As an NC resident, I think the key word was "traditionally". The state is aggressively gutting education programs and forcing conservative republicans into important positions in the UNC (state wide) university system. It's seriously a big problem.
Personally, I'd only take a smartphone with a protective case. I really enjoy reading books on the kindle app for iPhone and Andriod. This saves you the trouble of caring around yet another unnecessary bit of hardware. Virtually all phones have cases you can get that ruggedize them.
My wife and kids might have something to say about it, but I swear, if I had any realistic chance of doing this, I would do my utmost to find a way! Death or not, to travel to another world? To travel in space? To set foot on mars? To see what no person has ever seen before? To experience a different gravity.
And hell, I don't mind making a fool of my self in public, so a reality show would be fine too!
Oh, without a doubt, you're right. It's my opinion that one way or another we're going to collectively have to take a spanking. That should rightfully be across all areas of government, even social programs and entitlements. AND, we should raise taxes, close loopholes, increase taxes on the rich/investors, etc. Basically, spend less and make more.
In my house we are always saying how "every little bit helps". If we bring in an extra $20 somehow, or if we spend $20 less a month. It all adds up. So, cutting $10 billion from Nasa, when combined with other cuts, adds up to a net positive for our bottom line.... eventually. But other areas should also give.
Ok, so I want to see us explore mars and space in general. I want this a lot. I think it's important, interesting, exciting, and more. And I really wish we weren't in the financial situation we are in the US, but we are. I don't think this is a matter of the administration valuing space exploration less, but more of a reflection that we can't continue spending recklessly forever.
Mars, space exploration, and science in general are very important for the human kind and the US' wellbeing in general. But we've got to get our shit in order first. I know that using the family metaphor for government is flawed, however, if I have crippling debt in my household, I need to cut back on the things that might not just be what I want, but also some things that may even be important for the future. I need to focus on making it through the here and now, get my stuff in order, and then start making these types of investments.
So, yes, I am really disappointed to hear about this, but I we really need to be brutal for the foreseeable future in how we spend money. Once that's under control we can come back and pick up where we left off.
Since Thunderbolt can be used to drive displays, I personally want it just so I can daisy chain two large displays off from one Macbook Pro. If it also means that I can plug peripherals into the monotor or onto the end of the chain, well that's just an added bonus. This is the one new feature on that has actually made me really want to upgrade sooner rather than later.
I just thought I'd throw this out. The Raleigh/Durham (RTP) area in North Carolina has one of these too. I used it to build a swing set for my son last xmass. I've been playing around with their shopbot and using their wood working room too. Access to Solidworks is a nice feature too.
Personally, the vast swath of tools and capabilities just wow me. They've got two machine shops (big and little). They've got a wood shop. They've got a plasma cutter. They've got a welding room. They've got a sand blaster. They've got a sewing room (with a surger that was so dangerous they had to hack it to slow it down). They've got a laser cutter. They've got an electronics room. They've got a 3d printer (and they're *building* two others). They've got lots of space to work too. Not to mention storage rooms and offices you can rent. Oh - and they've got classes on most of this stuff. All this for $30 a visit (or $100 a month for unlimited visits). It's a crazy deal.
Overall it's a great place to see geeks and artists doing their thing. Everyplace should have a TechShop.
Not too long ago I saw an interview with someone (sorry, too lazy to look up the name) who is trying to create a system of standardized swappable battery packs for cars. Just like toys and electronics, the solution for electric cars is not necessarily greater range and faster charging. Instead, batteries should be packed and installed in such a manner that they literally snap in and out. This would allow drivers to drive into any gas station that offered this service and swap out your dead or dying battery pack for a new, fully charged pack. This would function just like it does for propane tanks. You simply swap the tank/battery pack out and pay only the cost of the electricity. The station would "own" the battery packs and would charge them for their customers. Heck, in some places they could use wind or solar to provide the electricity for this and it would be very profitable (after start up costs). Also, this would remove the scary idea that maybe these battery packs have a limited lifespan and I as a consumer would have to pay for a new pack. In this scenario, the station would take care of that.
