I would be considered a "Liberal" on most people's scale.
But I'm pro-gun. And I favour a strong military (but I oppose "Star Wars" because I don't think it is necessary now nor do I believe that it would work even if it was necessary). I also believe in more State's rights and a reduced federal government.
"Conservatives tend to believe that people behave in the way they do as a result of something about them in particular - their nature."
I also believe that. But I also believe that the way they were raised affects their choices. Someone who craves power can go into politics or religion or financials or just be an abusive husband.
"Some people are just good and some people are just bad."
Good and bad are personal evaluations. Saddam is "bad" but the US government thought Saddam was "good" when he was fighting Iran.
Personally, I thought one tin-pot dictator was fighting a authoratarian theocracy and I didn't see any "good" in either side.
"Liberals, on the other hand, see everyone as more or less products of our environment - the way we are nurtured."
But our environments do shape the choices we have. It takes someone with a LOT of self-focus to overcome the obstacles of his environment.
So, someone with a lot of character (an internal trait) can overcome his environment, but most people do not have that and become products of their environment.
"To illustrate my point, consider gun control."
I'm completely in favour of the 2nd Amendment. -but- I'm also in favour of a waiting period. I don't want someone buying a gun because he just found out his wife is cheating on him. I'm also in favour of registering guns which includes ballistics. A bullet pulled from a murder victim should be traced back to the gun that fired it and the person who purchased it.
I believe that 99%+ of the people who own guns are responsible gun owners and no threat to themselves or society.
But I also believe that a responsible gun owner would register his weapons, properly secure them and immediately report any that were stolen. This is his responsibility to society. When you exercise certain rights, you take on certain responsibilities.
So, is that "Conservative" or "Liberal"?
"Poverty is another example of the difference."
Easily answered by my previous statement about character and environment. Those with weak to average character will end up as products of their environment. Those with strong character will overcome those obstacles.
Now, take Enron and such. Crime does not depend upon poverty.
"How does this tie into free will? Conservatives make no effort or attempt to explain why bad people are bad. They just are."
Which is why I am not a Conservative.
"Liberals, on the other hand, attempt to explain bad behavior. They say it's a result of our upbringing or our environment. By attempting to explain it, they don't leave a lot of room for free will to say that the people made the choice to be bad."
I believe that people do make their own choice.
Here's an example: Exercise.
Everyone (Conservatives and Liberals) knows that you should exercise. Yet not many people do. Is that because they are "bad" people who have chosen not to exercise? Or is it because the parents didn't love them enough?
I believe that it is because most people do not have the character to force themselves to do what they know is good for them and would rather take the easy way.
Skinner is my favorite psychologist. I recommend reading "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and "Walden Two".
But he wasn't talking about biology as being the determining factor on behaviour.
He was all about conditioning. If you raise a child in a specific manner, the adult will behave in a specific manner. Unless their environment changes (environment meaning just about anything, not just the weather).
He said that behaviour is physiological responses to external stimuli.
And contrary to what people may read on the 'web, his daughter did not commit suicide.
"The false dichotomy you present is that we can either have computerized simulations, or we can have live-fire/OPFOR exercises, and that is precisely the false dichotomy you continue to pursue in your followup post."
That's very strange when I SPECIFICALLY included FTX's with games in my statement:
"In fact, 10 FTX's vs 5 FTX's + 10,000 games and I'd still say the 10 FTX squad would win."
"Going to build a twenty or thirty square-mile replica of a middle eastern city, complete with resident population for the troops to train in, are you?"
Hardly. 9 square blocks would be more than enough.
We're always going to have nut-cases running around and there's no way we can stop them from killing people. Sometimes a lot of people.
But! Statistically, they are less of a threat to you than your own family. More people in the US are killed by family members than by terrorists.
The only reason the terrorists seem like such a threat is because our government plays it up and the media constantly harps on it BECAUSE it is so unusual. So the public's PERCEPTION of the threat is far greater than the actual threat.
So the public allows their freedom to be erroded for the ILLUSION of safety.
Particularly if you're mid-Eastern or from any country that doesn't use our alphabet. Your name can be spelt many different ways.
