Slashdot Mirror
A Conference About Spam
zonker writes "January 17th will be the first (annual?) meeting of the Spam Conference held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The informal meeting will feature Paul Graham, John Graham-Cumming, John "Cap'n Crunch" Draper among others (possibly including ESR though he hasn't yet confirmed). The free conference will consist of a number of talks about new ways to combat the growing spam problem, after which everyone's going out and getting some Chinese food. Should be an informative and fun meeting and a chance to meet some interesting people."
Cool, Sounds like something to throw a tape int he vcr for. I have always found these kind of conferences interesting.
I'm not sure if I want it to become an annual conference or not. While combating spam is always good, and the list of those involved looks decent, if the conference becomes a regular thing, it means that spam is still a big problem.
Yeah, yeah. I'm probably being over-idealistic again to try to imagine that spam would become any less of a problem, no matter what measures are enforced.
So while I really hope something somehow gets done (Maybe that *cringe* AOL thing will help...) I'm not throwing out my spam filter just yet.
~The Incredible Xan~
"Saying that men can't be lesbians is gender discrimination."
slashdots being over-run by spam first aol now this, sounds like a good idea though hopefuly they will find out how to at least get rid of some of the spam, which by the way is getting very bad, I registered a new hotmail account the other day and normaly when you finish creating an acount there is one message, a welcome to hotmail from msn not this time nope there was two one was the welcome the other was a porn mail.....things are getting out of hand
Could someone post their email addresses so we can all send then wonderful offers on how to buy viagra online, as well as, our suggestions on how to fix "their spam problem".
MIT (who is hosting this conference) has a key server that presumably hold millions of mail addresses.
Seems it'd be more appropriate to go out to eat Spam afterwards...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
This is the guy who brags on his website that he doesn't have a credit card. The same guy who helped "steer" VA Linux to the biggest dot com stock flameout in history. The same guy who runs a blog that is so right wing that his solution to plane hijackings is to arm all the passengers. The same guy who brags he has no formal training in software development. The same guy who was pretty much run off the Linux kernel developer mailing list.
...
Who exactly gives a shit what this guy has to say?
Just asking
Spam is like a twisted, grizzled beast of some kind, that because it was left untended so long, grew to a hideous montrosity. He could only be defeated by the deadliest of measures (to YRO) and even then, it could regroup and reform like so many lycanthrope.
Anyway, spam's going nowhere, despite your conferences and box socials and whatnot.
...and forward this message and Slashdot page to ten of your e-mail contacts, you shall be granted eternal life!
Also, you shall be given a free Penis Enlargement, millions of dollars from your Nigerian friends and find out how to lose 50 pounds of weight in less than 5 seconds.
Yes, it is true!!!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Show your knowledge in front of MAJOR scientific audience! Publish your research FREE!!!! Sign up for our S_P+A_M CoNFEREnce today!!
To remove yourself from this list, please click here.
care to post your home and email addresses? i've got something to sell you. =)
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Does anyone know what happens to the hundreds of emails I forward to uce@ftc.gov each month? Someone mentioned to send them there, and I tried to read the stuff on the ftc site, but they just say its their "database" for spam. What does that mean? Do they actually do anything with the stuff? Not that the 20 seconds to forward with headers really kills my day. But I just want it to be useful to someone...
And out of curiosity, what are some other people's ideas on trying to prevent it? Basically right now I just try not to have my email address anywhere online (without some sort of word in it or something along those lines). And I watch what I might sign up for and their "privacy" policies. And I don't reply to the spam I get, since usually that apparently just confirms your address and makes you more valuable.
So any more tips?
being that the conference is about Spam, where Ralsky et al. have set up shop.
Is there such a thing as premeditated Pavlovian response?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Hmmm... I'm thinking (-1, Spambait).
I opened up my Inbox this morning and had like 50 emails about this conference...
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Try this on for size: If your received just one e-mail from every business in the US, you would get 1,200 per day.
Say it with me. Just hit delete. 1,200 times. Oops! Just deleted the e-mail from your (mother/father/brother/sister/spouce/SO/boss/once in a life time confidential offer).
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
E-mail 250,000,000 people about their ideas on fighting spam. That would surely work!
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
ill probably get mod'ed offtopic for this...
Ever since the internet came along spam has been a problem. People hate spam now.
i live in Minnesota where 1. we live in iglo's 2. there is no cable or dsl 3. Spam capital of the world.
I'm speaking of the food of course! Spam has been pretty popular here the last 20 years. You wouldn't believe all of the people that wear spam shirts... although those people go to the salvation army for their shirts its still nonetheless overwhelming!
Slash-for-Thought
Anybody know the best way to get signed up for massive amounts of spam? I'm kinda curious to see how fast I can get 1000+ messages on one account.
people pissing on spam:
<nasty>
URL http://www.gapingmaw.com/62365/
</nasty>
All the anti-spam team concentrated in one place. What's the chance of a certain prominant spammer `accidentically' causing the building to collapse?
there aren't enough 'offtopic' mod points to go around....
now you've posted that site and they'll get thousands of click-throughs from /.ers wanting to see what the fake website looks like!!
Hey... you sure this isn't some cunning spam advertising method to get us to go to your site? Is Yusaku Godai even your real username or is it really cafecutie21?!?
What happened to Arc? I think their spam tools are (to be) written in their (paulgraham.com) new dialect of lisp called Arc.
There seemed to be a lot of activity about it months ago, but I haven't heard anything since. And the website has not been updated.
Anybody have any news?
--t
Something who argues that there are only 1,200 businesses gets a 3, Insightful?
There are 1,200 businesses in my town, fuckwits.
Why is Cap'n Crunch in on this? I realise the other folks mentioned are somewhat "activists" and "leaders" but what's the big deal about CC? Has he done important stuff -- besides blowing a whistle into a telephone -- in the last, oh, 15 years? Seriously, someone please fill me in.
- Introduce them to the fried toothless wierdo.
- Let them talk to him for about 30 seconds.
- Remember that you have an important meeting loudly (because he is slightly deaf) and usher your children away very quickly.
- Tell your children "That man does drugs. Thats what happens to your brain on drugs."
- Change your shirt so he won't remember what you look like. (Elsewise he will want find out if your spam system caught his spam.)
Cruch's "company" is building a number of "cruch boxes." When at SANS IDNet, he would walk up to IDS vendors with his crunch box IP addresses and say "Did you catch me?" After a few minutes of questioning him, the vendors would eventually figure out he didn't actually do anything except plug into the network. Trust me, do yourself a favor and stay away from the Crunch.As quite possibly the only member of the old-school Slashdot trolls to ever actually attempt a serious and meaningful conversation with Mr. Lockwood (it worked, briefly), I feel compelled to comment on this.
That Geekizoid is an inanity is beyond dispute. That it is what it is almost entirely because of Mr. Lockwood is also beyond dispute. That Mr. Lockwood has, furthermore, contributed substantially to the deterioration of every site to which he has ever posted, save only those which were beyond redemption before he ever saw them (a category which arguably includes Slashdot), I will not dispute. That all of this, along with the other charges leveled against him, proves that Mr. Lockwood sucks, I will not dispute.
The real question behind all this, though, is not whether Mr. Lockwood sucks, but why Mr. Lockwood sucks. One might say that it does not matter, noting, by analogy, that one does not psychoanalyze a rabid dog, but instead simply puts it out of its misery. But it does matter, for in his own odd and frightening way, Scott Lockwood is Everyman. If you do not understand him, you do not understand anyone, probably including yourself.