I don't think this is all that far fetched. And, if standardized, this could even be automated to the point where you just drive your car over a machine which removed the batteries from the bottom of your car and puts in a new one. You swipe your credit card and you're back on the road.
Oh my god, this is the worst advice I've ever read.
It's extremely hard to estimate the level of effor it takes to build software. Thus you are virtually guaranteed that if you bid fixed rate you will get burnt. And, even if you're good at estimating, maintaining change orders for each little request is killer. And what happens when you estimate something (like say printing in Flex/Flash/Air to be a 40 hour project and it turns in to something like 120? - not that that's happened to anyone, or anything.) My point is, neither you nor your client know how much effort it will take to build software. Read my comment above to see how I recommend estimating, billing, and collecting.
Besides, I'd rather get paid for every hour I work. That's both honest, as I'm not getting paid for work I didn't do, and fair, as in I'm only billing for work I did.
I know a LOT of people who have been burnt bad by agreeing to fixed fee work. Software ALWAYS has bugs and your clients can easily say that something that doesn't work they way they feel it should is a bug and threaten legal action if you don't fix it for free. If you bill hourly for every hour of work you're covered.
Correction on this comment, assuming the submitter is in the US. You *should* become a corporation and sign up for s-corp status. See http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98263,00.html for more information.
Essentially, an s-corp treats the business and the shareholders the same as a sole proprietorship or partnership in terms of taxes without loosing the protections. This avoids double taxation. The drawback, which won't matter to most small businesses is that have restrictions on how you can issue stock.
I'm on Slashdot because I'm taking time off for my birthday.;) And I typed that entry out quick (and I'm not strong with grammar or spelling) so that's why I messed up lose and loose.
I started freelance web development more than 10 years ago. I built my company on my freelance work. So I can speak with some authority here.
Here's my advice in bite-size nuggets:
- Only bill time and materials. Do not ever agree to do fixed fee work or you will loose your shirt.
- Incorporate. It's actually easy and gives you more protections.
- When tax time comes around have a CPA do your taxes.
- Find a basic, easy to read, even handed/fair contracting agreement that you should always try to use. Have it reviewed by a lawyer. Include these points: mutual indemnification, your *hourly* rate, terms of ownership that gives you ownership over work produced until its paid for in full. Include a clause that allows your clients to cancel at any time without warning but they still have to pay for hours worked. (More on why later.) Any contracts provided by your clients have reviewed by a lawyer.
- You *will* eventually (probably sooner rather than later) be stiffed by a client in part or in whole. Have a lawyer you can call to write them a letter. You'll at least get some payment if you have a lawyer write a letter for you. Be sure to know how far you want to push this. The point of a lawyer is not to sue, but to get partial payment.
- You can set your hourly rate more or less randomly. Look to see what other independent contractors are charging (as best you can) and set your rate proportional to your experiance and confidence. Raise your rates annually.
- There are numerous ways to handle proposals. Here's what I do and what I recommend: First, spend time talking with your leads to learn what it is that they need. Write this down in a proposal format that includes the following: 1) A short summary (1 to 2 pages at most) of what the client needs. 2) How you propose to solve their problems. This pretty much says that you'll provide what's listed in section #1. 3) A list of technologies and techniques you're likely to use including languages, platforms, frameworks, database, techniques such as Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration, Source Code Control systems, etc. Provide a short blurb about each item listed and why it's good. And 4) provide a guesstimate of how long you think it will take. More on this in the next bullet point.
- To estimate projects follow this process: 1) break the project down into major steps you'll need to follow to complete the project. This would normally be something like building infrastructure, security, each major section of the application, etc, etc, etc. This is an art and is learned through experiance. Add 33% more for meetings and project management. Add 33% more for trouble shooting and debugging. Add 33% more for post deployment support. Make it very clear to your client that this is *just a guess* based on experiance. As a part of your project management strategy hold at least weekly meetings with your client to show them what you've accomplished, tell them what you're working on, and update them on anything that has taken longer or changed in scope on the project and how that impacts your estimate. Your contact should allow them to cancel at any time. The combination of your initial guess and your weekly updates, combined with the knowledge they can pull the plug at any time gives your client confidence in your project and comfort to pay hourly.
