Re:former ZD staffer on product reviews
on
Ziff Davis Teeters
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· Score: 2
What the hell?! "We were all just a bunch of geeks that got so worked up we threw objectivity out the window"? Look, if ZD was never anything more than some no-name hardware review web site run by some teenager and his friends from IRC I might understand how this could happen, but ZD is a goddamn publishing empire and has been for a long time now!
Are you telling me that you cocksuckers couldn't muster up journalistic integrity because everything Microsoft and DELL sent you was just so shiny and had so many flashing lights you were constantly distracted from the fact that your JOB was to evaluate computer shit in the most objective manner possible??
You're absolutely correct. I remember well the days when OS/2 could have been a contender and how shockingly little was ever written about it in PC Magazine.
Ever since then PC Mag (along with every other ZD publication) has transitioned from serious tech journalism to serious whoring.
These days I read Maximum PC for a similar level of info to what I used to get in PC Mag, but as good as it is it's still a magazine aimed at hobbyists. Hopefully the fall of ZD will give someone else a chance to launch some magazines for the markets ZD currently dominates that contain useful content rather than whoring.
The internet does not have a police force and it does not have a military to ensure that abuse does not occur. Instead the internet is self-regulating in a very frontier justice fashion: Everyone has a claim staked and if you trespass on someone else's claim and violate netiquette anything might happen -- from "nothing" to "orbital anvil to the skull".
Ever heard of MAPS? They worked very hard to educate spammers and ISPs before blocking the un-educable ones. Why are tougher blocklists that do not provide a strong educational component now employed instead of MAPS? Because the spammers and rogue ISPs abused MAPS by playing dumb and getting extension after extension to clean things up while crying crocodile tears and chuckling up their sleeves.
Your whining about "innocent" people being blocked does not impress me and nor should it impress anyone. These "innocents" are monetarily supporting spam-friendly ISPs and as such should be afforded no more respect than said ISP's themselves. Ignorance is no excuse: They chose to move into a bad neighborhood and now it's time for them to either move out or clean it up because if they don't nobody else is going to clean it up for them.
In case you haven't noticed, the face of the internet has changed a lot since it was first invented. At one time all it would take to stop spam from issuing forth from a host was a harsh word or two. These days complaints are useful only as proof that an ISP ignored them. Furthermore, local filtering/flagging of individual "potential spam" is also useless as it is clearly a temporary fix. How long before spammers and spamware vendors learn how to skirt SpamAssassin's filters? Such filters are inherently flawed as they rely on content while the spam issue is not about content -- it's about consent.
The current blacklists are entirely moral because e-mail is not sacrosanct. Nobody has a right -- morally or legally -- to deliver e-mail to anyone. Morally this is a perfectly reasonable stance as e-mail is not the sole means of communication. If what you have to say is so important that it can't risk getting blocked then you need to put a stamp on an envelope or dial a phone number.
Put shortly: The internet is based on trust and that trust has been abused far too often.
So far I've seen nothing from you but bitching, with no real solutions offered. You don't like blacklists but you can't seem to come up with anything as effective that doesn't offend your delicate morality. Sounds like you've got a personal problem.
Flogo are big into spamming and they never remove anybody from their lists -- even if you set your mail server to reject everything from them with 5xx errors they'll just keep hammering away. There's actually a DNSBL devoted to them called "Flowgoaway".
This is my question as well -- and to the people saying "it's not a problem" well, it is. I'm using Ximian with all the latest updates and I can't even copy and paste between two GNOME apps (Terminal and GEdit) let alone from a GNOME app to Mozilla or Licq.
These days copying and pasting text is such a fundamental GUI feature that it should be unthinkable to release with it broken -- like releasing without the ability to minimize windows.
Although the site comes complete with mug-shots for one spammer, nothing I've seen there compares (humor-wise anyway) to the hilarious Tommy Brock--Spammer, thug, exhibitionist page.
