We have seen a lot of articles with serious political - and little to no technical - bend to them make it through as front page stories lately. If I wanted to see conservative viewpoints expressed so blatantly I would go read drudge, townhall, or any of a long list of others. Slashdot editors should keep their editorial viewpoints off the front page.
The article is talking about stopping spam, as in preventing it from being sent. Filters do not do that.
Yes, they do. Very often, spam to my domain never gets to the "DATA" stage of the SMTP transaction.
No, they do not. Your message even confirms that. The email is still sent, your mail server just doesn't accept it. The spam is still internet traffic that gets routed from the spamming system to yours. Just because it doesn't necessarily take up storage space on your system doesn't mean it doesn't traverse the internet as traffic.
The tool that does this is greylisting, despite the claims for the past 5 years that greylisting would cease being an effective tool against spam. The first e-mail from a legitimate server is delayed 5 minutes...from then on, there is no delay, so the impact on communications is negligible.
Greylisting is still a filtering technique. You have to train your mail server to do it, and you have to update records (or refer to remote records) for which domains to accept, which to reject, and which to evaluate. In other words, just like any other filter, it still consumes CPU time, human time, and it still allows the spam to be sent.
I used it back in the day, first in DOS on a 2400baud, then eventually in windows on a blazing fast 14.4. Yeah, a lot of it wasn't that great (especially when they charged per message for email - even to for messages to other prodigy members) but it was pretty good in some ways for the time.
My question though is this - does anyone else remember the games they had on there? I seem to recall a D&D based game on there, but I can't seem to find anything on it any more. I would have thought that someone else would have played it. I thought it was called Neverwinter Knights (which of course is a current name for a D&D game) but I could be wrong on that.
On that regard, you are dead wrong. While filters can never be anything other than reactionary, there are other steps that can be taken - and have been taken successfully - that are proactive.
Every other solution vastly oversimplifies the problem
Then you haven't looked into enough solutions. There is one in particular that hasn't come up in this discussion that is proactive, highly effective, and does not vastly oversimplify the problem.
and can never, by themselves, eliminate spam. Ever
Can any one solution eliminate spam on its own? Not entirely. However, filters cannot even contribute. In the end, filters make the problem worse - they are a short-term solution that is disgustingly ignorant to the long-term reality.
That doesn't make the attempt any less useful.
Unless you are calling filters your attempt to stop spam, that is.
But, I will maintain that filtering is more or less as effective at slowing spam, on average, as law enforcement.
I hate to come crushing down on you with reality, but you're dead fucking wrong on that matter. While law enforcement isn't very useful in slowing spam, filters do the opposite and actually accelerate the rate at which spam is sent out. They also increase the cost of using the internet for every single user online by consuming bandwidth, storage space, and CPU time all around the world. Law enforcement at least in 99.99% of the cases does nothing, and hence adds no cost to internet usage for most users.
we're not about to stop everyone from using spam filters for a while to see how spam grows without filtering to compare it against with filtering
I don't know if you honestly have no clue how filters work, or if you're just trying to bury reason and logic in bullshit and nonsense. You don't have to turn off filters to see how uneffective they are at stopping spam. You only need to see how much spam is processed by the filters to see the volume increase. Long ago we passed the point where the majority of all email is spam, that was well after filters were widely deployed. The situation only continued to get worse from there. Every email server that is running some kind of filter has to hold on to the incoming email messages and filter them against whatever kind of hash it uses to identify spam. It then holds on to the spam for some amount of time so that people who need/want to can check for false positives. Every so often some poor bastard has to spend time to retrain said filter because inevitably spammers will find ways to get around them.
In other words, filters will never solve the problem. They will only continue to increase the cost of using the internet for everyone.
In short, filtering will never, ever, solve the spam problem. The summary of the article mentions techniques that are effective at stopping spam, and there is a reason why filters are not on that list.
Not necessarily. If no one receives your spam because their filters are effective, there will be no profitability left.
You vastly oversimplified the problem with that statement. A filter cannot solve the problem because it can never be adequate. A filter only starts an arms race with the spammers, they will constantly change their tactics to get around the filters. That then requires more work to be done to the filters to learn the new techniques, which drives the filters to consume even more resources. Filters are an always-losing strategy.
And then the filters will get lax, someone will start up again, a spurt of spam will arrive, the filters adjust, and again dead.
You have imagined a situation that will never, ever, happen. Filters will never stop spam. They will always be reactionary to spam, and spam will always be outsmarting the filters.
I don't see this any less effective than current methods.