Everyone, seemingly, detests Mr. Lockwood. Given that he had been married four times before he turned 30, this "everyone" may well include three ex-wives (last I heard, we're still waiting for his inevitable fourth divorce). From various anecdotes he has let drop over the years, there are a variety of real-life acquaintances, co-workers, and blood relatives in this category as well. So clearly, this is not just an online phenomenon; Mr. Lockwood is not a caring, sensitive man who lets off steam late at night by flaming people on weblogs. He is like this all the time. It is not a pose. It is the real Scott Lockwood, at 200 proof.
Mr. Lockwood himself is not unaware of this. He knows (and wishes it were not so) that dislike follows him around like the odor of alcohol trails after a drunk. But he has no idea why this is so. He knows it has to do with his abrasive and temperamental demeanor; he knows that his argumentative and self-righteous comments, and his complaints of being mistreated, win him no friends. But the connection between the cause and the effect, and the difference between his conduct and most other people's, escapes him. He has given up hope of understanding or improving the situation; he expects that it will continue, without change, for the rest of his life.
Mr. Lockwood does not understand that all of these things are symptomatic of a malaise that underlies his entire life. It is a condition that he was very nearly born with, and one which victimizes nearly all people to some degree. Most of us are not nearly as bad off as Mr. Lockwood; but there are some that have much more severe cases than him. Many rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals fall into that latter category. But even those of us who merely think ourselves better or smarter than everyone else, or who consider ourselves fit to decide what is right for everyone else, or who mock others for what they believe, are victims of this condition to some degree. I include myself in this; I do not claim (yet) to be speaking from a perspective completely outside the state of disease.
Mr. Lockwood's problem, to put it simply, is that he perceives the universe to be antagonistic to him. He has divided the universe into Self and Other, and decided that these two are eternal antagonists. Everything is his enemy; every action that anyone takes (other than to praise him), he perceives as some sort of attack, and he retaliates accordingly. He is convinced, although probably only subconsciously, that his life is a war in which he stands alone against all the forces of the universe. It is, in essence, the ultimate in paranoia.
As I wrote above, nearly everyone shares this condition to some extent. Many serial killers operate on the principle that, life being a never-ending battle that they will ultimately lose, they should take as many of the "enemy" with them as they can before they fall. But even ordinary people mostly act on analogous principles. Many people exploit the world around them in destructive or insensitive ways, or mistreat their fellow humans needlessly. This is all a consequence of defining the Other as an enemy; and this, in turn, is based on the fundamental error of dividing the universe into Self and Other.
What we all (Mr. Lockwood included) should strive for is an end to this division, which is really only a matter of mental habits, not an a priori property of existence. It derives from the infant's perception that part of what he perceives obeys his will and sends him sensory input (Self), and the rest does not (Other). The antagonism between these two hypothesized entities derives from the instinctive desire on the child's part to impose his will on everything; Other does not do what he wants, and is therefore the enemy. And so the infant makes the fundamental error that haunts him, in most cases, for the rest of his life.
This is what makes Mr. Lockwood tick. It is probably also what makes you tick. Think about that carefully before flaming him simply because his case is a bit worse than yours -- if indeed you are better off.
--mv
I've entered the war against spammers and porn for about a year now...
/. I joined the effort. I'm a sort of "late comer" and hopefully want to post my work on SourceForge and make it available to everyone.
Last year, when I discovered I was getting a whopping 2500 spam messages per month, I just HAD to do something about it. Besides joining SpamCop, I started figuring out ways to put an end to this insanity, and started figuring ways to fight it.
My first effort was to get to "Know thy enemy" and put some of my military training to good use, so started to do some "recon". With a better understanding of how they (spammers) work, I started setting up some Spam Honeypots... I'll save the rest for my talk at the Conference... but for those luckey enough to attend, it will be rather enlightening. I hope to put the results on my site. I'm sure someone will alert you folks to where to find it.
After reading about the SpamBayes project on
Spammers are getting sneakier then ever, but I've developed some clever ways to "follow the money trail" to locate the SOB's. Getting some pretty good results.
I was invited to talk at the conference, and I hope we can come up with some pretty cool spam fighting tools to try and make it as costly as possible for spammers to operate that don't "play by the rules".
I've got a number of Chinese contacts, working from within China to help me get a perspective on how cooperative the Chinese ISP's are, and getting mixed results. But I can assure you that unless you have some very dedicated people from within China working with you, that speaks the language, you'll get ZERO results...
I hope this conference will be just a start of things to come.
CC
It seems that at some point ISPs/mailbox providers are going to wake up and see that they should filter out the junk mail for their users. But, since we're all still waiting for that to happen, I decided to try a little program called SpamNet that promised to block out junk email. After a few months of use I'm happy to say it works great. The premise of SpamNet is that all users of the software can block spam. This works well, and works even better as more and more people use the software.
SpamNet sends it to a little folder called "Spam", in case you want to double-check and make sure nothing you wanted got blocked.
The good parts:
- Automatically blocks about 95% of spam
- Small, fast, simple, FREE
The bad:
- Not at all configurable (just does what it's supposed to do...)
- Occasionally it will block something from Amazon.com or another large mailing list which isn't really spam.
If you're tired getting spam give it a try for yourself, here is the link:
SpamNet
System Requirements:
Outlook 2000/2002/XP
Windows 98/2000/XP
Mr. "Quick Star" and Mr. Fake "Scott Lockwood", I have a message for you: get ready for a world of hurt. The first lesson is free.
Have you ever seen the movies Where the Heart Is and Anywhere but Here starring Natalie Portman? How about the classic Meg Ryan romantic comedies When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle? Well, THAT'S the style of Martial Arts I practice. I've perfected the ruthless and efficient OLSEN TWINS FASH-SLAP STANCE!
How about the the classic Sci-Fi cult hits Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Well, I know the martial arts from THOSE movies too! Let me show you THE PATHETIC TRANSVESTITE ALIEN STANCE!
I've also recently started to learn the martial arts from several new movies such as Jackass: the Movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. I really look forward to learning the martial arts from the upcoming movie Eight Mile starring my FAVORITE HERO EVAR, Eminem (a.k.a. Slim Shady & Marshall Mathers), so you'd better watch out for my ANGRY WHITE NIGGER STANCE!!!!
I'm also learning even more martial arts from this web page [realultimatepower.net], including the deadly KUNG-FU NINJA JESUS ATTACK STANCE! Hi-YAH!!!
I'm working to improve my rythm [klerck.org], flexibility [rotten.com], stealth skills [fartbuster.com], self-confidence [yahoo.com], and critical thinking [timecube.com] skills, so you'd better watch out, because very soon I will perfect my ultimate attack, THE LARD-LIKE ANTISOCIAL DEPRESSIVE ASSHOLE SPAMMER IMPOTENT PAEDOPHILE FELCHING FLATULENT WIGGER SUMO-SAMURAI CHILD-ABUSE RESTRAINING-ORDER UNWASHED BASTARDIZED ANAL IMMATURE CATHOLIC GOATFUCKER STANCE!!!!
If that doesn't scare you... just wait and see. You'll get yours soon enough.
As Nietzsche said, "If you stare too long into my ass [klerck.org], beware, for my ass [klerck.org] might start to stare back into you."
