I'm not sure I'd characterize Aristotle as 'lesser known'.
Between Plato and Aristotle, when considering who is better known, ask yourself this question. Which one has a name that many people cannot distinguish from a children's toy?
It's a shame that nobody recognized the Edison reference in your comment, it deserves to be moderated up. And my last mod point expired just a few hours ago, too.
Perhaps I am offtopic, but I had a slashdot question that I wanted to ask a slashdot employee (Pudge works for slashdot in case you have forgotten). And with his posting history it is virtually impossible for me to post a question in reply to something he has said earlier.
Sightings of Pudge in public are less common than sightings of Dracula in the daylight. Being as I have seen this message of his in a public discussion, I fully expect to see a sasquatch walk across my front lawn in the very near future.
Can you tell us how we can tell when our moderator points expire? Under the old slashdot layout it would show up in our user page when we are logged in. It isn't in there since the layout changed a while back.
Do you know where we might be able to find that? I have one moderator point left from my most recent allocation and I would like to know how long I have left to use it.
Which is probably why they send the same canned response to every complaint now, claiming to have read the complaint and determined that nothing wrong was done and nothing could be done in response.
Yes it is the auto warranty brokers. They are spoofing caller ID anyway apparently, so it won't help you too much.
I figured as much, most of the annoying automated callers spoof caller ID.
What do you report them under when you try to complain to the FCC about it? Were you able to get a company name or something?
At work I get annoying calls of three types:
The vehicle warranty bastards that you mentioned
Some other bastards that want to sell me discounted diabetes medications and supplies
Yet some other bastards that call to refinance credit card debt (or reduce credit card payments) - these are the current targets of my anger
At least with the credit card bastards I do get toll-free call back numbers. They are different every time but with Ameritech (800-337-4194) I can call and find out which RespOrg is responsible for the number in question. Then I at least have a company to call and complain to, and someone to direct my FCC and attorney general complaints against.
I also have a complaint response here on my desk (against the "This is your second notice that your warranty has expired" people). Somehow the FCC thinks this clear cut violation of multiple telemarketing laws is somehow not a violation.
That is one of the 800 number-related incidents that I would like to report, but we don't have caller ID so I have never been able to get a number for where those calls are coming from. I presume that is the same call about vehicle warranties that you are referring to? I have even managed to answer that call once or twice, and told them that I don't own a car. They kept calling anyways.
Though the one I have been trying most to address is the "reduce your credit card payment" scam. We get this call 1 or 2 times a month at work, and they call with the same message but a different company name and number each time. They never say who they are looking for. I call them back and ask to be taken off their calling list and they either deny calling or they hang up on me. They are in blatant violation of the cold-calling regulations but the FCC always says there is nothing wrong.
The FCC is probably the least competent of all our federal government's departments right now. Have you ever filed an FCC complaint? I have (against a toll-free RespOrg, and then against another one when the owner of the number in question moved). When you file a complaint, the response is a form letter telling you the FCC cannot do anything. And then when you call the FCC for more information on how they came to that conclusion you wait for half an hour on hold before someone tells you they can't do anything, either; and they won't tell you if you can find out who read your complaint (if it was read at all).
Frankly they could put a lobster in charge of the FCC and it would be just as well off as it is at this moment. So any sentient being will likely be an improvement.
The FCC is so frustrating I went to go stand in line at the DMV afterwards because I wanted to feel like I accomplished something that day.
I disagree. Spam is an economic problem, not a social problem as you claim. Spam is sent because it is profitable to send. No amount of education will make spam go away because there are too many users on the internet who you will never be able to get through to.
If you want to end spam, you have to remove the profit motive.
But what you are proposing is effectively just another type of filterr
No, it is not. A filter does the following
evaluates spam after it is sent
accepts certain numbers of false positives / false negatives as collateral damage
costs CPU time to execute
encourages spammers to write craftier spam to evade
Whereas placing restrictions on registrars has none of those pitfalls.
Filters do nothing to reduce the act of sending spam. You can place all the filters you want and the spammers will still send as much, if not more, spam.
But if the spammers don't have anything to spamvertise, then they won't send out spam. Even more so, if they don't get paid for sending out spam, they won't send it out, either. They aren't sending out spam as a charity act.
Your suggestion about `the damned registrars' does nothing to remove the profit motive.
How about removing the swiss cheese security model of the operating systems that are affected so the bad guys won't be able to spread bot-nets. I know, I know, many people would loose support jobs then.. never mind, carry on.
The bigger problem with that idea is that there are plenty of users on the internet who are happily using old un-patched systems running windows 9x, or even win2k or XP logged in as admin (also unpatched).