I can show you why, but if you chose not to acknowledge what is in front of you, then I cannot help you.
Convicting someone just opens up room for someone else to take his place
On that I agree with you. punitive actions, up to and including murder (which a disturbing number of people support for this) won't work.
Take down a botnet, and those same people who allowed their computers to be infected once will get infected again with the next botnet.
Building a botnet takes time, and taking one down is easily more effective at stopping spam than filtering. That is in part though because of the indisputable fact that filters are worthless at spam prevention.
Filtering is an important tool. It is not and, for all practical purposes, can not be the only tool. But omitting that tool is just as fatal of a mistake as ignoring the law as a tool.
I didn't say it cannot be used. I said it is worthless in actually stopping and preventing spam. Those are two very different arguments.
The article is talking about stopping spam, as in preventing it from being sent. Filters do not do that. Filtered spam still costs people money as it still consumes resources and takes up storage space on servers on the internet. Filters have to be adjusted and trained, and they consume CPU time as well.
In short, filtering will never, ever, solve the spam problem. The summary of the article mentions techniques that are effective at stopping spam, and there is a reason why filters are not on that list.
The sustained decrease in spam over the last year can be attributed to many factors, including: Botnet takedowns, increased prosecution of spammers and the source industries such as fake pharmaceuticals and replicas
Notice that filters are not included in that list, as they do not make a meaningful change in total spam volume. While some people are hiding behind their filters, others are actually taking action to stop spam. As I have said before, filters will never, ever, win the war on spam.
There is no legal obligation to do what the 911 operator tells you to -- or even the police, unless the request is being made in a particular way.
Zimmerman was from the neighborhood watch. Maybe you live in Somalia or some other third-world lawless hellhole where the police effectively non existent, but in the US the neighborhood watch is supposed to watch. Zimmerman went way beyond watch. If he would have just stayed in his truck like he was told, we wouldn't be having this conversation and Zimmerman wouldn't have murdered this unarmed 17 year old kid.
Those words are not as important as the part where the 911 dispatcher told Zimmerman
We don't need you to follow him
And then he went and did it regardless. Racist or not, Zimmerman is still a fucking murderer and deserves to be tried for his crime. Whether he murdered him for being black or just murdered him for the hell of it doesn't matter, there is a dead 17 year old kid now who would otherwise be alive if Zimmerman hadn't murdered him.
There aren't that many possibilities, really. The scotus can toss it out entirely, let it stand, or remove just some parts of it. They aren't going to rewrite it (that's not their job). Similarly they can't just make their own law in its place. Any other proposed solution is likely even further from the realistic possible outcomes.
Hence the notion of "most accurate prediction" is rather absurd in this case. You get it right, or you don't. The options essentially boil down to A, B, and C. If you answer F, 7, or blue, you likely have no idea what's going on.
And I predict that none of what you predicted will happen.
Scotus will most likely delay the decision, it's election year, and Obama has ways to pressure them
Really? What ways in particular? How is the president able to force the scotus not to act? Are you aware of how the three branches of government work in the US? Do you have any idea what you're talking about in general?
Republicans will have to show their base they are not signing under the mandate
Which they came up with...
being constitutional (and it's not), so it's most likely to be delayed.
Newsflash, dippy. The scotus exists for the very purpose of deciding the constitutionality of laws (as well as some other key functions). Thankfully you are not on the court.
But a more important prediction: if/when this act goes into effect expect many of the companies that have maybe up to 100 people all of a sudden lose half of their employees so not to go over 50 employee maximum after which they have to comply with various provisions.
Thank you for demonstrating so clearly that you have no idea what you are talking about. You might as well predict an invading herd of chupacabra to lay siege to Washington DC.
I don't recall seeing those actions previously becoming considering synonymous. Creepy, perhaps. Extortion, quite possible. But smearing? Unless there is derogatory content hosted on there with the intent of associating said content with said toddler, I'm not sold.
Some conferences might be better suited to digital note taking than others. If you are going to conferences where you need to be able to draw figures and also write text, you'll likely find that pen and paper is the only reasonable solution. If your conference is instead all text, then a laptop might work.
Also, some conferences allow you to take photographs of the slides (while others expressly forbid it). This can be very helpful as well.
Personally, I take all my notes by hand, pen and paper. Then I transcribe them in to an openoffice presentation to disseminate my notes to my colleagues. Finally, I convert the presentation to PDF and post it to my web site so the text can be searched by anyone who knows how to find my web site.
Was they located the ever elusive "white Hispanic."