-- Vlad
I just LOVE Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com]. Especially the "flab" [olsentwins.com] section, where I learned to use a fold of my own stomach-flab as a Martial Arts weapon. Oh and the "aborted fetus" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read Vladinator's entrails [olsentwins.com]. Here you will find how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have an orgy party? A faggot party? Go to the the mall naked and get arrested for public indecency? Have a sleepover and get woken up by Nigerians on the phone?
In short, if you haven't seen Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com], you don't know what you're missing!
I just LOVE Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com]. Especially the "flab" [olsentwins.com] section, where I learned to use a fold of my own stomach-flab as a Martial Arts weapon. Oh and the "aborted fetus" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read Vladinator's entrails [olsentwins.com]. Here you will find how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have an orgy party? A faggot party? Go to the the mall naked and get arrested for public indecency? Try to sleep but get woken up by Nigerians on the phone?
In short, if you haven't seen Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com], you don't know what you're missing!
I just LOVE The Anti-Vlad Triad's site! Especially the "fash" section, where I learned to cut the bottom off of an old shirt to use as a hair enhancement! Oh, and the "dance party" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read The Anti-Vlad Triad's emails! Here you will discover how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have a LAN party? A hash party? Go to the mall to look at underage girls? Have a sleepover and call Scott Lockwood at midnight?
In short, if you haven't checked out The Anti-Vlad Triad's site, you don't know what you're missing!
One idea that occurred to me was requiring the sender to do some nontrivial computation (for instance, the receiving mail server sends the product of two (large, but not RSA-large) primes, which the sender must factor and include with the message to be accepted.
Now, unfortunately, such a scheme has some problems. The huge variation in performance between machines out there means any computation substantial enough to crimp a spammer might cause grandma's 486 to become unusable for sending email. More to the point, it could greatly increase the cost of running webmail services (not to mention mailing lists). Now, the big webmail providers might be prepared to play along - they might even build some dedicated hardware for the purpose of running the protocol fast. However, there's nothing to stop spammers building exactly the same kind of hardware, enabling them to continue to send out spam by the bucketload!
So, anyway, I don't think my idea is the answer, but surely the whole area of improved mail protocol design would be worth exploring.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Good work comrade, may this off-topicness continue.
Sweet.
Dedicated to teaching quality Trolling skillz
STEP 1 : Pick a story and search through for a highly-rated or otherwise prominent comment in which someone uses a nubmered list. For example, you want to find something like this:
EXAMPLE:
- Blah!
- Blah!
- Blah!
For example, I selected this post as a prime target. There are only a few things to keep in mind: pick an active story and a comment that'll be seen by a lot of people as the target of your troll. The comment MUST contain a numbered list, similar to the above, although the exact style of numbering can vary. Also, try to pick a comment that hasn't already been trolled this way. Every comment with a numbered list will eventually get hit, so you want to be quick.STEP 2 : Take careful note of the method of numbering that your target post is using. It really doesn't matter, as long as it's numbered. For example, in this post I use text like "STEP 1", "STEP 2", etc. Note this carefully. This method of trolling makes the most sense when the list is a list of ordered steps (such as this vary document you are reading), BUT if the numbered list is something different, such as "REASON 1:", "REASON 2:", etc., hit it anyway! Your troll will be more esoetric and non-sequitur, but all the better: trolling doesn't always HAVE to make sense. Sometimes it's fun to confuse people.
STEP 3 : Now you'll put the information gained from step 2 to good use, as you attack the target you selected. This is where it gets complicated, so pay attention. This is easiest to explain with a couple of examples. Let's say your target looks like this:
TARGET POST:
Now, to pull off your masterfult act of trollage, you'll want to sneak in, post a reply, and do this:
TROLL REPLY:
- 4. ???
- 5. PROFIT!
Let's say that the post you're replying to is a bit more complex:TARGET POST:
Reasons Linix is so great!
*REASON 1: My allowance won't cover expensive software.
*REASON 2: Completely off-topic rant about Microsoft.
*REASON 3: I love Linix!!
Now you want to come in and do this:
TROLL REPLY:
*REASON 4: ???
*REASON 5: PROFIT!
Note what I did there: I emulated the exact style of his numbered list, and then added to it in order to cleverly troll him. THAT is the key. If he numbers his list using bold, use bold. If your target uses all caps, use all caps. If he uses Roman Numerals, use Roman Numerals (hint: I II III IV V VI VII VII IX X, then everything repeats from there), etc. Make YOUR list seem like an naturally-flowing conclusion to your TARGET's list. Then give him HELL! Here's the general key:
TARGET POST:
...
1. Blah!
2. Blah!
3. Blah!
X. Blah!
TROLL REPLY
X+1. ???
X+2. PROFIT!
I know it gets complicated when you throw in the algebra, but you should be able to do it. Keep track of the numbers on a piece of paper if you have to. It's vary difficult, but once you try it out, you'll get the hang of it. It's an aquired skill that can only be improved through hard work and practice. So get out there and troll!
Here's a summary:
STEP 1 : Pick your target (active, contains numbered list)
STEP 2 : Gather information (style of the numbered list)
STEP 3 : Nail the target by adding on to his own list!
STEP 4 : ???
STEP 5 : PROFIT!
See, I even did it to my own damn list! That's how easy it is once you become a master at this discipline of trolling! Good luck, young Jedi!!! Go out and troll the world, you motherfucking cuntrag bitches!!
Offtopic fact: Minnesota is the largest producer of spam (the semi-edible "meat" kind). Hawaii is the largest consumer of it.
You were fun when you were intelligent, now you are just stupid.
Wow, ohmyGOD, Pumpernickel told me to FOAD. I guess I'd better do what he says!! Oh, wait. There's absolutely no reason for me to do what he says, now that I think about it.
Creative material. Creative material. Creative material.
Creative material. Creative material. Creative material.
Creative material. Creative material. Creative material.
Creative material. Creative material. Creative material.
Creative material. Creative material. Creative material.
Creative material. Creative material. Creative material.
Creative material. Creative material.
Confidential material.
Confidential material.
Confidentail material.
That's just scratching the surface. I could go back further, if you like.
If you actually look, you'll see that 90% of the real spam (multiple identical messages posted minute apart in an attempt to push our messages off the page) is posted by our enemies, Lockwood and his VladeKua5y minions. Maybe you just don't read carefully.
We generate more original material than evaryone else here COMBINED, and we generate BETTER stuff, too. We ARE Trolltalk. We are what's keeping it alive despite all attempts to destroy it. YOU are one of those attempts.
you could be arrested for holding conferences!
From: "ONI THEO"
Date: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:53:31 AM Pacific/Auckland
To: mrspam@spam.com
Subject: URGENT
Attention:
I presume this email will not be a surprise to you.
Am an engineer with the ministry of mineral resources
and energy in south Africa and also a member of the
contract awarding committee of this ministry under the south
Africa government.
Many year ago, the south Africa government asked this committee
to awards contracts to foregn firms, in which myself and two
of my partner are leader of the committee, with our good
position in this committee, we over involved this contract to
the tune of of us$21,500,000:00, to be benefited by me and two
other of my partner that are in charge of this contract awarding
committee in this ministry.
Now, that the contracts value has been paid off to the actual
contractor that executed this job, All we want is a trusted
foreign partner like you that we shall front to claim this over
involved sum.
Upon our agreement to carry on this business transaction with you,
the said fund will be share as follow, 75% will be for myself and two
others of my partner, 20% will be for you for using your bank account,
5% will be set aside for any expenses that might be incurred by us and
you in the process of the document and other formalities that will
justify you as the rightful owner of this said fund.
