Considering I have first hand experience with these marvellous buzzing wonders of pollination that gives us our sweet sticky morning treats... For fun and factoring in the CON score of bees in general in this case, all I'm hoping for is a natural 20 roll. *crosses fingers* Still, any serious empirically valid science is valued at this point to beekeepers. Beekeepers in my area are still dealing with the varroa problem. The colony collapse disorder has yet to hit people here.
Very true. It has never been a good idea so naive *IS* the keyword. I doubt a competent "tech geek" slashdot user would ever opt out to hostile/unknown spam for security reasons... However, after that analysis one has to factor in the effects of spam on the "average" user. Sadly, the mainstream "average" has gotten diluted over the years in terms of net-sense. In a way, the only way to beat the epidemic spam levels we see presently would be tutor people. I know that means "rocky waters" if it entails getting some sense into the average people near you. I know from experience and having had to reconstruct more hijacked spambots from scratch than I care to remember. But still, addressing all Slashdot users valuing their "geek cards", please educate people, educate the less techy users. The fight against spam is a big one, but it will only be won through user awareness... Of course, I admit that is a target that seems as lofty as the sky these days given the impression among "Joe Sixpacks" that a computer is merely a tool, sort of like a toaster.
Congratulations... you got griefed by people that you'd normally beat hands down in a fair fight, so they resorted to underhanded tactics to get back at you via sheer annoyance. (That is assuming what you say is empirically true.) It begs the question of your email address however... Why the smeg would you have it accessible enough so people COULD grief you in that way? People may guess, but botnets have all the time in the world to match random usernames to random hosts.
But yes, you are right, opting out from random spam wouldn't help. It would make it worse.
Simple... even from a "brute force" zombie spammer's perspective, having a list of guaranteed active mail addresses that are actually read will result in a lot more hits than misses. By opting out to non solicited spam from a "hostile" source and confirming the account is active and has someone actually reading junkmail in the process, one only makes the spammers' job easier. Also, your email address increases in value when being sold inbetween spammers. Effectively, you make the A-list among spammers. Having an opt out bit to catch the most naive users would be an investment so to speak. Then again, as you say not all spammers do this.
From where I am, I'm in the same "club" as far as charging goes. Sender pays be it voice or SMS/MMS, or one gets charged for premium services like ringtones and a whole other bollocks that is most often useless. Data plans still cost an arm and a leg though. (Then again, I do remember a certain saying about fools and money being easily separated...) Anyway... Charging for both sending and receiving is just plain bad provider practice in my view.
However, I do find the notion of lining the "greedy bastards" up and assigning a firing squad to administer lead poisoning to be severely out of proportion... so I propose common sense on part of the consumer. Read the contract and billing terms provided. All of it. Even if it requires an electron microscope. Then sign up only after having checked multiple providers for a comparison and a balanced perspective. If no provider has terms that seem fair, don't sign up at all. Unfortunately in the real world, and I suspect the US in particular, too many people have already signed up to contracts favouring the provider by far. In this case, shop around for a way out when the contractual provider lock-in expires. If anything it would add a downwards pressure on consumer costs unless the providers are collaborating in terms of pricing.
Don't even joke about this. I still see badly formulated ads in the local paper advertising "get computer literate". The ads only offer extremely basic skils at MS Office, crude IE web browsing habits and Outlook mail proficiency... do the math given that background...
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Considering I have first hand experience with these marvellous buzzing wonders of pollination that gives us our sweet sticky morning treats... For fun and factoring in the CON score of bees in general in this case, all I'm hoping for is a natural 20 roll. *crosses fingers* Still, any serious empirically valid science is valued at this point to beekeepers. Beekeepers in my area are still dealing with the varroa problem. The colony collapse disorder has yet to hit people here.
Very true. It has never been a good idea so naive *IS* the keyword. I doubt a competent "tech geek" slashdot user would ever opt out to hostile/unknown spam for security reasons... However, after that analysis one has to factor in the effects of spam on the "average" user. Sadly, the mainstream "average" has gotten diluted over the years in terms of net-sense. In a way, the only way to beat the epidemic spam levels we see presently would be tutor people. I know that means "rocky waters" if it entails getting some sense into the average people near you. I know from experience and having had to reconstruct more hijacked spambots from scratch than I care to remember. But still, addressing all Slashdot users valuing their "geek cards", please educate people, educate the less techy users. The fight against spam is a big one, but it will only be won through user awareness... Of course, I admit that is a target that seems as lofty as the sky these days given the impression among "Joe Sixpacks" that a computer is merely a tool, sort of like a toaster.
Congratulations... you got griefed by people that you'd normally beat hands down in a fair fight, so they resorted to underhanded tactics to get back at you via sheer annoyance. (That is assuming what you say is empirically true.) It begs the question of your email address however... Why the smeg would you have it accessible enough so people COULD grief you in that way? People may guess, but botnets have all the time in the world to match random usernames to random hosts.
But yes, you are right, opting out from random spam wouldn't help. It would make it worse.
Simple... even from a "brute force" zombie spammer's perspective, having a list of guaranteed active mail addresses that are actually read will result in a lot more hits than misses. By opting out to non solicited spam from a "hostile" source and confirming the account is active and has someone actually reading junkmail in the process, one only makes the spammers' job easier. Also, your email address increases in value when being sold inbetween spammers. Effectively, you make the A-list among spammers. Having an opt out bit to catch the most naive users would be an investment so to speak. Then again, as you say not all spammers do this.
... then I remembered what day it is.
From where I am, I'm in the same "club" as far as charging goes. Sender pays be it voice or SMS/MMS, or one gets charged for premium services like ringtones and a whole other bollocks that is most often useless. Data plans still cost an arm and a leg though. (Then again, I do remember a certain saying about fools and money being easily separated...) Anyway... Charging for both sending and receiving is just plain bad provider practice in my view.
However, I do find the notion of lining the "greedy bastards" up and assigning a firing squad to administer lead poisoning to be severely out of proportion... so I propose common sense on part of the consumer. Read the contract and billing terms provided. All of it. Even if it requires an electron microscope. Then sign up only after having checked multiple providers for a comparison and a balanced perspective. If no provider has terms that seem fair, don't sign up at all. Unfortunately in the real world, and I suspect the US in particular, too many people have already signed up to contracts favouring the provider by far. In this case, shop around for a way out when the contractual provider lock-in expires. If anything it would add a downwards pressure on consumer costs unless the providers are collaborating in terms of pricing.
Don't even joke about this. I still see badly formulated ads in the local paper advertising "get computer literate". The ads only offer extremely basic skils at MS Office, crude IE web browsing habits and Outlook mail proficiency... do the math given that background...