These guys are not the first to apply that label to the shooter. Zimmerman identifies himself as "white hispanic" on his voting registration. Some of the very early news coverage - that came out over a month ago, just after the shooting - also used that label.
In other words, the concept of "white hispanic" is not new here. Not sure what planet you've been hanging out on lately but we've been using this term since this crime was first reported, and it has been a standard part of the language for some time.
This was posted on there on Wednesday or so. Usually slashdot is desperately trying to copy facebook, but this time slashdot is a few days behind google plus.
I have never been on a flight that has fed me anything beyond a bag of pretzels. Even longer flights I'm lucky to get pretzels and a can of soda. I don't know who these yuppies are that are bitching about airline food, but really that is not a problem that (at least) 99.99% of the world and 99% of the USA will never, ever, encounter.
Here they disregard not only hand positions. They also disregard turn signals, turn lanes, stop signs, stop lights, speed limits, weather conditions, following distances, and the laws of physics in general.
For example, last week someone in the right hand lane attempted to make a left-handed U-turn while I was driving past them in the left hand lane. They were on their way to buy cigarettes - had they hit me (as they quite nearly did) I would have spared them dying of lung cancer and bludgeoned them to death in the road.
I have no problem with having the question I send to the government tied to my real name, but I refuse to let facebook be treated as an integral part of the conversation. This is not how democracy is supposed to work.
I did. And that is the only reason why I view the story as being the least bit credible, as samzenpus has a long proud history of bringing distortion and epic failure to the front page of slashdot.
However, even the BBC gets fooled on occasion. I trust them enough that I watch them for my morning news while I eat breakfast - however they are in the end still human and prone to human mistakes.
The story indicates that the movie Borat was banned in Kuwait. Hence they chose the wrong theme, from a movie they couldn't even view, in that country.
Although being as the story was posted by the fail master himself samzenpus, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if a large part of the story (or the entire damned thing) turned out to be crap.
Slashdot Mirror
We have seen a lot of articles with serious political - and little to no technical - bend to them make it through as front page stories lately. If I wanted to see conservative viewpoints expressed so blatantly I would go read drudge, townhall, or any of a long list of others. Slashdot editors should keep their editorial viewpoints off the front page.
The article is talking about stopping spam, as in preventing it from being sent. Filters do not do that.
Yes, they do. Very often, spam to my domain never gets to the "DATA" stage of the SMTP transaction.
No, they do not. Your message even confirms that. The email is still sent, your mail server just doesn't accept it. The spam is still internet traffic that gets routed from the spamming system to yours. Just because it doesn't necessarily take up storage space on your system doesn't mean it doesn't traverse the internet as traffic.
The tool that does this is greylisting, despite the claims for the past 5 years that greylisting would cease being an effective tool against spam. The first e-mail from a legitimate server is delayed 5 minutes...from then on, there is no delay, so the impact on communications is negligible.
Greylisting is still a filtering technique. You have to train your mail server to do it, and you have to update records (or refer to remote records) for which domains to accept, which to reject, and which to evaluate. In other words, just like any other filter, it still consumes CPU time, human time, and it still allows the spam to be sent.
I used it back in the day, first in DOS on a 2400baud, then eventually in windows on a blazing fast 14.4. Yeah, a lot of it wasn't that great (especially when they charged per message for email - even to for messages to other prodigy members) but it was pretty good in some ways for the time.
My question though is this - does anyone else remember the games they had on there? I seem to recall a D&D based game on there, but I can't seem to find anything on it any more. I would have thought that someone else would have played it. I thought it was called Neverwinter Knights (which of course is a current name for a D&D game) but I could be wrong on that.
Filters are an always-losing strategy.
As is every other option.
On that regard, you are dead wrong. While filters can never be anything other than reactionary, there are other steps that can be taken - and have been taken successfully - that are proactive.
Every other solution vastly oversimplifies the problem
Then you haven't looked into enough solutions. There is one in particular that hasn't come up in this discussion that is proactive, highly effective, and does not vastly oversimplify the problem.
and can never, by themselves, eliminate spam. Ever
Can any one solution eliminate spam on its own? Not entirely. However, filters cannot even contribute. In the end, filters make the problem worse - they are a short-term solution that is disgustingly ignorant to the long-term reality.
That doesn't make the attempt any less useful.
Unless you are calling filters your attempt to stop spam, that is.
But, I will maintain that filtering is more or less as effective at slowing spam, on average, as law enforcement.