You should bear in mind that you will be required to put head together
with us, and give this business transaction moral and financially
support it required to be successful.
If you are interested and financially capable in handly this business
transaction, Kindly reply us through this email address (theoruffy@netscape.net)
for more details and to let you know what is required of this business
transaction to be successful.
Also we request your private and office phone number to open communication
with you.
Your faithfully,
Oni Theo
The problem is that email has essentially remained unchanged since... well, since ever. Unlike HTML was given over to a standards board, and has evolved from its humble beginnings, and has been enhanced universally through technologies like JavaScript, Flash, Java, et. al.
I think the spam problem is only one part of the email issue. Other issues might be that email messages are completely unsecure, and there is no authentication/validation of the sender.
A number of people have been saying it, and a whitelist server system seems to be the way to go. A signature key, such as in PGP, seems to be a good start, but PGP isn't a whitelist system. You also run into the problem in whitelist servers of not being able to receive the unsolicited mails that you really, really want to receive (like the email from the headhunter who wants to offer you $20k more than you're making now).
At the risk of speaking blasphemy here, I'd suggest a whitelist server system that charged a postage on unsolicited emails of 10 cents, and the recipient has the option to accept or reject the fee. For every fee the recipient accepts, the ISP also gets a cut for their trouble, to encourage adoption of whitelist servers.
Of course, any solution that doesn't have universal adoption won't deter anyone. Spam is the symptom, there should be a consortium to deal with the root problems.
This is a great idea! If only more people knew about this conference, we could accomplish a great deal of progress towards eliminating the problem of spam.
What we need is a simple way of notifying via email many people at one time, presumably with a form letter and flashy subject line. But sending all these emails at one time will burden our server, so we need to use a group of mail servers around the world, including the less-populated ones used in foreign countries such Korea and Africa, to help distribute the message.
If everyone who gets this message passes it on to relatives and friends, surely something good can come from it!
IN SOVIET RUSSIA...
Conference is permanent. During breaks participants don't go out to eat Chinese, they eat YOU. Too bad I have no idea where to include spam...
Oh, and comrades, it's much more fun posting these while logged on!
spam costs the receiver money. magazine ads, TV commercials, and billboards do not. the first of those three are completely opt-in, as well, since you have to buy them or watch TV to see the ads. the third is fully paid for by the billboard owner. why is this concept so hard to grasp?
That latest one is too long to read... ...3 466
<wsl3> We need something new in there already...
<wsl3> Hey, I know...
<wsl3>
<county> Generally, yes, Sulla.
<wsl3> Much better.
<county> And when I do talk to women I'm attracted to, I'm just biting and cutting.
<wsl3> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20721&cid=468
That latest one is too long to read... ...3 466
<wsl3> We need something new in there already...
<wsl3> Hey, I know...
<wsl3>
<county> Generally, yes, Sulla.
<wsl3> Much better.
<county> And when I do talk to women I'm attracted to, I'm just biting and cutting.
<wsl3> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20721&cid=468
MIMI: How long till next year? ... Please pick up the phone. Are you okay? It's not funny. It's not fair. How can I atone? Are you okay? I lose control, but I can learn to behave. Give me one more chance; let me be your slave! I'll kiss your Doc Martens, let me kiss your Doc Martens; your every wish I will obey!
ROGER: Three and half minutes...
MIMI: I'm giving up my vices. I'm going back -- back to school. Eviction or not, this week's been so hot; as long as I've got you I know I'll be cool. I couldn't crack the love code, dear, til you made the lock on my heart explode! It's gonna be a happy new year! A happy new year!
MARK: Coast is clear; you're supposed to be working, that's for midnight, where are they? There isn't much time.
MIMI: Maybe they're dressing. I mean what does one wear that's apropos for a party -- that's also a crime?
MAUREEN: Chips, anyone?
MARK: You can take the girl out of Hicksville, but you can't take the Hicksville out of the girl!
MAUREEN: My riot got you on TV, I deserve a royalty.
MIMI: Be nice you two, or no god awful champagne.
MAUREEN: Don't mind if I do. No luck?
ROGER: Bolted plywood, padlocked with a chain. A total dead end
MAUREEN: Just like my ex-girlfriend Honey...? I know you're there
JOANNE: That might be okay. Down girl, heel...stay! I did a bit of research with my friends at legal aid. Technically, you're squatters: there's hope. But just in case...
MARK AND JOANNE: Rope!
MARK: We can hoist a line --
JOANNE: To the fire escape --
MARK: And tie off at...
MARK AND JOANNE: That bench!
MAUREEN: I can't take them as chums.
JOANNE: Start hoisting...wench!
ROGER: I think I should be laughing, yet I forget, forget how to begin. I'm feeling something inside, and yet I still can't decide, if I should hide or make a wide open grin. Last week I wanted just to disappear; my life was dust, but now it just may be a happy new year. A happy new year.
COLLINS: Bond -- James Bond!
ANGEL: And Pussy Galore -- in person!
MIMI: Pussy -- you came prepared!
ANGEL: I was a boy scout once, and a brownie, til some brat got scared.
COLLINS: Aha! Moneypenny -- my martini!
MIMI: Will bad champagne do?
ROGER: That's shaken -- not stirred.
COLLINS: Pussy -- the bolts.
ANGEL: Just say the word!
MIMI: Two minutes left to execute our plan.
COLLINS: Where's everyone else?
ROGER: Playing Spiderman.
MARK: Ironic close up: tight. On the phone machine's red light. Once the Boho boys are gone, the power mysteriously comes on...
"If I feel sorry for anyone it's the companies whose million dollar ad campaigns get shut down by "spam-blocking" email filters.."
I'm sorry if I lack your great empathy; that I cannot feel for thieves.
Tivo, I can agree with you about - at least for non-premium programming. For that, you either are required to hold multi-annual pledge drives like public television stations do, or you're forced to rely on advertisement revenue. The viewers of your station pay exactly nothing for the priveledge of watching your channels.
That, in itself, is a completely different thing than spam. When I purchase an e-mail account, I am not utilizing any of these spamming companies' products or services. They are not providing me with any product or service at all. Yet, they are taking something from me - my bandwidth, and my time.
Bandwidth, if you haven't heard, isn't cheap. Time is even more expensive. Tell me, can I come into your house and leave with your TV, without your permission? We already know your answer - a great big resounding 'YES!' (By the way, please post your address, I could use another TV.)
When I purchase an e-mail account, it is my property. When I pay for an internet connection, that connection and its bandwidth are mine.
Invasive non-opt-in spamming, at the least, constitutes invasion of property (entering the account) and theft (usage of my bandwidth without my consent).
Of course there are idiot. Its called culture jamming and its alive and well all round the world. Its not all left wing polemic. A lot of people are just tired of the overwhwlming amount of and stupidity of the ads that assult them from billboards, magazines and tv's.
As well, there are laws about where you can put billboards and how offensive you can be in tv and print ads. And if the public complain enough about ads the CEO listens and takes them off.
Why should spam be any different to other advertising.