Re:This is interesting:
on
Mapping the Spam
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· Score: 3, Interesting
From what I've read Rackspace has been cleaning up their act recently. I don't know that they've fully graduated from black to greyhat, but something is better than nothing...
PostmasterGeneral/Mindshare supposedly has two prominent ex-MAPS people working in their "abuse department" to "clean up" their spam problem. The only problem is that these people of previously sterling reputation in the anti-spam community have been there since last summer or fall (at least) and PMG is still spamming. Last I read the only thing these ex-MAPS people have authority to do is listwash -- they couldn't even manage to remove addresses that were bouncing with 5xx errors!
Try doing a news.admin.net-abuse.email search on PostmasterGeneral, PMG and/or Mindshare "Subject:" headers. There you'll find all the sordid facts and all the high drama (including people breathlessly proclaiming undying loyalty to these obvious anti-spam turncoats).
If you run a mail server you can blackhole PMG with this list of their IP blocks and domains:
E3 videos in an open format?
on
E3 Wrapup
·
· Score: 2
I've been following the proceedings on Blue's but it seems like almost every video I've seen linked is in Windows Media Format (or the latest DIVX -- gotta love a codec that breaks compatibility with every release).
So has anybody converted these to MPEG or something?
Seriously, practical overclocking is currently dead. It died when my Celeron 533 running at 824 (and even the 533's that could hit 1GHz) stopped cutting it for the latest games. The price/performance ratio advantage that overclocking used to give you simply doesn't exist with current hardware.
My brother boasted to me the other day about how his video card can be overclocked in software and it doesn't void the warranty. Hello? This isn't overclocking, it's the manufacturer underclocking to sell more units to people who are so far into the rice boy mentality that their mind shuts down and their wallet opens up when they see the word "overclock".
He's not quite right though. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead came up with the shotgun approach and (IIRC) was actually the inspiration behind it's inclusion in DOOM.
Play Silent Hill 2 before you rule out monsters as being scary. Seriously.
Sure the game could use fewer puzzles and better endings but when it's scary it's damn scary. Many times it's even scary when it's only trying to be unsettling.
WinMX 3.1 was just released a few days ago and it definitely seems to be everything it was hyped as being and more. It's got the many of the features of eDonkey without the bugs and shitty interface. It's also missing the spyware, ad banners and other crap that seems to plague every other p2p network.
Reading this story was the nail in the coffin for Fastrack, AFAIC. I was going to stick around a while until the new WinMX got it's legs, but forget about that now.
Then make sure than the place is flooded with signs in various medium (stone, metal, ceramic, you name it), each one depicting the best graphical representation of what danger lies in there....bodies slowly curling up as waves pass through them, animals dead, it's not hard to visualise it.
Yeah, just like the great pyramids! Good thing we're all smart enough to stay away from those fucking things 'cause nobody wants the wrath of those dead pharoes coming down on them!
Do you seriously think that this would deter anyone from investigating further?
Obfuscation is the only answer that makes any sense. Building monuments on top of the site or doing anything else to attract attention to it will only turn it into a future tourist attraction/religious site/etc.
I'm all for warnings, but they need to be placed AFTER all the obfuscation and most of them need to be consistant with the warnings we already have at facilities with similarly long-life waste (otherwise the place could be mistaken as being much older than it actually is -- an archealogical find that even we didn't notice). There should be detailed information on nuclear energy. We can assume that any civilization able to find the warnings shouldn't be too far from having nuclear capabilities of their own.
The only thing you got right is that it is fucking stupid to include a nuclear bomb in the mix.
It was also found that someone putting a foot up Judge Ronald Whyte's ass will in no way eliminates or substantially impair his ability to walk. The esteemed judge may find it more difficult to engage in certain quick strides but nevertheless, walking will still be possible.
"you would not block UUNET because they sell bandwidth to ISPs who are spammers"
Want to bet I wouldn't?
Often spammers and spam-friendly ISPs have very close relationships with national carriers. This has to be dealt with somehow and in some cases this may be the only way to get the national provider's attention.