- Invoice bi-weekly and give a discount for payment in the first week. We give 3% discount for early payment in our standard contract. We get good cash flow and our clients save money.
- To find leads for projects I recommend that you network. There are many professional networking organizations out there as well as your local chambers of commerce. Also, attend conferences in your technical expertise. Submit topics to those conferences and try to talk at them. Write for technical journals. Most of these are very easy to get into. In terms of sales, don't try to sell. Instead listen to the problems your leads have and tell
My take on this is that, though your assignment has spawned an ethical question, the reality of the situation is economic.
Your boss believes that it will cost him less to "scrape" data from the website and use multiple free accounts than to simply pay for the data access. This may be true at first, but, ultimately, this is false.
On the off chance you've not scraped websites before, I'll tell you that this is extremely error prone. So, while this may work initially, you'll be constantly chasing down bugs in the process.
Based on your description I assume you'd be automatically logging into their systems before scraping the data. What if their login process changes? What if they restructure their website? What if they add a captcha to the registration and login process?
My point is, what your boss wants to do is, to use Steve Job's recent phrase, a bag of hurt.
I'll bet that given enough time, the cost to your company in terms of your salary to build and maintain this application will be greater than the cost to actually pay for the data and create a dependable connection.
Don't forget to factor in what it costs you when your users see bad data or error messages due to the process breaking.
It'll cost less to do it the right way. So forget the ethics of it and educate your boss on the economics of it.
Frankly, I could care less about standards. What I want is reliablity. It's obvious that CSS, E4X, SVG and the rest of that gang havn't met that promise. I'm not saying they won't, but I'm saying that, as a business, I'm not going to wait for things to change.
I say give me something that works consistently over something that's a "standard" but hardly ever works consistently, or takes so much time to implement consistently that I've already lost the race by the time I finish my application.
One thing that surprises me is how most people miss the point that flash isn't just about animation any more. It's a platform! Consider this, ActionScript is a full featured OO language. Flash is installed on almost any computer. Wouldn't this begin to suggest that you could use Flash to create truly platform agnostic web-distributable applications?
Screw web "pages", the future of the web is about web "applications". Cross platform web applications marginalize (actually commoditize) Microsoft's operating system (and a big portion of it's business model.
Why do you think MS is working on Avalon?! To tie "rich" internet applications to windows, and not to other OSes like Mac or Linux.
Perhaps we should all learn Flash and start writing applications in it... this might do something to help knock MS off it's thrown. (Not that I care, but it's something a lot of Slashdotters do care about.)
I advertise my company using Google Ad Words. I don't want to spend much money to get up to the top.
So, I write a program to repeatedly hit the url linked to by any ads which appear above me until their monthly limit has been reached.
Viola, I'm up at the top.
Now, from the other advertisers' perspectives that is fraud and theft. The perpetrator has caused the advertisers above them money for something they didn't receive (IE valid visitors to their site). The perpetrator has also cost the advertisers money because of lost potential revenue from sales (by not being visible to potentially interested customers).
All in all, Google looses business because the ones getting knocked off finally give up and take their money elsewhere.
Let's face the reality. As computers have become more commonplace everyone is expected to use it to do their job plus three other people's (who were downsized (and I guess got more leisure time)) jobs. In the end this leads to more stress, more exhaustion, more overtime, less realistic expectations. Etc. Etc. Etc. THAT, I think, is the biggest false assumption in computing.
A ex-coworker of mine once said, "we've done so much with so little for so long we're now qualified to do everything with nothing at all".
Now, the question is, are they banning CONNECTIONS to SMTP servers from IPs that reverse resolve to DSL provider subdomains?
A couple of posts above mentioned banning of dynamic IPs. If this were the case, how would AOL know what is and isn't a dynamic IP? Is there a range of IPs that has been globally defined as dynamic? I don't believe so...
See, what I'm getting at is that, if I recall correctly, and SMTP connections functions like this:
The originating server connects to the destination server (or another relay). There is a brief exchange of commands. I don't have any notes handy so I can't remember the commands exactly, but the commands indicate who the message is to, who it's from and some other details.