Many of these people don't care how great your latest OS is. They are fine with what they have and they don't want anything else. You can propose all the OS-level security changes you want and you'll never get those changes out to those legions of users.
The botnet operator doesn't care if the spammers they host make a dime or not. All they want to know is that the money keeps rolling in to their laundered bank accounts.
And where does the money come from?
Mostly the owners of the spamvertised domains. Hence the spammers are the wholesale level you refer to. If it costs too much to be spamvertised, such that the owners of the spamvertised domains cannot afford to pay for the spamming, then there is no longer an incentive for the botnet operators to provide that service.
Filters have already solved the spam problem. It's been over six months since the last time something got through my gmail filter.
Which did not solve the problem, because the spam was still sent. The message still traversed the internet and added traffic to the source and destination systems. The message still had to be analyzed by your spam filters.
The spam problem can only be considered solved when there is no spam sent.
In fact, I'm not sure why spammers go to the trouble of registering domains. If it's just for the ease of transferring the dns record to a new ip address, why bother?
If I were to guess, I would suspect that would be it. If they have evilspammingdomain.com hosted by ISP A, who eventually catches on and stops hosting, they can take the same domain and have it instead hosted by ISP B, and then the spam that was earlier sent out referring potential suckers to go buy crap from evilspammingdomain.com will still get them to the same site.
In short, I suspect that it was because previously it was easier to get protection from registrars than from ISPs, as more ISPs were operating in developed countries and cared about spam at the time.
Now, there are hordes of ISPs operating in developing countries who don't give a damn about the spam epidemic as long as someone makes a buck in the process.
However, the registrars are just as bad as before, so presumably the spammers figure they might as well kick them a buck as well and buy some domains to potentially be of value later should the new ISPs ever start caring about spam.
But the short answer is the profit motive for the botnet is largely tied in to the profit motive for spamming. The answer therefore is to remove the profitability of spamming, or more so to remove the profitability of the spamvertised businesses (both those directly [merchants] and indirectly [registrars and ISPs] profiting from the spam-generated business). If the spamvertised business is no longer making money then they will no longer pay the spammer (botnet operator) and the motive to maintain the botnet will dry up.
Spam is profitable even when only one in 10,000 people respond to them
Spam makes for an excellent case study in the problem, more on that in a moment.
People have been building better and better spam filters for years
Filters will never solve the spam problem. I have said that before, and I will continue to say it until people start to realize the reality of the situation.
Build better filters, and spammers will send better spam.
You have to remove the profit motive.
And a fair portion of botnet activity is spam-driven or spam-propagating. So if we work on the spam problem, the botnet problem will diminish.
And there is one angle in particular that is available for stopping spam:
The damned registrars
If you look at spam messages, you'll see that the vast majority of them ask you to go to domains that are on the order of days old, and seldom remain up for more than a few weeks. This is because registration of domains is too easy, with too little liability anywhere along the way.
Spamming and spamvertised domains are registered at a bewildering rate 24/7. And most of them are registered with bogus information to boot. We need a few things to hinder this
Registrars need to sell domains only to valid registration data
Registrars that willingly sell domains to spammers need to be punished swiftly and severely
ISPs that willingly offer services repeatedly to spammers need to face the same
If the virtual storefronts selling the v!@gr@ are shut down promptly, and proper impediments are put in place to hinder their creation, spam will become less profitable. The owners of the spamvertised domains can only afford to pay the spammers for their services as long as they are still selling products.
If you manage to disable the storm botnet, someone will just great better botnet software. The end result is just a better botnet.
If you want to stop the botnet, you need to remove its incentive. The botnet operates not for someones jollies, but because it is profitable to have a botnet. If you remove the profit motive the botnet will self-disassemble over time.
I take it you looked at the 32-bit version? The 64-bit version is 3.15GB.
Correct. For my needs I have not seen a compelling reason to buy a new computer for the past several years. 32bit is plenty adequate for me, thank you.
I suggested cockroaches would probably do nicely for it
Have you ever tried to catch a cockroach? They have survived for hundreds of millions of years because they can avoid predators like almost nothing else. Granted, maybe this mammal is better than most, but I would be surprised if it was indeed capable of eating enough cockroaches to sustain itself.
I bet it'll do fine eating sewer rats and other city gunk.
The article mentions that this critter subsists on a diet of insects. It would be a rather significant step to go from eating invertebrates to eating other mammals.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure I'd characterize Aristotle as 'lesser known'.
Between Plato and Aristotle, when considering who is better known, ask yourself this question. Which one has a name that many people cannot distinguish from a children's toy?
It's a shame that nobody recognized the Edison reference in your comment, it deserves to be moderated up. And my last mod point expired just a few hours ago, too.
