyers, guns or money, I might suggest the slashdot effect be directed at the above sender. :)
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
I don't have a problem with them leaving out "paid for by" stuff as long as the SMS headers say who sent it, just like email (well, presuming it can't be forged like email). If you can't tell who sent it, then that's a problem with SMS itself that needs to be remedied, irrespective of who's sending them.
Or is it 100ft? No campaigning within x feet of a polling place? Will this mean that they can't send the ads on voting day?
That's why I can let my network monitoring utilities go ahead and send me SMS messages.. I don't get charged for them. :-) Other carriers might charge $0.10, but at least one doesn't...
My provider, Cellular South, doesn't charge for each sms message. That doesn't mean that unwanted messages can be sent to me.
--Todd
In NooooZealand it is free to receive SMS and incoming calls, only the originator gets charged.
The SPAMsters are going to play this game as long as they can sucker companies into using SPAM services. When the penny finally drops that people hate SPAM, companies will realise that SPAM isn't worth using. The SPAM companies will then fold.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I just emailed the director of the FEC and asked where I can send my bill for receiving these ads and if the FEC or the political parties will reimburse me.
I don't see myself getting an answer.
If you start getting these, call up your provider and tell them that you want it stopped.
If enough subscribers are pissed off, the phone company will have to do something about it or risk losing paying subscribers.
If some asshole starts spamming my phone I'll sue my provider for allowing it to happen! Junk mail in my physical mailbox is bad enough.. but, at least they pay for that (and it keeps the postal service in business). But, if I'm paying for it I'm going to nip that shit in the butt real quick!
I can't believe it costs you money to receive an SMS or a mobile phone call. You guys (North Americans) have such a weird mobile phone system! It seems really unfair that the recipient has to pay when the recipient cannot control the actions of the people calling or sending SMS messages. Especially since marketers are starting to send SMS advertising messages - clearly the marketers should have to pay for that! North America is truly unique in this regard - everywhere else in the world (Europe, Australia, Asia etc) the person making the phone call is the one who pays - just like it is for fixed-line calls.
a beowulf cluster sending SMS spam!
No, Beowulf clusters can't imagine in Soviet Russia.
"resident Bush..."
Make that President. Elected the exact same way that Clinton was: by the Constitutional process of the electoral college (Bush got more popular votes than Clinton did; but that does not matter. Never has; learn your civics.).
In case you want to bring up the Supreme Court, remember that all the Supremes did was stop a redundant attempt by the Gore camp to tamper with the votes. Gore still lost in later counts, like he lost in the earlier ones.
Bush has a much better grip than Clinton on the issues. Clinton is still one of those morons who believes that you can tax the hell out of everyone in order to make a prosperous nation. Clinton was also one of those who believe that you create racial harmony by punishing people for being of the wrong skin color (he even went as far as to put a flaming racist in the top civil rights post).
Remember, be polite, and don't flame. Save that for the SMS messages for his phone (wish I knew the number).
How about identifying the SMS spammer and then let's SMS-Slashdot 'em... that would be sweet... ;-)
"Thank you for calling Bigfat Telco's customer service line. Due to an overwhelming number of calls, we now require that you send in your customer service request via SMS message from your SMS-capable cellular phone. You may be charged 10 cents per message, plus 10 cents per autoresponse from our customer service software with lame suggestions that don't apply to you. Bigfat Telco provides this service in lieu of human beings, which is a whole lot cheaper than answering the phone."
Voila! On-paper cost reduction == inflated on-paper stock price. With recent events and all, you don't have to be a sleepy SEC chairman to figure out what comes next.
Regretfully, there isn't a toll-free 800 number, but they have an "admin" mailbox and can be contacted at this address here. Note their page doesn't seem to have been updated since 2001. Have fun.
This sig no verb.