It just seems to me that you might be able to masquerade as coming from a static IP or a static domain by feeding in forged values to the MAIL From command. If I'm correct, then by taking on spamming techniques (lying about where you're coming from and who you are) you might be able to get around this restriction (if AOL is truly breaking SMTP). As long as the actual email message being transmitted as the DATA has the correct information in it's from header and/or replyto header your message might actually make it though and be useful to the recipient.
Oh well. I guess if nothing else, technically speaking, this probably isn't really breaking SMTP if it's just refusing connections based on a reverse DNS lookups. I don't think this would really work if it relies on the MAIL From SMTP command due to the fact that any serious spammer could get around that in about four seconds flat.
Frankly, I think this is brilliant. I have a few problems with the gnutella/napster type programs. 1) I can't get full albums. 2) I don't know what quality I'm going to get. 3) I can never find what I want (although I have non-standard tastes). 4) People go off line 1/2 way though the download 5) Hard to organize.
I've always said if they hit the $.50 mark and sold unrestricted, high quality MP3s I'd buy online and save the cots of the CD. Hell, I'd do it just to preview a CD before I bought it (if I chose to), if not, I keep the MP3 and all are happy.
Here's what I do: I buy a CD ($15-20). Bring it home. Rip it. Place CD in large 300+ CD holder kept in car. Place Jewel box in closet. Eventually I'm going to find an MP3 player with all the features I want and a hard drive large enough to hold, say, 60 gigs of mp3s so I can re-encode at a higher rate and keep all my music with me where ever I go.
I digress.
Why buy the case unless I REALLY like the band? If I could get quality MP3s online without the hassles mentioned above at about $.50 a pop, I'd totally do it.
Slashdot Mirror
As an NC resident, I think the key word was "traditionally". The state is aggressively gutting education programs and forcing conservative republicans into important positions in the UNC (state wide) university system. It's seriously a big problem.
Personally, I'd only take a smartphone with a protective case. I really enjoy reading books on the kindle app for iPhone and Andriod. This saves you the trouble of caring around yet another unnecessary bit of hardware. Virtually all phones have cases you can get that ruggedize them.
My wife and kids might have something to say about it, but I swear, if I had any realistic chance of doing this, I would do my utmost to find a way! Death or not, to travel to another world? To travel in space? To set foot on mars? To see what no person has ever seen before? To experience a different gravity.
And hell, I don't mind making a fool of my self in public, so a reality show would be fine too!
Where do I sign up?
Oh, without a doubt, you're right. It's my opinion that one way or another we're going to collectively have to take a spanking. That should rightfully be across all areas of government, even social programs and entitlements. AND, we should raise taxes, close loopholes, increase taxes on the rich/investors, etc. Basically, spend less and make more.
In my house we are always saying how "every little bit helps". If we bring in an extra $20 somehow, or if we spend $20 less a month. It all adds up. So, cutting $10 billion from Nasa, when combined with other cuts, adds up to a net positive for our bottom line.... eventually. But other areas should also give.
Ok, so I want to see us explore mars and space in general. I want this a lot. I think it's important, interesting, exciting, and more. And I really wish we weren't in the financial situation we are in the US, but we are. I don't think this is a matter of the administration valuing space exploration less, but more of a reflection that we can't continue spending recklessly forever.
Mars, space exploration, and science in general are very important for the human kind and the US' wellbeing in general. But we've got to get our shit in order first. I know that using the family metaphor for government is flawed, however, if I have crippling debt in my household, I need to cut back on the things that might not just be what I want, but also some things that may even be important for the future. I need to focus on making it through the here and now, get my stuff in order, and then start making these types of investments.
So, yes, I am really disappointed to hear about this, but I we really need to be brutal for the foreseeable future in how we spend money. Once that's under control we can come back and pick up where we left off.
Since Thunderbolt can be used to drive displays, I personally want it just so I can daisy chain two large displays off from one Macbook Pro. If it also means that I can plug peripherals into the monotor or onto the end of the chain, well that's just an added bonus. This is the one new feature on that has actually made me really want to upgrade sooner rather than later.
Frankly, I'd consider a Möbius strip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip
I just thought I'd throw this out. The Raleigh/Durham (RTP) area in North Carolina has one of these too. I used it to build a swing set for my son last xmass. I've been playing around with their shopbot and using their wood working room too. Access to Solidworks is a nice feature too.