I hate to come crushing down on you with reality, but you're dead fucking wrong on that matter. While law enforcement isn't very useful in slowing spam, filters do the opposite and actually accelerate the rate at which spam is sent out. They also increase the cost of using the internet for every single user online by consuming bandwidth, storage space, and CPU time all around the world. Law enforcement at least in 99.99% of the cases does nothing, and hence adds no cost to internet usage for most users.
we're not about to stop everyone from using spam filters for a while to see how spam grows without filtering to compare it against with filtering
I don't know if you honestly have no clue how filters work, or if you're just trying to bury reason and logic in bullshit and nonsense. You don't have to turn off filters to see how uneffective they are at stopping spam. You only need to see how much spam is processed by the filters to see the volume increase. Long ago we passed the point where the majority of all email is spam, that was well after filters were widely deployed. The situation only continued to get worse from there. Every email server that is running some kind of filter has to hold on to the incoming email messages and filter them against whatever kind of hash it uses to identify spam. It then holds on to the spam for some amount of time so that people who need/want to can check for false positives. Every so often some poor bastard has to spend time to retrain said filter because inevitably spammers will find ways to get around them.
In other words, filters will never solve the problem. They will only continue to increase the cost of using the internet for everyone.
In short, filtering will never, ever, solve the spam problem. The summary of the article mentions techniques that are effective at stopping spam, and there is a reason why filters are not on that list.
Not necessarily. If no one receives your spam because their filters are effective, there will be no profitability left.
You vastly oversimplified the problem with that statement. A filter cannot solve the problem because it can never be adequate. A filter only starts an arms race with the spammers, they will constantly change their tactics to get around the filters. That then requires more work to be done to the filters to learn the new techniques, which drives the filters to consume even more resources. Filters are an always-losing strategy.
And then the filters will get lax, someone will start up again, a spurt of spam will arrive, the filters adjust, and again dead.
You have imagined a situation that will never, ever, happen. Filters will never stop spam. They will always be reactionary to spam, and spam will always be outsmarting the filters.
I don't see this any less effective than current methods.
I can show you why, but if you chose not to acknowledge what is in front of you, then I cannot help you.
Convicting someone just opens up room for someone else to take his place
On that I agree with you. punitive actions, up to and including murder (which a disturbing number of people support for this) won't work.
Take down a botnet, and those same people who allowed their computers to be infected once will get infected again with the next botnet.
Building a botnet takes time, and taking one down is easily more effective at stopping spam than filtering. That is in part though because of the indisputable fact that filters are worthless at spam prevention.
Filtering is an important tool. It is not and, for all practical purposes, can not be the only tool. But omitting that tool is just as fatal of a mistake as ignoring the law as a tool.
I didn't say it cannot be used. I said it is worthless in actually stopping and preventing spam. Those are two very different arguments.
The article is talking about stopping spam, as in preventing it from being sent. Filters do not do that. Filtered spam still costs people money as it still consumes resources and takes up storage space on servers on the internet. Filters have to be adjusted and trained, and they consume CPU time as well.
In short, filtering will never, ever, solve the spam problem. The summary of the article mentions techniques that are effective at stopping spam, and there is a reason why filters are not on that list.
The sustained decrease in spam over the last year can be attributed to many factors, including: Botnet takedowns, increased prosecution of spammers and the source industries such as fake pharmaceuticals and replicas
Notice that filters are not included in that list, as they do not make a meaningful change in total spam volume. While some people are hiding behind their filters, others are actually taking action to stop spam. As I have said before, filters will never, ever, win the war on spam.
There is no legal obligation to do what the 911 operator tells you to -- or even the police, unless the request is being made in a particular way.
Zimmerman was from the neighborhood watch. Maybe you live in Somalia or some other third-world lawless hellhole where the police effectively non existent, but in the US the neighborhood watch is supposed to watch. Zimmerman went way beyond watch. If he would have just stayed in his truck like he was told, we wouldn't be having this conversation and Zimmerman wouldn't have murdered this unarmed 17 year old kid.
We don't need you to follow him
And then he went and did it regardless. Racist or not, Zimmerman is still a fucking murderer and deserves to be tried for his crime. Whether he murdered him for being black or just murdered him for the hell of it doesn't matter, there is a dead 17 year old kid now who would otherwise be alive if Zimmerman hadn't murdered him.
There aren't that many possibilities, really. The scotus can toss it out entirely, let it stand, or remove just some parts of it. They aren't going to rewrite it (that's not their job). Similarly they can't just make their own law in its place. Any other proposed solution is likely even further from the realistic possible outcomes.