This seems timely, as in the past I have had all of my incomming text messages blocked on my verizon phone. I never used it for messaging and was only recieving spam on it. I called and had the feature turned off. In the past day or two I've started recieving messages again (one of which woke me up in the middle of the night), all of which are blatant spam (I've never given anyone permission to call or message my phone). I called verizon to see why I was getting them (and if I was still paying for them), and the woman on the phone told me that incomming messages could not be blocked (even though I had had them blocked for the past 6mo or so), and that I still have to pay for them (even though they will creidt the account, but that requires calling them which is never a very pleasant experience). Oddly enough they seemed more than willing to block outgoing messages? Looks like I'll have to seriously consider switching plans when my contract is up. Does anyone have any idea why verizon doesn't allow the blocking of messages any more (besides the obvious motive of blatant greed by making a couple of cents on every piece of spam sent)?
Text spam is illegal in the UK and many places in Europe. Generally the only mass spam received is for premium rate scams where you are encouraged to call a premium rate phone number. Usually these have either the number hidden or shown to be from the premium rate phone number they want you to call.
It is possible to spoof the source phone number of the mobile phone or insert alphanumeric characters.
Many aggregators offer this service (usually used for legimate purposes) - A salesman for an overseas text message aggregator once specifically told me when I asked about altering the sender address that it would work with the number spoofed to +44906xxx - a typical premium rate number prefix.
Needless to say, we didn't buy any services from them!!
From: 121
GM: Cingular MSG:
Wish you had more
reception? Well you
don't have to. Get a
Free Antenna
Booster @ www.My
Cingular PCS.com
Of all the times to get this, I was in a cingular office while my friend was getting his nokia replaced. POS SMS, that's the only SMS message I have received.
and favours corporations. What a great move.
what's the difference between SMS and text messaging? I know I ahve to pay 10 cents per message receiveed for text messaging with ATT ... but i dont think ATT has SMS.
Dunno.. just confused someone clarify?
Better would be to retain the requirement that the originator be readily identifiable but allow more flexibility in the form that this takes: "Sent from http://www........org/", for example, would still leave enough room in the message to be usable. (The originator phone number shown with the message isn't adequate identification, IMHO, because it puts too much onus on the receiver expend time and money to track the originator down, though it should be a requirement that the number is a genuine toll-free one operated by the message originator and manned at the time the messages are sent...)
Quite why any candidate or organisation would want to use this medium in a country where many of the recipients will have to pay to receive the message is left as an exercise for the reader.
My biggest concern regarding SMS/text paging is how wireless carriers like Nexel make it trivial to send a massive payload of messages, just by knowing the area code/exchange and creating a program to hit every possible number combination.
Especially with a high propability rate of success, being that wireless providers can fill up exchanges pretty fast with subscribers. A more logical approach would be for each cellular subscriber to create a unique alias and/or number combination for sending messages, making brute force attacks much less propable (assuming you don't post your address on the web, only to be harvested by email-harvesting spam-spiders).
Or, disabling the option altogether. As a Nextel subscriber, there's nothing I could do to stop someone from costing me 10 cents a text message - it comes with every plan i've seen, so theoretically it would be easy to hit almost every subscriber within an NPA/exchange.
Do not copy our music or go to jail!
This message is brought to you by the RIAA
I send bulk SMS from work everyday. Why? I have it tied into my Big Brother monitoring and everytime there is an alert my team get alerted. The computers send the alerts. No need to carry a pager and a phone (and everyone has a phone).
Also if I don't need an urgent reply, I prefer to send an SMS rather than ring someone so that they can choose when to respond to me.
So in other words, Vint Cerf agrees that Gore did not create the internet.
Cerf thinks Gore was a positive influence, but perhaps he does not remember that Gore was one of the biggest supporters of the Clipper Chip.
...then you'll miss the good'ol days when spam was text based.
"PC Load Letter": You have not included enough politically correct phrases in your letter. Please edit it and resubmit for printing.
Americans have to PAY to RECIEVE an SMS???