Personally, the vast swath of tools and capabilities just wow me. They've got two machine shops (big and little). They've got a wood shop. They've got a plasma cutter. They've got a welding room. They've got a sand blaster. They've got a sewing room (with a surger that was so dangerous they had to hack it to slow it down). They've got a laser cutter. They've got an electronics room. They've got a 3d printer (and they're *building* two others). They've got lots of space to work too. Not to mention storage rooms and offices you can rent. Oh - and they've got classes on most of this stuff. All this for $30 a visit (or $100 a month for unlimited visits). It's a crazy deal.
Overall it's a great place to see geeks and artists doing their thing. Everyplace should have a TechShop.
Not too long ago I saw an interview with someone (sorry, too lazy to look up the name) who is trying to create a system of standardized swappable battery packs for cars. Just like toys and electronics, the solution for electric cars is not necessarily greater range and faster charging. Instead, batteries should be packed and installed in such a manner that they literally snap in and out. This would allow drivers to drive into any gas station that offered this service and swap out your dead or dying battery pack for a new, fully charged pack. This would function just like it does for propane tanks. You simply swap the tank/battery pack out and pay only the cost of the electricity. The station would "own" the battery packs and would charge them for their customers. Heck, in some places they could use wind or solar to provide the electricity for this and it would be very profitable (after start up costs). Also, this would remove the scary idea that maybe these battery packs have a limited lifespan and I as a consumer would have to pay for a new pack. In this scenario, the station would take care of that.
I don't think this is all that far fetched. And, if standardized, this could even be automated to the point where you just drive your car over a machine which removed the batteries from the bottom of your car and puts in a new one. You swipe your credit card and you're back on the road.
Food for thought. :)
Oh my god, this is the worst advice I've ever read.
It's extremely hard to estimate the level of effor it takes to build software. Thus you are virtually guaranteed that if you bid fixed rate you will get burnt. And, even if you're good at estimating, maintaining change orders for each little request is killer. And what happens when you estimate something (like say printing in Flex/Flash/Air to be a 40 hour project and it turns in to something like 120? - not that that's happened to anyone, or anything.) My point is, neither you nor your client know how much effort it will take to build software. Read my comment above to see how I recommend estimating, billing, and collecting.
Besides, I'd rather get paid for every hour I work. That's both honest, as I'm not getting paid for work I didn't do, and fair, as in I'm only billing for work I did.
I know a LOT of people who have been burnt bad by agreeing to fixed fee work. Software ALWAYS has bugs and your clients can easily say that something that doesn't work they way they feel it should is a bug and threaten legal action if you don't fix it for free. If you bill hourly for every hour of work you're covered.
Correction on this comment, assuming the submitter is in the US. You *should* become a corporation and sign up for s-corp status. See http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98263,00.html for more information.
Essentially, an s-corp treats the business and the shareholders the same as a sole proprietorship or partnership in terms of taxes without loosing the protections. This avoids double taxation. The drawback, which won't matter to most small businesses is that have restrictions on how you can issue stock.
I'm on Slashdot because I'm taking time off for my birthday. ;) And I typed that entry out quick (and I'm not strong with grammar or spelling) so that's why I messed up lose and loose.
I started freelance web development more than 10 years ago. I built my company on my freelance work. So I can speak with some authority here.
Here's my advice in bite-size nuggets:
- Only bill time and materials. Do not ever agree to do fixed fee work or you will loose your shirt.
- Incorporate. It's actually easy and gives you more protections.
- When tax time comes around have a CPA do your taxes.
- Find a basic, easy to read, even handed/fair contracting agreement that you should always try to use. Have it reviewed by a lawyer. Include these points: mutual indemnification, your *hourly* rate, terms of ownership that gives you ownership over work produced until its paid for in full. Include a clause that allows your clients to cancel at any time without warning but they still have to pay for hours worked. (More on why later.) Any contracts provided by your clients have reviewed by a lawyer.
- You *will* eventually (probably sooner rather than later) be stiffed by a client in part or in whole. Have a lawyer you can call to write them a letter. You'll at least get some payment if you have a lawyer write a letter for you. Be sure to know how far you want to push this. The point of a lawyer is not to sue, but to get partial payment.