Perhaps I am offtopic, but I had a slashdot question that I wanted to ask a slashdot employee (Pudge works for slashdot in case you have forgotten). And with his posting history it is virtually impossible for me to post a question in reply to something he has said earlier.
Sightings of Pudge in public are less common than sightings of Dracula in the daylight. Being as I have seen this message of his in a public discussion, I fully expect to see a sasquatch walk across my front lawn in the very near future.
Hey Pudge
Can you tell us how we can tell when our moderator points expire? Under the old slashdot layout it would show up in our user page when we are logged in. It isn't in there since the layout changed a while back.
Do you know where we might be able to find that? I have one moderator point left from my most recent allocation and I would like to know how long I have left to use it.
Which is probably why they send the same canned response to every complaint now, claiming to have read the complaint and determined that nothing wrong was done and nothing could be done in response.
Yes it is the auto warranty brokers. They are spoofing caller ID anyway apparently, so it won't help you too much.
I figured as much, most of the annoying automated callers spoof caller ID.
What do you report them under when you try to complain to the FCC about it? Were you able to get a company name or something?
At work I get annoying calls of three types:
At least with the credit card bastards I do get toll-free call back numbers. They are different every time but with Ameritech (800-337-4194) I can call and find out which RespOrg is responsible for the number in question. Then I at least have a company to call and complain to, and someone to direct my FCC and attorney general complaints against.
I also have a complaint response here on my desk (against the "This is your second notice that your warranty has expired" people). Somehow the FCC thinks this clear cut violation of multiple telemarketing laws is somehow not a violation.
That is one of the 800 number-related incidents that I would like to report, but we don't have caller ID so I have never been able to get a number for where those calls are coming from. I presume that is the same call about vehicle warranties that you are referring to? I have even managed to answer that call once or twice, and told them that I don't own a car. They kept calling anyways.
Though the one I have been trying most to address is the "reduce your credit card payment" scam. We get this call 1 or 2 times a month at work, and they call with the same message but a different company name and number each time. They never say who they are looking for. I call them back and ask to be taken off their calling list and they either deny calling or they hang up on me. They are in blatant violation of the cold-calling regulations but the FCC always says there is nothing wrong.
In other words, I feel your pain.
Frankly they could put a lobster in charge of the FCC and it would be just as well off as it is at this moment.
It occurred to me after writing that rant that if a lobster were indeed in charge of the FCC, it could then be the Federal Crustacean Commission.
Thank you, and don't forget to tip your server.
The FCC is probably the least competent of all our federal government's departments right now. Have you ever filed an FCC complaint? I have (against a toll-free RespOrg, and then against another one when the owner of the number in question moved). When you file a complaint, the response is a form letter telling you the FCC cannot do anything. And then when you call the FCC for more information on how they came to that conclusion you wait for half an hour on hold before someone tells you they can't do anything, either; and they won't tell you if you can find out who read your complaint (if it was read at all).
Frankly they could put a lobster in charge of the FCC and it would be just as well off as it is at this moment. So any sentient being will likely be an improvement.
The FCC is so frustrating I went to go stand in line at the DMV afterwards because I wanted to feel like I accomplished something that day.
I clicked the link from the end of the story and was unable to find anything on that page referring to "Peter Quinn", "Quinn", or even just "Pete".
What information are we supposed to glean from that link?
a technical solution to a social problem
I disagree. Spam is an economic problem, not a social problem as you claim. Spam is sent because it is profitable to send. No amount of education will make spam go away because there are too many users on the internet who you will never be able to get through to.
If you want to end spam, you have to remove the profit motive.
But what you are proposing is effectively just another type of filterr
No, it is not. A filter does the following
Whereas placing restrictions on registrars has none of those pitfalls.
Filters do nothing to reduce the act of sending spam. You can place all the filters you want and the spammers will still send as much, if not more, spam.
But if the spammers don't have anything to spamvertise, then they won't send out spam. Even more so, if they don't get paid for sending out spam, they won't send it out, either. They aren't sending out spam as a charity act.
Your suggestion about `the damned registrars' does nothing to remove the profit motive.
Please re-read my other posts in this thread.
How about removing the swiss cheese security model of the operating systems that are affected so the bad guys won't be able to spread bot-nets. I know, I know, many people would loose support jobs then.. never mind, carry on.
The bigger problem with that idea is that there are plenty of users on the internet who are happily using old un-patched systems running windows 9x, or even win2k or XP logged in as admin (also unpatched).
Many of these people don't care how great your latest OS is. They are fine with what they have and they don't want anything else. You can propose all the OS-level security changes you want and you'll never get those changes out to those legions of users.
The botnet operator doesn't care if the spammers they host make a dime or not. All they want to know is that the money keeps rolling in to their laundered bank accounts.