Hence the notion of "most accurate prediction" is rather absurd in this case. You get it right, or you don't. The options essentially boil down to A, B, and C. If you answer F, 7, or blue, you likely have no idea what's going on.
Scotus will most likely delay the decision, it's election year, and Obama has ways to pressure them
Really? What ways in particular? How is the president able to force the scotus not to act? Are you aware of how the three branches of government work in the US? Do you have any idea what you're talking about in general?
Republicans will have to show their base they are not signing under the mandate
Which they came up with...
being constitutional (and it's not), so it's most likely to be delayed.
Newsflash, dippy. The scotus exists for the very purpose of deciding the constitutionality of laws (as well as some other key functions). Thankfully you are not on the court.
But a more important prediction: if/when this act goes into effect expect many of the companies that have maybe up to 100 people all of a sudden lose half of their employees so not to go over 50 employee maximum after which they have to comply with various provisions.
Thank you for demonstrating so clearly that you have no idea what you are talking about. You might as well predict an invading herd of chupacabra to lay siege to Washington DC.
I don't recall seeing those actions previously becoming considering synonymous. Creepy, perhaps. Extortion, quite possible. But smearing? Unless there is derogatory content hosted on there with the intent of associating said content with said toddler, I'm not sold.
Send your drives to me, postage paid. I'll test them for you for no charge, and send them back to you before the warranty expires.
Just think of all the Slashdot jokes that could have been...
That doesn't mean we can't still make Wang jokes.
Q: Who was the first female computer programmer?
A: Eve - she had an Apple in one hand, and a Wang in the other.
Some conferences might be better suited to digital note taking than others. If you are going to conferences where you need to be able to draw figures and also write text, you'll likely find that pen and paper is the only reasonable solution. If your conference is instead all text, then a laptop might work.
Also, some conferences allow you to take photographs of the slides (while others expressly forbid it). This can be very helpful as well.
Personally, I take all my notes by hand, pen and paper. Then I transcribe them in to an openoffice presentation to disseminate my notes to my colleagues. Finally, I convert the presentation to PDF and post it to my web site so the text can be searched by anyone who knows how to find my web site.
Was they located the ever elusive "white Hispanic."
These guys are not the first to apply that label to the shooter. Zimmerman identifies himself as "white hispanic" on his voting registration. Some of the very early news coverage - that came out over a month ago, just after the shooting - also used that label.
In other words, the concept of "white hispanic" is not new here. Not sure what planet you've been hanging out on lately but we've been using this term since this crime was first reported, and it has been a standard part of the language for some time.
How many versions of flash had Linux releases? Maybe 10, 11, and 12? That hardly even qualifies as a token gesture in my view.
This was posted on there on Wednesday or so. Usually slashdot is desperately trying to copy facebook, but this time slashdot is a few days behind google plus.
I have never been on a flight that has fed me anything beyond a bag of pretzels. Even longer flights I'm lucky to get pretzels and a can of soda. I don't know who these yuppies are that are bitching about airline food, but really that is not a problem that (at least) 99.99% of the world and 99% of the USA will never, ever, encounter.
Here they disregard not only hand positions. They also disregard turn signals, turn lanes, stop signs, stop lights, speed limits, weather conditions, following distances, and the laws of physics in general.
For example, last week someone in the right hand lane attempted to make a left-handed U-turn while I was driving past them in the left hand lane. They were on their way to buy cigarettes - had they hit me (as they quite nearly did) I would have spared them dying of lung cancer and bludgeoned them to death in the road.
I have no problem with having the question I send to the government tied to my real name, but I refuse to let facebook be treated as an integral part of the conversation. This is not how democracy is supposed to work.
You might want to click on the link.
I did. And that is the only reason why I view the story as being the least bit credible, as samzenpus has a long proud history of bringing distortion and epic failure to the front page of slashdot.
However, even the BBC gets fooled on occasion. I trust them enough that I watch them for my morning news while I eat breakfast - however they are in the end still human and prone to human mistakes.
I think it was banned in kazahkstan not kuwait.
The BBC article states it was banned both in Kuwait and Kazakhstan.
The story indicates that the movie Borat was banned in Kuwait. Hence they chose the wrong theme, from a movie they couldn't even view, in that country.
Although being as the story was posted by the fail master himself samzenpus, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if a large part of the story (or the entire damned thing) turned out to be crap.
I don't use it at all. Never have I had a login for it. I can tell them I am not a user and there is nothing on there that I have posted.
Granted, no employer should ever ask you for a username and password for anything, ever. But this makes it even easier to respond.