- You can set your hourly rate more or less randomly. Look to see what other independent contractors are charging (as best you can) and set your rate proportional to your experiance and confidence. Raise your rates annually.
- There are numerous ways to handle proposals. Here's what I do and what I recommend: First, spend time talking with your leads to learn what it is that they need. Write this down in a proposal format that includes the following: 1) A short summary (1 to 2 pages at most) of what the client needs. 2) How you propose to solve their problems. This pretty much says that you'll provide what's listed in section #1. 3) A list of technologies and techniques you're likely to use including languages, platforms, frameworks, database, techniques such as Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration, Source Code Control systems, etc. Provide a short blurb about each item listed and why it's good. And 4) provide a guesstimate of how long you think it will take. More on this in the next bullet point.
- To estimate projects follow this process: 1) break the project down into major steps you'll need to follow to complete the project. This would normally be something like building infrastructure, security, each major section of the application, etc, etc, etc. This is an art and is learned through experiance. Add 33% more for meetings and project management. Add 33% more for trouble shooting and debugging. Add 33% more for post deployment support. Make it very clear to your client that this is *just a guess* based on experiance. As a part of your project management strategy hold at least weekly meetings with your client to show them what you've accomplished, tell them what you're working on, and update them on anything that has taken longer or changed in scope on the project and how that impacts your estimate. Your contact should allow them to cancel at any time. The combination of your initial guess and your weekly updates, combined with the knowledge they can pull the plug at any time gives your client confidence in your project and comfort to pay hourly.
- Invoice bi-weekly and give a discount for payment in the first week. We give 3% discount for early payment in our standard contract. We get good cash flow and our clients save money.
- To find leads for projects I recommend that you network. There are many professional networking organizations out there as well as your local chambers of commerce. Also, attend conferences in your technical expertise. Submit topics to those conferences and try to talk at them. Write for technical journals. Most of these are very easy to get into. In terms of sales, don't try to sell. Instead listen to the problems your leads have and tell
My take on this is that, though your assignment has spawned an ethical question, the reality of the situation is economic.
Your boss believes that it will cost him less to "scrape" data from the website and use multiple free accounts than to simply pay for the data access. This may be true at first, but, ultimately, this is false.
On the off chance you've not scraped websites before, I'll tell you that this is extremely error prone. So, while this may work initially, you'll be constantly chasing down bugs in the process.
Based on your description I assume you'd be automatically logging into their systems before scraping the data. What if their login process changes? What if they restructure their website? What if they add a captcha to the registration and login process?
My point is, what your boss wants to do is, to use Steve Job's recent phrase, a bag of hurt.
I'll bet that given enough time, the cost to your company in terms of your salary to build and maintain this application will be greater than the cost to actually pay for the data and create a dependable connection.
Don't forget to factor in what it costs you when your users see bad data or error messages due to the process breaking.
It'll cost less to do it the right way. So forget the ethics of it and educate your boss on the economics of it.
Frankly, I could care less about standards. What I want is reliablity. It's obvious that CSS, E4X, SVG and the rest of that gang havn't met that promise. I'm not saying they won't, but I'm saying that, as a business, I'm not going to wait for things to change.
I say give me something that works consistently over something that's a "standard" but hardly ever works consistently, or takes so much time to implement consistently that I've already lost the race by the time I finish my application.
Open soure flash development: (I havn't tried, it but a quick googled turned this up)
s -open-source-flash-development/
http://www.actionscript.com/index.php/fw/1/toward
There's also Laszlo, which generates Flash documents. Oh yea. That's open source and runs on J2EE servers.
I almost forgot, IBM made an eclipse plugin for laszlo too! http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo
Now, you truly can make flash content on you Ubuntu Hoary box.
One thing that surprises me is how most people miss the point that flash isn't just about animation any more. It's a platform! Consider this, ActionScript is a full featured OO language. Flash is installed on almost any computer. Wouldn't this begin to suggest that you could use Flash to create truly platform agnostic web-distributable applications?