It isn't just advertising. You don't advertise the last porn flick on Saturday morning cartoons. However, this is what happens with e-mail. I have no problem with companies giving me the chance to sign up for a mailing list that offers deals/products/whatever. In fact, I left Amazon.com's advertisment e-mail on, simply because they do a pretty good job of just sending me stuff I am interested in. It is when I get countless amounts of crap I have no interest in that I get annoyed. Further, it pisses me off even more when I can't off someone's mailing list. It should be an obvious sign that if you are trying to leave a mailing list, YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED. E-mail is not like watching TV and seeing an add. It is like walking through the mall and having a dozen people shoving flyers in your face and refusing to leave you alone.
I run my own business. I rely on e-mail heavily to communicate with customers and clients (I get orders via e-mail, support questions, contract inquiries, etc.) I spend upwards of 5 non-billable hours each week having to take care of the crap that fills my order inboxes, customer support inboxes, and my main mailbox. This crap includes both spam and e-mail worms. I spend that 5 non-billable hours a week AFTER everything goes through filters (if I didn't have filters, then I'd be spending more like 20 hours a week) - and it's only getting worse.
So, to sum up - it's not just a few e-mails. And yes, e-mail is about communication, and spammers are destroying the value of e-mail as a communications medium. And, by extension, since my business relies on e-mail, spammers are destroying (or at least seriously disrupting) my business. I pay business taxes, my bottom line is being affected by these criminals, and I really wouldn't mind if we just outlawed spam altogether.
You want to know what's anti-american, anti-business, and anti-innovation? Scum who abuse public resources - namely, spammers.
What if you were a CEO? How would you feel about all this bad press?
I'd fire the asshole in the marketing department who decided mass-mail was an acceptable practice, and I'd lobby Congress to outlaw spam.
I believe he meant if they each sent one email per year, though that'd give you more like 25000 emails per day.
What about those irritating popup ads? I would also like them to be classified as spam. They do the same amount of damage, if not more - to the end user. Or is the definition of spam restricted to the e-mail mode only?
wow, that joke is about as old as the crust on your underwear. it is about as funny as your dad. about as lame as your cat. and about as tired as your dog. why do you even bother?
DIE SCUMBAG, DIE!
Really, if there was a way to remove vermin like you from the planet of the earth, giving what is known as "humankind" an ever worse name than USA already managed to give it, I'd endorse it even economically. Hell, if they wanted to hire me (if it was legal to shoot idiots like you to bring the average IQ of the world population above 20) I'd even do it for minimum wages, just for the satisfaction to know I had done something good for the planet.
Now get back to eating shit. Hopefully you'll die from it. The sooner the better!
Your Satisfaction is Our Guarantee!
We guarantee the BEST Alaskan Seafood available anywhere! From our award winning cold smoked Lox to our Giant King Crab, we only offer the best! We know quality seafood and we are the fishermen who can bring it to your front door! We offer recipes along with a great list of Alaskan products and Gourmet Gift Boxes. Top service and top quality is what we offer.
http://www.optinisp.net/salmon/testimonials.htm
Please enter your e-mail address to get immediate access to our web site and order page.
For the last goddamned time:
This is not a free-speech issue, it's a property rights issue. Advertisers are no more entitled to use my computer to send me an ad at my expense, than they are to break into my house and paint a billboard on my living room wall.
No, advertising isn't illegal, but using other people's property without their consent is indeed illegal.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There are over 24,361,450 businesses in the US (Source here)
...
...
:-) Bottom line is: don't trust numbers, you can make them say whatever you want!
So let's see. If:
o every US business was doing 1 mass mailing a year;
o that day would be picked at random;
o your email ended on 2% of these mass mailing lists;
The you would be getting:
24,361,450 mailings / 365 days * 2%
(launching calc...)
= 1335 spam per day
Hey that was close enough!
PS: yes, I made up the assumptions to match the result
I code, therefore I am.
Technically, billboards (and to a lesser extent, other said forms of advertising, too) are not opt-in. I don't remember ever paying to read spam. Your logic must be twisted as hell if you meant to imply "well, if you don't want to look at giant advertisements placed every 20 feet along the road, then you should move way out in the middle of nowhere and not ever come into the city."
As far as I'm concerned, billboards are far less opt-in advertising than spam, because you pretty much have to look at billboards, but you don't necessarily need to use email to communicate (there are still people out there that don't check their email 50 times a day, you know). Email, television, and magazines alike all are similar in that they offer information and communication but at the price of abundant uselessy information by way of capitalism from legitimate and not-so-legitimate sources.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Did you know that your fat? Would you like to do something about it?? Well now you can, lose hundreds of pounds in a week THATS RIGHT one week just call 1-800-fat-man1 get that great looking body you've always wanted
what the hell this isn't offtopic IT'S A JOKE YOU LAMERS!! ABOUT SPAM!! WHICH IS WHAT THIS STUPID ARTICLE IS ABOUT!While anyone will be welcome, we're hoping most of all to make this an opportunity for hackers working on spam filters to get together and compare notes.
Filters. That's a give-away. Filters are damage-control after the thief has left. Block them at the first HELO, block them after their ISP refuses to handle complaints to abuse@, block widely, block often. Talking heads, I've said it once.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I didn't check the box for my crappy, "no one has ever heard of this shitty web site" admin email account for a week and half. I had to wait for over an hour for 3000+ emails to download, erase, and expunge. Take a look at this screenshot from a while back: check the Evolution progress meter!
That buildup was from only 5 days worth of spam.
Penis enlarges YOU!
The logic behind that is pretty goddamned inarguable.
That guy managed to both get first post and fail at the same time.
Use POPFile instead. It's free, Open Source, multi platform and easy to use. It also doesn't use a heavyhanded approach to email (like forced white/blacklists) which can cause more headaches than they are worth...
Say it with me -- Most Spam is NOT advertising...
Many states that are adopting anti-spam laws are focusing in on the fraud, misrepresentation, etc.
Most spam does not come from businesses who are contacting potential customers with interesting information. There is a big difference between that and some jerk who finds my name on a list and emails me with: "Make Money Fast", "Find Information About Anyone" or "Increase the Size of Your Penis."
Although there are some companies who send legitimate emails to customers who have opted-in most spam comes from scammers who do not have a legitimate product, who don't honor opt-out requests and who use false header information because they know what they are doing is wrong.
A few self-centered, greedy, low-life, fuckhead bastards are ruining email for everyone and there is no flippin' reason in the world that we should allow this. I say hang 'em!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If I get spam about this conferences I'm gonna be pissed. Like an angry Christmas shopper. Heh, happy holidays y'all.
We should filter ANYTHING about soviet russia to get rid of trolls, and spam should be filtered by hotmail, yahoo, aol, big email providers that a lot of people use. That way the garbage won't get to YOU!
In Soviet Russia you get to the garbageThere are over 24,361,450 businesses in the US
Ah yes, I forgot:
"According to the MPAA, there are over 65,744,682 businesses in the US. They actually found 24,361,450 but some of them were big corporations."
I code, therefore I am.
ehhh, it only happened to balance out the effects monty python had on 'spam'. yin and yang etc. right? heheh
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
And what do you say to the ISPs whose mail servers fall over due to the load imposed by spam attacks?
What do you say to those who have to pay for Internet access based on the amount of data they transfer? They certainly never asked for the spam that's costing them money.
And you certainly can't claim that relay raping is anything but network abuse.
Spam is not welcome. I never asked for it. My having a mailbox is not an open invitation for unsolicited commercial email.
noah
I can't speak for another, but I think it'd be safe to imply 'keep your fucking eyes on the road.'