No wonder it never took of over there...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
That greatly depends on the receiver's telco. In Germany e.g., sending to T-D1 is quite reliable (other providers, on the other hand, don't work at all).
There's a key difference between e-mail spam and anonymous SMS. Where anon SMS can be used for, say, flirting or a number of social events, it cannot be used in bulk without putting a plentitude of nickels on the cashier's desk.
Spam costs relatively nothing, SMS still costs a nickel or two to send. Do you really think a spammer will shell out $100k to reach a million mobile subs with his "Enlarge your penis now!!" message?
I don't see the danger of misuse for spam as that high - I see the pros outweighing that risk.
(However, I still think Europe has a better charging model where the initiating party always pays in full for the telecom transaction - you never pay to receive in Europe, except in a few special circumstances which you are always aware of when they occur and have to deliberately initiate. But that's another story altogether.)
...add three inches to my cellphone!
I'll just handle this shit the way it used to be done. Take a fucking bat to the asshole on thier way to work. Voting to cocksmears out of office doesn't help, becuase some other corrupt dickhead will step up to the plate. While we're at it, someone should take a bat to Jack Vallenti, and the RIAA bitch. Whatever happened to the "we'll just kick your ass" spirit. The teamsters wouldn't have put up with this shit 20 years ago. Hoffa anyone?
It's all documented. It's clumsy wording (rather than devious, does anyone seriously think that Gore wanted people to believe that he was making an outrageous claim to have single-handedly created the Internet - the very fact that the claim appears to be ludicrous ought to be the very reason why people like yourself shouldn't be assuming that Gore actually meant the interpretation you're using.)
Interesting that an out of context quote like this can be used to ridicule a politician, but, say, making the same joke over and over again about 9/11, usually with the audience laughing along, is treated as a non-story. But nobody wants to criticise trifecta boy.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
I dunno about you and your friends, but for my friends it's a major way we make sure we meet up on a Friday night.
:BTW, where's the astronomy department?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
What he said is what he said. I am getting tired of all this (alone != alone, is != is) talk. What every happend to saying what you mean and sticking to it???
It is a free standing sentence. Please tell me how I am misunderstanding what he said.
It's like when the Democrats and Republicans where fighting over school lunches and the Democrats where saying that a reducation in the projected rate of increase was a cut when it was not a cut.
br?
So how did they pay the spam-house to originate all the messages? Why, by using the funds from your income tax "election campaign" check-off box, of course! The whole sordid mess makes me proud that I've never voluntarily contributed money to ANY political party or politician. Not even the party I used to be registered with.
It's simple English comprehension of a clumsy sentence, a sentence he has admitted could have been better worded and that people who really do have the right to claim co-inventorship of the Internet, such as Vint Cerf, say doesn't mean what the wingnuts claim it means and is a justified boast for what it does mean.
He is sticking to what he said. He just didn't say what you've decided he said. And, be honest, if you really thought he said that he invented the Internet then wouldn't you actually say the words he said each time, rather than "Al Gore said he invented the Internet."?
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Are Republicans incapable of understanding English? I mean, what's the trouble here? Is Bush with his bizarre lingual skills symptomatic of a major crisis in the intelligence levels of the average wingnut? Why the hell are you people always cutting funds for education when clearly you're all in desperate need of more, or is this due to the stupid religious schooling that leaves you all without knowledge of basic science? I had no idea they'd miss out on teaching you English too, but, geez I guess they're worse and more dangerous than I thought.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
the Democrats where saying that a reducation in the projected rate of increase was a cut when it was not a cut.
There's this little thing called *inflation* you may have heard about. In real(inflation-adjusted) dollars, the GOP was cutting spending on Medicare.
Even Rep. John Kasich admitted it was "intellectually dishonest" to be portraying an increase in absolute dollars as an actual increase in the program's spending.
And finally, if "created" and "invented" mean the same thing, why do pundits and conservatives like yourself persist in saying "invented" instead of what Gore actually said?
Probably because you *know* they do *not* mean the same thing.