Screw web "pages", the future of the web is about web "applications". Cross platform web applications marginalize (actually commoditize) Microsoft's operating system (and a big portion of it's business model.
Why do you think MS is working on Avalon?! To tie "rich" internet applications to windows, and not to other OSes like Mac or Linux.
Perhaps we should all learn Flash and start writing applications in it... this might do something to help knock MS off it's thrown. (Not that I care, but it's something a lot of Slashdotters do care about.)
Could you be any more obviously pathetic?
I advertise my company using Google Ad Words. I don't want to spend much money to get up to the top.
So, I write a program to repeatedly hit the url linked to by any ads which appear above me until their monthly limit has been reached.
Viola, I'm up at the top.
Now, from the other advertisers' perspectives that is fraud and theft. The perpetrator has caused the advertisers above them money for something they didn't receive (IE valid visitors to their site). The perpetrator has also cost the advertisers money because of lost potential revenue from sales (by not being visible to potentially interested customers).
All in all, Google looses business because the ones getting knocked off finally give up and take their money elsewhere.
How's that for fraud?
Doug
A friend of mine has been working on his version of this at http://www.capango.com/.
I'm not sure if I agree with him, but he makes some compelling arguments for this and why other forms of eradicating spam won't work.
Food for thought.
Doug
"Computers will simplify your life"
or
"Computers will give you more leisure time."
Let's face the reality. As computers have become more commonplace everyone is expected to use it to do their job plus three other people's (who were downsized (and I guess got more leisure time)) jobs. In the end this leads to more stress, more exhaustion, more overtime, less realistic expectations. Etc. Etc. Etc. THAT, I think, is the biggest false assumption in computing.
A ex-coworker of mine once said, "we've done so much with so little for so long we're now qualified to do everything with nothing at all".
Yea, all that and here in DC you can drive in the HOV lanes in them! That's worth the extra 5g!
Doug
Now, the question is, are they banning CONNECTIONS to SMTP servers from IPs that reverse resolve to DSL provider subdomains?
A couple of posts above mentioned banning of dynamic IPs. If this were the case, how would AOL know what is and isn't a dynamic IP? Is there a range of IPs that has been globally defined as dynamic? I don't believe so...
See, what I'm getting at is that, if I recall correctly, and SMTP connections functions like this:
The originating server connects to the destination server (or another relay). There is a brief exchange of commands. I don't have any notes handy so I can't remember the commands exactly, but the commands indicate who the message is to, who it's from and some other details.
It just seems to me that you might be able to masquerade as coming from a static IP or a static domain by feeding in forged values to the MAIL From command. If I'm correct, then by taking on spamming techniques (lying about where you're coming from and who you are) you might be able to get around this restriction (if AOL is truly breaking SMTP). As long as the actual email message being transmitted as the DATA has the correct information in it's from header and/or replyto header your message might actually make it though and be useful to the recipient.
Oh well. I guess if nothing else, technically speaking, this probably isn't really breaking SMTP if it's just refusing connections based on a reverse DNS lookups. I don't think this would really work if it relies on the MAIL From SMTP command due to the fact that any serious spammer could get around that in about four seconds flat.
Is it just me, or does this give a whole new meaning to vibrating ringers? :)
Frankly, I think this is brilliant. I have a few problems with the gnutella/napster type programs. 1) I can't get full albums. 2) I don't know what quality I'm going to get. 3) I can never find what I want (although I have non-standard tastes). 4) People go off line 1/2 way though the download 5) Hard to organize.
I've always said if they hit the $.50 mark and sold unrestricted, high quality MP3s I'd buy online and save the cots of the CD. Hell, I'd do it just to preview a CD before I bought it (if I chose to), if not, I keep the MP3 and all are happy.
Here's what I do: I buy a CD ($15-20). Bring it home. Rip it. Place CD in large 300+ CD holder kept in car. Place Jewel box in closet. Eventually I'm going to find an MP3 player with all the features I want and a hard drive large enough to hold, say, 60 gigs of mp3s so I can re-encode at a higher rate and keep all my music with me where ever I go.
I digress.
Why buy the case unless I REALLY like the band? If I could get quality MP3s online without the hassles mentioned above at about $.50 a pop, I'd totally do it.