Actually MAPS is on it's way out. It lost a lot of support when it started charging and this lawsuit isn't likely to win it any friends.
SPEWS is the current favorite because unlike MAPS it doesn't pussy-foot around trying to "educate" spammers and their hosts.
Beyond any of this though, MAPS only blocks those who spam and (in the case of the DUL) those who are trying to use their dial-up lines to send e-mail directly (rather than going through a mail server on a static IP). While MAPS has in the past shown favoritism towards large companies (giving them ridiculous amounts of time to clean up), they don't block small companies because they're small.
Amazing how there are plenty of other large ISP's that manage to run reletively spam-free operations. In a situation where there is no other option for connectivity it should be even easier than in a situation where the spammers can simply jump to another ISP.
All this government-operated ISP has to do is hire a few people to work an abuse desk, create some web sites with info on how to secure a variety of mail servers (in the native tongue), serve notice to the people responsible for the misbehaving servers and then stop routing traffic for any address that keeps spamming after X Day. They may also have to play whack-a-mole for a while as the truly clueless try to dodge by bumping their servers to different addresses but not for too long.
So the spammer is a customer of a customer? Not a problem. This too can be solved by not routing traffic. Stop routing enough traffic and the customer will be on their very own intranet (something which neither the spammer nor any of the legitimate customers will pay for). Sooner or later the customer will come around to your point of view ("hosting spammers is an extremely bad idea").
See? Problems like this are very simple to solve when those at the top have a sincere desire to solve them. SPEWS exists to assist in creating that desire.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell?! "We were all just a bunch of geeks that got so worked up we threw objectivity out the window"? Look, if ZD was never anything more than some no-name hardware review web site run by some teenager and his friends from IRC I might understand how this could happen, but ZD is a goddamn publishing empire and has been for a long time now!
Are you telling me that you cocksuckers couldn't muster up journalistic integrity because everything Microsoft and DELL sent you was just so shiny and had so many flashing lights you were constantly distracted from the fact that your JOB was to evaluate computer shit in the most objective manner possible??
Bullshit.
You're absolutely correct. I remember well the days when OS/2 could have been a contender and how shockingly little was ever written about it in PC Magazine.
Ever since then PC Mag (along with every other ZD publication) has transitioned from serious tech journalism to serious whoring.
These days I read Maximum PC for a similar level of info to what I used to get in PC Mag, but as good as it is it's still a magazine aimed at hobbyists. Hopefully the fall of ZD will give someone else a chance to launch some magazines for the markets ZD currently dominates that contain useful content rather than whoring.
The internet does not have a police force and it does not have a military to ensure that abuse does not occur. Instead the internet is self-regulating in a very frontier justice fashion: Everyone has a claim staked and if you trespass on someone else's claim and violate netiquette anything might happen -- from "nothing" to "orbital anvil to the skull".
Ever heard of MAPS? They worked very hard to educate spammers and ISPs before blocking the un-educable ones. Why are tougher blocklists that do not provide a strong educational component now employed instead of MAPS? Because the spammers and rogue ISPs abused MAPS by playing dumb and getting extension after extension to clean things up while crying crocodile tears and chuckling up their sleeves.
Your whining about "innocent" people being blocked does not impress me and nor should it impress anyone. These "innocents" are monetarily supporting spam-friendly ISPs and as such should be afforded no more respect than said ISP's themselves. Ignorance is no excuse: They chose to move into a bad neighborhood and now it's time for them to either move out or clean it up because if they don't nobody else is going to clean it up for them.
In case you haven't noticed, the face of the internet has changed a lot since it was first invented. At one time all it would take to stop spam from issuing forth from a host was a harsh word or two. These days complaints are useful only as proof that an ISP ignored them. Furthermore, local filtering/flagging of individual "potential spam" is also useless as it is clearly a temporary fix. How long before spammers and spamware vendors learn how to skirt SpamAssassin's filters? Such filters are inherently flawed as they rely on content while the spam issue is not about content -- it's about consent.
