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101 Ways To Save The Internet

Posted by timothy on from the good-luck-with-that-list dept.

captain igor writes "Wired news is running an editorial detailing 101 ways to save the Internet from spammers, crackers and smothering regulation. What does do Slashdot readers think of these suggestions, and what other options should be considered to keep the Internet from falling to evil forces?"

14 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. They made a typo. by LNO · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is there no quality control there?

    11 Larry Flynt, build a porn browser It should cover our tracks coming and going.

    I think we all know that should read "coming and coming".

  2. My favorite one by SargeZT · · Score: 5, Funny

    24. Release Episode III on the Net It's going straight to video anyway.

    Lets see how long it takes wired to get DOS'ed by the Star Wars geeks of doom.

    --
    And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
  3. Re:getting rid of spammers by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Or we could make it a goal in 2004 to each get a throw-away address, and reply to every single spam we receive. This way, the spammers will spend so much time looking through our bogus replies that the "legit" replies to their spam will be lost in the background noise.

    The current tactic of ignoring spam "in the hope it will go away" just helps raise the spammers' signal-to-noise ratio when they look at their replies. If they had to go through a million bogus replies to get the 10 that are stupid enough to really want their crap, they'll become unprofitable quickly.

  4. Poor tech article from Wired by Ophidian+P.+Jones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would expect more than this from Wired, as there are several glaring inaccuracies.

    "Make email addresses portable" - get your own domain name and move it from ISP to ISP as you please.

    "Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move?" - my home directory, including public_html, is accessible from Samba. I can copy any file there and it is live on the web instantly.

    "Big music, follow the money 8 of 9 adults beyond student age still pay for songs instead of ripping them." - ripping them? That has nothing to do with whether you paid for it.

    "Replace servers with P2P Too many network services - domain names, Web servers, email - rely on the old client-server model, which is vulnerable to attack." - uhhh.... eeyeah.

    Oh well. I guess they have to match the dumbed down state of their readers.

  5. You'd think they'd know by now. by reaper20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone else find it funny that "Just use Mozilla" would have taken care of over half of these?

  6. eep by AEton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    40 Big music, follow the money 8 of 9 adults beyond student age still pay for songs instead of ripping them.

    Some people do both. Way to keep your readers clued, Wired. Remember that the main objection of record labels to "Rip. Mix. Burn" was that they thought "rip" meant "steal" - and Wired seems to like to propagate this fallacy.

    --
    We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
  7. What does do by i_am_pi · · Score: 5, Funny
    What does do Slashdot readers think of these suggestions
    I do did thinked that the editorers shoulds read the sumbisions more betterly so the grammer is gooder kthx bye
  8. 92 Turn off your HTML email by JohnGrahamCumming · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, yes, yes.

    HTML email is an abomination that must be stopped. It's bigger than necessary, it's ugly and it's the spammer's friend.

    John.

    1. Re:92 Turn off your HTML email by Fnkmaster · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Yes, I agree and you agree - we'd prefer that pretty graphics stay on the web and that email be used for text. The problem is that Joe Average seems absolutely enamored of using all sorts of atrocious fonts, background colors, and blinkenlights in his emails. I receive this things in the course of business all the time, and they make me want to gouge my eyes out.


      The counterpoint to this is that Joe Average seems to respond to HTML emails with large images and huge blinkenlights much better than he responds to plain text. That is actually the primary reason spammers use it - the people saavy enough to prefer text email are exactly the same people who never buy something they receive an unsolicited email about.


      The sad truth is that people are dumb, and people like shiny flashy things (my preciousssss...). Just deal with it. Don't expect them to change just because it would create a positive externality for all of us who use the Internet.

  9. Re:getting rid of spammers by October_30th · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The current tactic of ignoring spam "in the hope it will go away"

    Well, why not crack down on it on multiple fronts. Target the morons buying into spam by advertisements showing how stupid it is and create an effective, international anti-spam effort.

    --
    The owls are not what they seem
  10. Educate Joe Sixpack by Gothmolly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The computer is not yet an appliance, don't treat it like a microwave
    Your 2 GHz Athlon is not obsolete when the 2.1 GHz one comes out
    The Microsoft is not the Internet
    WWW is not the Internet
    Nigerians are not that generous
    MS' Passport is _not_ handy
    A $300 rebate on 3 years of AOL is not "free"
    The case of your computer is not "the CPU"
    Downloading those MP3s from Kazaa is almost certainly illegal
    MS Office is NOT the gold standard for Office Suites that some make it out to be

    Save the Internet? That's like 'saving the Planet'. The Internet will be there regardless of the S/N ratio on it. Save the people FROM the Internet, the new, spammy, MSN-y, pointy-clicky Internet.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  11. Stopping spam, popups, etc. by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    • Define adware, spyware, etc. as "computer intrusions" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Require European-style "explicit, separate permission" for installs of such things as public policy, so they can't hide "permission" in some vague EULA.
    • Get Visa International to require that any site that accepts credit cards must have a digital certificate that gives the identity of the merchant, including their true name, DUNS number, and primary banking relationship. Any credit card site that doesn't do this gets their transactions reversed as soon as someone reports them to Visa. That will make it easy to follow the money.
    • Enforce the new Federal spam law. It's weak, but it's something. A few high profile raids and arrests will do it.
    • Lobby the FTC on the details of the "do not spam" list. Insist that opt-out by domain be supported. Insist that mail service providers that don't opt out their customers be required to disclose this in ads.
  12. Re:getting rid of spammers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    get a throw-away address, and reply to every single spam we receive. This way, the spammers will spend so much time looking through our bogus replies

    Another completely clueless message modded up as "interesting".

    Most spam has a fake From: address. If you reply to it, your reply will either be undeliverable, or will go to the unlucky person whose email address was forged by the spammer. If the From: addresses were valid, getting rid of spam would be trivial.

  13. Re:url by spazoid12 · · Score: 5, Funny

    And, this guy obviously hasn't actually tried it...

    http://www.amazon.com/wolf/wired

    Sucker...