And where does the money come from?
Mostly the owners of the spamvertised domains. Hence the spammers are the wholesale level you refer to. If it costs too much to be spamvertised, such that the owners of the spamvertised domains cannot afford to pay for the spamming, then there is no longer an incentive for the botnet operators to provide that service.
Filters have already solved the spam problem. It's been over six months since the last time something got through my gmail filter.
Which did not solve the problem, because the spam was still sent. The message still traversed the internet and added traffic to the source and destination systems. The message still had to be analyzed by your spam filters.
The spam problem can only be considered solved when there is no spam sent.
Period.
there's no reason why spamvertized stuff can't be purchased from http://123.321.456.654/crap [123.321.456.654] instead of http://abcdefghijk.cn/morecrap [abcdefghijk.cn]
That is a good point.
In fact, I'm not sure why spammers go to the trouble of registering domains. If it's just for the ease of transferring the dns record to a new ip address, why bother?
If I were to guess, I would suspect that would be it. If they have evilspammingdomain.com hosted by ISP A, who eventually catches on and stops hosting, they can take the same domain and have it instead hosted by ISP B, and then the spam that was earlier sent out referring potential suckers to go buy crap from evilspammingdomain.com will still get them to the same site.
In short, I suspect that it was because previously it was easier to get protection from registrars than from ISPs, as more ISPs were operating in developed countries and cared about spam at the time.
Now, there are hordes of ISPs operating in developing countries who don't give a damn about the spam epidemic as long as someone makes a buck in the process.
However, the registrars are just as bad as before, so presumably the spammers figure they might as well kick them a buck as well and buy some domains to potentially be of value later should the new ISPs ever start caring about spam.
Could you explain what you mean by removing the profit motive?
I explained it in more detail above
But the short answer is the profit motive for the botnet is largely tied in to the profit motive for spamming. The answer therefore is to remove the profitability of spamming, or more so to remove the profitability of the spamvertised businesses (both those directly [merchants] and indirectly [registrars and ISPs] profiting from the spam-generated business). If the spamvertised business is no longer making money then they will no longer pay the spammer (botnet operator) and the motive to maintain the botnet will dry up.
Spam is profitable even when only one in 10,000 people respond to them
Spam makes for an excellent case study in the problem, more on that in a moment.
People have been building better and better spam filters for years
Filters will never solve the spam problem. I have said that before, and I will continue to say it until people start to realize the reality of the situation.
Build better filters, and spammers will send better spam.
You have to remove the profit motive.
And a fair portion of botnet activity is spam-driven or spam-propagating. So if we work on the spam problem, the botnet problem will diminish.
And there is one angle in particular that is available for stopping spam:
If you look at spam messages, you'll see that the vast majority of them ask you to go to domains that are on the order of days old, and seldom remain up for more than a few weeks. This is because registration of domains is too easy, with too little liability anywhere along the way.
Spamming and spamvertised domains are registered at a bewildering rate 24/7. And most of them are registered with bogus information to boot. We need a few things to hinder this
If the virtual storefronts selling the v!@gr@ are shut down promptly, and proper impediments are put in place to hinder their creation, spam will become less profitable. The owners of the spamvertised domains can only afford to pay the spammers for their services as long as they are still selling products.
If you manage to disable the storm botnet, someone will just great better botnet software. The end result is just a better botnet.
If you want to stop the botnet, you need to remove its incentive. The botnet operates not for someones jollies, but because it is profitable to have a botnet. If you remove the profit motive the botnet will self-disassemble over time.
I take it you looked at the 32-bit version? The 64-bit version is 3.15GB.
Correct. For my needs I have not seen a compelling reason to buy a new computer for the past several years. 32bit is plenty adequate for me, thank you.
You could just grab the ISO file directly:
32-bit [microsoft.com]
64-bit [microsoft.com]
Wow, 2.4gb for an operating system. Glad to see that Microsoft is fighting bloat...
you can't imagine why they would do that? LOL!
-------> (joke)
You
It seems you are not familiar with sarcasm. Are you new here?
I tried to download the beta, and ended up with a sign in page that offers no ability to sign in anywhere. Perhaps they don't like my browser?
I am running Konqueror on KDE (in FreeBSD). I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to test that combination for their web site.
I suggested cockroaches would probably do nicely for it
Have you ever tried to catch a cockroach? They have survived for hundreds of millions of years because they can avoid predators like almost nothing else. Granted, maybe this mammal is better than most, but I would be surprised if it was indeed capable of eating enough cockroaches to sustain itself.
I bet it'll do fine eating sewer rats and other city gunk.
The article mentions that this critter subsists on a diet of insects. It would be a rather significant step to go from eating invertebrates to eating other mammals.