As far as I'm concerned, billboards are far less opt-in advertising than spam, because you pretty much have to look at billboards, but you don't necessarily need to use email to communicate (there are still people out there that don't check their email 50 times a day, you know). Email, television, and magazines alike all are similar in that they offer information and communication but at the price of abundant uselessy information by way of capitalism from legitimate and not-so-legitimate sources.
Again, keep your eyes on the road.
Comparing billboards to spam is completely retarded. Do billboard painters run up to your front door and paint the inside of your front door with 'TEENS FUXXXED!@', and sign another painter's name on the bottom? No, but if they did, you'd probably get off scott free if you shot the bastard dead. As soon as it's legal to shoot spammers dead, I'll welcome spam.
Are there conferences on billboard ads? Do people lose sleep over magazine ads? Is there an anti-TV commercial movement?
Advertisers lease space on billboards. They give money to the owner of said property (the billboard) in consideration of its appropriate use by them. This is a legitimate contractual exchange between consenting parties, all of whom enter into said arrangement of their own volition.
Advertisers pay publishers to have their adverts printed. This is a legitimate contractual exchange between consenting parties, all of whom enter into said arrangement of their own volition.
Advertisers give money to networks and local stations to run their adverts. This is a legitimate contractual exchange between consenting parties, all of whom enter into said arrangement of their own volition.
Spammers use network and computing resources that do not belong to them and for which they have not paid anything in consideration of use, often relaying through other networks (and hijacking bandwidth and CPU cycles that would otherwise be used for legitimate and probably profitable tasks) in an attempt to hide their origin. The processing of UCE on the receiving machines takes CPU cycles and ultimately otherwise useful and profitable time away from the owners of those resources. There is no legitimate contractual agreement there, anymore so than if I spraypainted my company's logo on your garage door in the dark of night and left it to you to bear the cost of cleaning it up. It's just advertising, right?
If I feel sorry for anyone it's the companies whose million dollar ad campaigns get shut down by "spam-blocking" email filters, portable video recorders (like TiVo) that allow "skip commercials" functionality, and other anti-America, anti-business, anti-innovation tactics.
Print and broadcast advertising are what keep publishers and networks in business, and what keeps the cost at the point of consumption of print and broadcast media in the range of free to a few dollars per unit for the consumer, but there is no binding agreement between the consumer and the network or publisher requiring the consumer to watch or read the adverts in consideration of consuming the product (the content of the magazine or TV show).
Freedom of speech != a right to a captive audience, and most certainly not at the audience's expense.
And, as an aside, if the profitability of a product or service rests solely on the success or failure of its "million dollar ad campaign," one surely must question just how innovative it could possibly be.
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
He did, he just used them all in one......spot.
If this is a conference on spam, then shouldn't about 1000 random people show up and tell the hosts that they could make big bucks by charging everyone who attends one dollar, but let them in for free if they bring ten friends?
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
http://www.brettglass.com/spam/
If I were to run over to your house (private property) and plant stickers all over your windows for my website and you had to just "peel them off", then what fun that would be! E-mail is a private resource... NOT PUBLIC. When companies contact someone via e-mail, they are using resources, consuming time and money of the user... and if they are unsolicited, they should be FINED. This is where the law is heading due to such abusive spamming practices. Phone lines are PRIVATE, which is why many choose to have unlisted numbers, and companies are required by law to no longer call you if you tell them so. (One of the best gadgets of the century is the ZAPPER to stop such calls.) Many states have laws banning unsolicited phone calls and e-mails. I am a business major who has recently completed a course in Marketing, and there are many methods of advertising besides SPAMMING people... it just happens to be one of the cheapest methods, but companies are learning that they aren't worth the bad press, so many are choosing not to bother with it. I currently filter any e-mails that aren't on my contacts lists into a "junk mail" folder which I rarely glance at... occasionally, I'll find an e-mail that came from a new friend, I'll add them, and then I'll either delete the rest, unsubscribe from their lists, or report them to the authorities for fraud/spamming/etc. Sooner or later, businesses will learn that sending unsolicited e-mails is unacceptable and/or unlawful. Key word being unsolicited... they can ask if you'd like to subscribe to a "newsletter", but hopefully there will be more laws preventing them from tricking you into doing so. There are other forms of marketing, radio/tv ads, sending samples or brochures through the mail (public federal system). And as for those using TIVO, more power to them. I do the old fashioned thing... change the channels during commercials I don't like & take bathroom/fridge breaks. Companies are evolving to use products within shows for advertising & sponsor events using their name, etc. I usually hate and don't watch many commercials anyway, save for the superbowl ones ;-)
Poor poor advertising companies, oh boo hoo... *sobs* I've got news. Companies pay for advertising to help promote their products by trying to convince or remind consumers to buy those products (or services). If consumers think negatively about HOW the company advertises, they generally begin to think negatively about the product and the company as well, and the company loses goodwill. Many of the companies using SPAMMING as a marketing tool are of ill-repute to begin with. Plenty of porn sites use it, but notice playboy, penthouse, and many others widely known do not. Notice that they're usually products with no medical support for claims and no "brand name" backing them to begin with... b/c they don't care about ruining their name... most likely b/c noone's heard of it. As for TV ads, SO WHAT??? TV ads have been getting LONGER and cutting into programming for years, it's about time consumers did something about it by blocking, skipping, or ignoring them. Same thing with Popups on web pages, I close them the INSTANT they open, don't even read 'em. I don't like the idea of a window opening that I didn't ASK for. In fact, I may disable pop-ups entirely in my browser. Even AOL has CHOSEN to stop using as many pop-up ads on their service KNOWING they'll lose money in order to satisfy customers b/c of so many complaints about the damn pop-up ads. As for the flash animations and ads before movies, fiiiine, I'll sit and wait for them to load if I can't skip them or close them down, but I'll likely be pissed the whole time and think negatively of the company and its products as well as the web page using the ad.
If you wish to use advertising, use it in a sensible manner to capture the attention of people in your market and envoke a positive reaction. Humor in TV ads works... I'll sit and watch a funny commercial, radio ads work if I'm too lazy to change the radio station, billboards work sometimes... trials, contests, sweepstakes, etc. are usually great ways to gain interest. Maybe companies should simply wise-up and put all that money they throw away at bad advertising into profits and lowering the cost of their products.
Isn't most spam a "once in a life time confidential offer"?
Strange how this "anti-spam" consortium is supporting China, a known spam-supporting aand human-rights-abusing country by consuming their food.
If you want to fight spam, fight it at it's source - China's border routers. We must storm their shores with hedge clippers. Their beaches will covered in tattered CAT-5.
Id like to share with you /.'ers a portion of the email i sent to this guy Hes a laywer, and he was whining about being black holed because he had a open relay that he says could not be... but I digress. (see his thing for details). I think it speaks for itself, and has larger implications beyond spam.
/allow all,some, or none. The criteria they choose to use to control that traffic is strictly up to them. They make the choices on whom to lay trust and whom not to, not only to allow traffic but where they get information which effects their criteria.
Quote below:
--
On a non logic issue, it is my belief that we (members of the internet) will soon badly need some law that enchances the common sense doctrine that you have the right to control all content that goes in and out of your network. On that note people have every right to block incoming traffic, including email. They can choose to block
It is now a fucking period. Commence.
rmail in emacs on this particular system has headers from http://spamassasin.org Now that those headers appear on a lot of the messages, how do you get through the messages from your favorite correspondents before dealing with the more problematical spam commercial messages?... Not being a programmer, it's a bit perplexing not finding the information!... at http://spamassassin.org
Yes, invite ESR... AND TURN THE GODDAMN CONFERENCE INTO A BULLSHIT FEST.