The current blacklists are entirely moral because e-mail is not sacrosanct. Nobody has a right -- morally or legally -- to deliver e-mail to anyone. Morally this is a perfectly reasonable stance as e-mail is not the sole means of communication. If what you have to say is so important that it can't risk getting blocked then you need to put a stamp on an envelope or dial a phone number.
Put shortly: The internet is based on trust and that trust has been abused far too often.
So far I've seen nothing from you but bitching, with no real solutions offered. You don't like blacklists but you can't seem to come up with anything as effective that doesn't offend your delicate morality. Sounds like you've got a personal problem.
Amen to that! Years of Katz blather accurately summarized by one short, simple Slashdot post. You are my hero.
Are you blind or what?
White/green letters on black backgrounds have been around on computer displays since the teletype started going out of style.
The problem is either your web browser or your eyes or both.
Flogo are big into spamming and they never remove anybody from their lists -- even if you set your mail server to reject everything from them with 5xx errors they'll just keep hammering away. There's actually a DNSBL devoted to them called "Flowgoaway".
This is my question as well -- and to the people saying "it's not a problem" well, it is. I'm using Ximian with all the latest updates and I can't even copy and paste between two GNOME apps (Terminal and GEdit) let alone from a GNOME app to Mozilla or Licq.
These days copying and pasting text is such a fundamental GUI feature that it should be unthinkable to release with it broken -- like releasing without the ability to minimize windows.
If you're serious about learning everything there is to know about the worst spamgangs be sure to check out Spamhaus's excellent Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO).
Although the site comes complete with mug-shots for one spammer, nothing I've seen there compares (humor-wise anyway) to the hilarious Tommy Brock--Spammer, thug, exhibitionist page.
From what I've read Rackspace has been cleaning up their act recently. I don't know that they've fully graduated from black to greyhat, but something is better than nothing...
PostmasterGeneral/Mindshare supposedly has two prominent ex-MAPS people working in their "abuse department" to "clean up" their spam problem. The only problem is that these people of previously sterling reputation in the anti-spam community have been there since last summer or fall (at least) and PMG is still spamming. Last I read the only thing these ex-MAPS people have authority to do is listwash -- they couldn't even manage to remove addresses that were bouncing with 5xx errors!
Try doing a news.admin.net-abuse.email search on PostmasterGeneral, PMG and/or Mindshare "Subject:" headers. There you'll find all the sordid facts and all the high drama (including people breathlessly proclaiming undying loyalty to these obvious anti-spam turncoats).
If you run a mail server you can blackhole PMG with this list of their IP blocks and domains:
Thank you!
My linux box isn't powerful enough to watch video on (and lacks sound anyway). On the other hand I refuse to install QuickTime on my Windows machine.
Life would be so much better if all video codecs were player-independent...
Well if he's right then your lawyer shouldn't have a problem with it, should he?
Now you kids play nice or I swear to god I'm going to turn this car around and there will be no DisneyWorld for anybody!
Hey, this IS C|Net we're talking about.
They've always been huge MS shills.
I've been following the proceedings on Blue's but it seems like almost every video I've seen linked is in Windows Media Format (or the latest DIVX -- gotta love a codec that breaks compatibility with every release).
So has anybody converted these to MPEG or something?
Because some people have more money than brains?
Seriously, practical overclocking is currently dead. It died when my Celeron 533 running at 824 (and even the 533's that could hit 1GHz) stopped cutting it for the latest games. The price/performance ratio advantage that overclocking used to give you simply doesn't exist with current hardware.
My brother boasted to me the other day about how his video card can be overclocked in software and it doesn't void the warranty. Hello? This isn't overclocking, it's the manufacturer underclocking to sell more units to people who are so far into the rice boy mentality that their mind shuts down and their wallet opens up when they see the word "overclock".
How the hell is this post (Score:4, Insightful)?! It's a barely coherent rant!
Here's my opinion: DOOM III will rule the known universe because it has the best blood smears ever. Anyone who doesn't like DOOM III is a pedophile.