What in hell does ESR know about spam? His advice as a board member of VA Linux helped turn VA Linux and its subsidiaries into the fucking laughing stock of Wall Street.
Yea verily, for if I ever happen upon your presence a great inward kicking will happen to your gluteus maximus region. In conclusion,
IF I EVER MEET YOU I WILL KICK YOUR ASS.
I'm not sure if John would be the best speaker for a conference on spam. If anyone else has had him wake you up to see what you think of the latest crunchbox revision, then you know what I mean.
Hell, if you've ever seen the TLC 'Hackers' episode or ever heard him talk more than 5 minutes anywhere, then you'll know what I mean.
btw, I hope the conference is for adults only. You don't want Captain Crunchy anywhere near young boys.
Posted anonymously by user:
68b329da9893e34099c7d8ad5cb9c940
We should go after the companies that those links point us too ! They forge the headers but the links always point to the company who paid to get the spam sent out in the first place. Sue there asses off for being stupid and condoning illigal behavyor ! Then maybe they think before they give some spammer 20 grand to spam everyone. Sue there asses off. ! The spam will dry up ! Using my e-mail address, my own property, Something I pay for for this has got to be illgal I am only allowed 25 e-mails a day and cause of all the damn spam I got to pay more to get my real e-mail !
rmail in emacs on this particular system has headers from http://spamassasin.org
Now that those headers appear on a lot of the messages, how do you get to the messages from your favorite correspondents before dealing with the more problematical spam commercial messages?... How do you sort out your favorite correspondents' messages from the hundreds of spam commercials?... Not being a programmer, it's a bit perplexing. The information didn't appear at
http://spamassassin.org
***BZZZTTTT*** I'm sorry; the correct answer is "It's called theft of service".
Thank you for playing, and don't forget your lovely consolation prize.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
What's up with the extreme flooding of trolls??
brett, i'm not quite sure what you mean by your post. i guess my question is, who is 'we' and how come my grandmother still gets 20 spams a day in her aol account? the article you linked are parts of a solution, but if my grandmother can't make it work on her machine, then they don't really matter in the long run because spam will continue to propogate right? i also think a few of the things mentioned in your presentation go about the problem in somewhat of a wrong way (imho). for instance rbl and blacklists have proven to be difficult solutions to the problem as they have blacklisted the wrong hosts and caused much grief to people...
:)
that said, i've dug your articles for years. thanks
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
If you run a business, for example, you'll frequently (if you're lucky) get queries from potential customers who want more information. You WANT those unsolicited e-mails. Or you might get e-mail from someone you worked with 10 years ago but never thought to add to your whitelist, perhaps because you don't even know his or her current e-mail address.
I have whitelists set up for my e-mail accounts, but I face both these issues on a regular basis. I can't afford to discard an e-mail from an unknown sender without first verifying that the sender really doesn't have something useful to say. Fortunately, most spammers use obviously retarded e-mail addresses or subject lines that make it relatively easy to skim and filter them out quickly (and of course I use a blacklist for known offenders as well).
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
It is a conference AGAINST spam instead of a spammer conference.
Lucky I didn't fire my nuke yet...
Great - now your saying that you can make email better by making it slower! Not only is that one-dimensional but its the wrong vector. There are plenty of legit reasons to have to send out a few thousand solicited messages to a list - think of the bands that want to tell their fans about tour dates and all the nerd techie lists (no offense intended) - We don't want to collectively punish the rest of the internet because of spammers.
,But it too is a solution the collectively punishes the rest of the net (and imagine how up in arms we all would be if somehow "they" started charging for email!)
I'm thinking based upon reading these posts that the best immediate solution is going to be smarter filters and more of them. But this is a technical solution - perhaps there is another angle..(dimension?) Hey- and this is largely the focus of the SPAM Conference. cool. The only thing about filters I still want to be able to get the REAL EMAIL from my girlfriend when she sends me a message saying "I WANT YOUR HUGE C**K TONIGHT" We don't want SPAM filter to become SMUT filters - cause while we might all know SPAM when we see it, we still all have different ideas about smut.
SPAM for FUN and PROFIT?
the market itself will(should?) eventually do some sort of self-regulation (nice thing about free markets) - I don't think there are terribly many people spamming for the fun of it. Somewhere there is an econmic incentive - some dismally low percentage of people who are ordering Growth Hormone or Penis Enlrgers from unsolicited mail they receive will either make it worthwhile to continue spamming for customers or will lead anyone who can add (or subtract) to attract customers in other ways. Solutions which propose a charge for outgoing messages are heading towards this idea
Marketers are just like little kids (something they actually share in common with techies!) -- when they get a new toy they love to play with it more than the old toys. Email is still a newish toy for them. much more fun than doing direct mail.
anyone know the click through or sales rates for any unsoliced mail? Unfortunatly there will probably be a similar reaction as when ad-banner CTR dropped - make more of them and make them bigger.
yrs. cyberRodent
Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds demand.
They're going out for some Chinese food? That has to be the funniest thing I've seen in the last 3 days! (The Great Firewall, etc....)
C|N>K
dude, you do know you've just been trolled?
Egads, hasn't that windbag been discredited enough.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Bravo, my friend, bravo. Mod this up.
Draper targets. Draper follows. Draper lures. The more this gets out, the better it is for life in general.
The ratio of people with pages on SourceForge or having nick's like Cap'n Crunch compared to politicians is still too bad... If you know what I mean... :-(
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I never understood and still don't get why people get their panties all in a bunch about a few emails from businesses that they have to read through and delete or whatever.
A few emails?!?! - Are you daft?
I get anywhere from 20 to 67 (record so far) spam-emails every day! - Sure, my email address has been around the net since 1988 and it has been featured heavily on both websites and newsfeeds, but still... That's not a 'few'!
I didn't ask for any emails and still I get them. I don't want them! How hard is that to understand?
Why should I 'hide' myself just to escape the junk mail avalanche? - I cannot and will not accept that, and neither will a lot of other people. Leave my mailbox alone, dammit!
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
That's an ellipsis (or possibly two).
"According to the MPAA, there are over 65,744,682 businesses in the US. They actually found 24,361,450 but some of them were big corporations."
:-) ... shame I've no mod points right now.
Heh, that's the first truly funny post I've read all day
Due to the excessive volume of robotic responses to the emails I spend time and effort to send to people I have not known to prior to this, have been forced to do this robotics test.
If you do not run a robot, please ignore this message. I will only send it once. Its purpose is to check someone's mailbox to make sure that I am not communicating to a robot, either some whitelist robot, or a vacation program, or something equivalent. I value my time: Nothing is more annoying than to spend an hour carefully writing a message to you about a subtle technical flaw than to have an obnoxious robot tell me my effort was a waste. Now, if this email is sent without resulting in a bounce, my 'AEIOU ('Avoid Egocentric Ignorant Obnoxious Users') will inform me to not write the message. Otherwise, please reply to this message to confirm that you do exist and this message is read. Only then will I proceed to write the message I wished to.
So, if this email arrives in your inbox, my apologies. It will only happen once. I've been forced to such extremes only because of the widespread use of such robots. You have my apologies, but I have been left with no choice.
I do have some good news however. In the future, we'll have constructed a realtime blackhole list that anyone can check to verify if an address runs a robot or not. This way, people not running can be looked up to verify that they're not running a robot and will not see these messages. If you wish to voluntarily add yourself to this list to state that you are or are not a robot, please see http://aeiou.losers.example.com/addlist.html
dude, you do know you've just been trolled?
Gee, Skippy, thanks for the heads-up, but I've been playing in this sandbox a while (note the increasingly rare 5 digit uid).
The fact remains that two of the major reasons that spam continues to be a problem is that too many people either just accept it as "one of those things" they have to deal with as part and parcel of the electronic age, or they actually think that spammers have a right to hijack other people's property and time.
Since I'm pretty sure it's still illegal for me to personally hunt down spammers and plink them with my DE .50AE M-VII or show them a little hot and heavy lovin' with my Mossberg, I have to settle for doing my part by reminding people that spam is not a Free Speech issue whenever the subject comes up, wherever that may be. The fact that UCE is a property rights issue has fuckall to do with whether the post to which I replied was a troll.
The fact that you probably consider your one-liner to be a great personal achievement - representing your highest and your best potential - and therefeore must surely think my several paragraphs a veritable magnum opus representing a huge investment of time and personal sacrifice, has fuckall to do with the fact that some of us actually use language to convey meaning to other people - as a matter of course, not as the rare exception.
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
Not if you keep getting it day after day after day after day, ad infinitum.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Out of curiosity and boredom I clicked on the link
They didn't expect you to join or pay anything. They wanted you to follow the link on their fake girl website so their advertiser pays them for the click-through to the online dating service. It looks you followed the link just like they hoped. (you did click on the link to see where it went didn't you?)
You didn't see the obvious. Ker-ching $$
P.T. Barnum was right!
The truth shall set you free!
0900 = call to order
0910 = roll call
0930 = "Old business?.....Spam sucks."
0931 = "What have we done about it?.....Nothing."
0932 = "New business?.....Spam still sucks."
0933 = "What are we going to do about it?.....Probably nothing."
0934 = "Meeting adjourned.....let's go get some chinese food!"
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Oops! Just deleted the e-mail from your (mother/father/brother/sister/spouce/SO/ boss/once in a life time confidential offer).
But isn't that what I get everyday from the spammers? Once in a lifetime confidential offers to enlarge my penis, accept money from Nigeria, meet hot lesbian college chicks and more?
And I demand to be renumerated for all of my expenses for all unwanted communication.
At $20/month for phone usage, I *DEMAND* my $.000015 for twenty seconds of *STOLEN* phone time.
Worse, the costs to me for the garbage truck to haul away a single postal pamphlet ar far worse. $.00166 (at 1/30 pound/letter, $.05/pound disposal fee).
I don't know about you, but those cost me 10x and 100x the cost of receiving a single spam. Where is the cry about *that* supposed theft of service?
I'm not for spam at all, but at least I'm not hypocritical and irrational about it. Each postal letter you dont' want costs *you* more than 100 spams, in terms of the cost to you. I don't know about you, but I get a couple fliers every day in my mailbox, costing me 10x as much as the email spam I get.
If you disagree about these prices, please give me numbers. I've been looking for numbers for over a year, and NOBODY has given me anything that wasn't outright bullshit.
Are there conferences on billboard ads? Do people lose sleep over magazine ads? Is there an anti-TV commercial movement?
1. The fight over bill boards has a long history. Ladybird Johnson officially started the fight with her work on highway beautification. Many large cities now have a moratorium on billboards. The content of billboard, like all advertising, is heavily restricted.
2. Magazine advertising is also restricted and people lose sleep over how to circumvent those restriction. However, because magazine ad campaigns cost real money, and the advertiser and magazine are liable for those campaigns, people generally behave.
3. Again, the fight over TV commercials are at a very mature state, but they are still skirmishes. A few years ago it was over underwear in commercials. Now the liquor companies want to end the voluntary ban of hard liquor advertising on TV. Of course we cannot directly promote tobacco on tv.
Which is to say it is extremely naive and ill informed to claim that advertising is not illegal in America. It would be very easy to put together a campaign that is illegal, and even professional mess up every once in a while. What makes non-internet advertising manageable is that the rules are known and it is assumed that the advertiser will always be held accountable. Contrast this to email where the advertiser assumes that the laws of the land do not apply because they can cowardly hide behind fraudulent headers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Despite holding the conference at a university, it appears that they didn't invite any academic researchers to the conference. There's a lot of work being done on the subject and they've limited themselves to the open source developers who've been busy re-inventing the wheel.
For example, Paul Graham, the one who "invented" the use of Bayesian Networks for spam detection. Sahami et. al. did the earliest research (that I've found) on spam detection using B.N.s in 1998. The paper can be read online at citeseer, http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/sahami98bayesian.html.
Another interesting, new research paper that they are sure to ignore is Manco et. al.'s "Towards an Adaptive Mail Classifier." They apply clustering algorithms to sorting e-mail messages, going above and beyond mere spam filtering. I doubt anyone will read it, but you can get it (also from citeseer) at http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/531747.html.
Bernie Shifman and Alan Ralsky go along and open up a can of whoopass?
The real, current bogofilter page is at http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net.
I'd suggest reading my post again. I did not say billboards were opt-in. Thank you.
In Soviet Russia, there sose YOU!
I really don't want to hang around the Media lab all day.
Does anyone know what time the conference is going to be held?
No, actually there should be more spelling errors. After all, that is a troll post, and that means the more he contradicts himself, the more he will catch. It must not be overdone, though. Too much contradiction and people easily realise a post is a troll.
No, he used five periods, that's 1 2/3 ellipsis.
Did you know that your fat?
Your message makes no sense.
I'll tell you why -- if it wasn't for the fact that I am dilligent in reporting SPAM that ends up in my mailbox, my email would be virtually useless. It would take me most of the day just to filter out the "good" messages from the SPAM. Not too terribly long ago, I was getting anywhere from 50 to 200+ SPAMS per day. These days I hardly get any at all. The only thing I do different than I did before is I report all received SPAM.
No kiddin'. I would have deleted my VA software IPO offer if I hadn't read about it on Slashdot first.
It sounded like a lot like a Nigeria scam. ;) If only I had the good sense to sell all my stock that first day...
Funny I never get telemarketing that comes collect, and I have to accept to get my other calls
I never get advertising from people who took over the newspaper printer and printed their ads on the newspaper's paper without paying for it
The television ads I get are from advertisers who help support the costs of running the program not people who freeload on the stations wavelength and add to the program's cost
Face it. Real advertising not only pays its own way, but reduces the cost of the media it uses. Spam is just theft.
And as for the companies whose million dollar ad campaigns get shut down by the spam filters, how do they have any more right to put their advertising on my computer without my permission than to come into my home to give me their speil without my permission?
My computer, my internet connection, my rules. If you don't like it f*** you, you damn commie.
Yes. To provide another analogy. It is illegal to FAX ads to people with FAX machines. The reason is that the recipient must pay for paper and toner, and is therefore paying for your advertising. Similarly, spam uses ISP network resources and disk space, which is an expense for the ISP that they should not need to deal with. Free speech does not mean you get your venue for free as well.
Vote for Pedro
or are they baiting stupid spammers into showing up as well, so they can beat the crap out of them?
Vote for Pedro
I wonder how much more spam these guys will get after this meeting....
-v
Whoa, flamebait?
i predict it will be...
here!
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away