I'm ready for my +5, Insightful!
He's not quite right though. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead came up with the shotgun approach and (IIRC) was actually the inspiration behind it's inclusion in DOOM.
Play Silent Hill 2 before you rule out monsters as being scary. Seriously.
Sure the game could use fewer puzzles and better endings but when it's scary it's damn scary. Many times it's even scary when it's only trying to be unsettling.
WinMX 3.1 was just released a few days ago and it definitely seems to be everything it was hyped as being and more. It's got the many of the features of eDonkey without the bugs and shitty interface. It's also missing the spyware, ad banners and other crap that seems to plague every other p2p network.
Reading this story was the nail in the coffin for Fastrack, AFAIC. I was going to stick around a while until the new WinMX got it's legs, but forget about that now.
The Matrix has changed the way movies are made today.
Care to back that up? Oh that's right, you can't because it's bullshit!
Then make sure than the place is flooded with signs in various medium (stone, metal, ceramic, you name it), each one depicting the best graphical representation of what danger lies in there....bodies slowly curling up as waves pass through them, animals dead, it's not hard to visualise it.
Yeah, just like the great pyramids! Good thing we're all smart enough to stay away from those fucking things 'cause nobody wants the wrath of those dead pharoes coming down on them!
Do you seriously think that this would deter anyone from investigating further?
Obfuscation is the only answer that makes any sense. Building monuments on top of the site or doing anything else to attract attention to it will only turn it into a future tourist attraction/religious site/etc.
I'm all for warnings, but they need to be placed AFTER all the obfuscation and most of them need to be consistant with the warnings we already have at facilities with similarly long-life waste (otherwise the place could be mistaken as being much older than it actually is -- an archealogical find that even we didn't notice). There should be detailed information on nuclear energy. We can assume that any civilization able to find the warnings shouldn't be too far from having nuclear capabilities of their own.
The only thing you got right is that it is fucking stupid to include a nuclear bomb in the mix.
It was also found that someone putting a foot up Judge Ronald Whyte's ass will in no way eliminates or substantially impair his ability to walk. The esteemed judge may find it more difficult to engage in certain quick strides but nevertheless, walking will still be possible.
"you would not block UUNET because they sell bandwidth to ISPs who are spammers"
Want to bet I wouldn't?
Often spammers and spam-friendly ISPs have very close relationships with national carriers. This has to be dealt with somehow and in some cases this may be the only way to get the national provider's attention.
Actually MAPS is on it's way out. It lost a lot of support when it started charging and this lawsuit isn't likely to win it any friends.
SPEWS is the current favorite because unlike MAPS it doesn't pussy-foot around trying to "educate" spammers and their hosts.
Beyond any of this though, MAPS only blocks those who spam and (in the case of the DUL) those who are trying to use their dial-up lines to send e-mail directly (rather than going through a mail server on a static IP). While MAPS has in the past shown favoritism towards large companies (giving them ridiculous amounts of time to clean up), they don't block small companies because they're small.
So no, Chicken Little: The sky is not falling.
Amazing how there are plenty of other large ISP's that manage to run reletively spam-free operations. In a situation where there is no other option for connectivity it should be even easier than in a situation where the spammers can simply jump to another ISP.
All this government-operated ISP has to do is hire a few people to work an abuse desk, create some web sites with info on how to secure a variety of mail servers (in the native tongue), serve notice to the people responsible for the misbehaving servers and then stop routing traffic for any address that keeps spamming after X Day. They may also have to play whack-a-mole for a while as the truly clueless try to dodge by bumping their servers to different addresses but not for too long.
So the spammer is a customer of a customer? Not a problem. This too can be solved by not routing traffic. Stop routing enough traffic and the customer will be on their very own intranet (something which neither the spammer nor any of the legitimate customers will pay for). Sooner or later the customer will come around to your point of view ("hosting spammers is an extremely bad idea").
See? Problems like this are very simple to solve when those at the top have a sincere desire to solve them. SPEWS exists to assist in creating that desire.