Yep, adding a drivers license number to the name would do away with false positives, but the terrorists will just use a different name in the first place and bypass it that way.
Names and documents are the easiest things to change.
Yep, they wouldn't get far trying to take over a plane now.
But what about if one of them takes the pilot course, becomes a pilot, flies for a few years until he gets put on a route he can use and THEN flies the plane into a building?
Maybe he wouldn't be able to get a pilot job in the US. But what about from a different country? Fuel up the plane for the flight back and WHAM!
#1. Change the cockpit doors so the terrorists can't get into them.
#2. Rotate the first 2 seats in the plane to face the rest of the passengers.
#3. An air marshal with a pistol or uzi and rubber bullets (no hull penetration) sits here, facing the passengers.
#4. The air marshal has an intercom to the pilots.
#5. Improve training at the baggage inspectors. They are the first line of defense.
That way, a terrorist has to get past the first inspectors, get past the air marshal who will have alerted the pilot who will be calling in for emergency landing instructions and military support and then get past the door to get to the cockpit.
Defense in depth.
Weak old guys and fat senators don't pose any problems to that system.
The old guy MAY be hiding a bomb in his oxygen mask.
On the other hand, if he wanted to destroy the plane, he's put the bomb in his checked luggage and the remote detonator in his cell phone.
This isn't about how convoluted you can make things. The real terrorists seem to rather simplistic and direct in their approach. The simpler the plan, the fewer things that can go wrong.
The problem is that we are focusing on the once in a lifetime and never to be repeated incidents rather than looking at the actual problem.
It's the ILLUSION of safety that we're pursuing here.
If the only viable attack method the terrorists have is some old guy's medical kit, then terrorism has long since been defeated.
I can see fixing the security on planes (mostly by fixing the door so no one can get to the pilots).
But you're right. Any terrorist would have to be an idiot to try that again right now. If nothing else, the passengers would fight back this time.
This isn't about making anything "safer". This is about providing the ILLUSION that we are "safer" now because we are "taking these steps".
But illusions are not reality. Rep. John Lewis used to be tagged by the "security" issue. But he can bypass that if he registers as John R. Lewis. Which tells you how reliable that "security" measure is.
The "security" we've put in place is whatever is easiest for the "security" people to do. And that results in the stupid incidents we keep reading about.
"Playing a game for a few hours a night doesn't teach you how to effectively handle anything but that game. Real Life is consisted of ever-changing rules and possibilities, and until I can find a game that has a perfect model of real life, with no constraints, scripting, and perfect A.I., nothing will come close to substituting it."
And the BIGGEST limitation is the programmer who wrote the code.
Scenario: Your squad is pinned down by a few snipers in a couple of apartment buildings up the street. What do you do?
In the game, the programmer only gives the snipers certain options.
In real life, the snipers fire a few shots, you take cover, they toss a grenade and go out the window across a board to a building on the next block, down the stairs and sit in their living room.
Again: "Playing a game for a few hours a night doesn't teach you how to effectively handle anything but that game."
Exactly. You are "training" against the pre-conceived notions of the programmer LIMITED by what he was able to make work.
Learning a game gives you a false sense of your own abilities. This will get you killed.
"That's not an either/or situation either - you've inserted your own false dichotomy now."
Incorrect. I was replying to this statement by the parent: "You would prefer to send them into harm's way with no training or preparation for what they're going to encounter?"
That's phrased as an either/or statement. A "dichotomy".
Note where I identify at least two other options in addition to the video games / no training dichotomy.
"The best way to train is to have combat units who have just rotated back be the OPFOR. The next best way is to have a unit that has played OPFOR regularly. Video game simulations are way, way down on the list."
"best" "next best"
"Obviously it's not a good idea to entirely replace live-fire exercises or OPFOR exercises in the field with simulations, but as a complement to such things, I don't see why it's a particularly bad idea."
So, exactly, how would this "complement" such training? And no generalities or fuzzy-feeling crap.
I'd put a squad that went through 10 FTX's together against a squad that's played 10,000 games and I'm sure the FTX squad would win.
In fact, 10 FTX's vs 5 FTX's + 10,000 games and I'd still say the 10 FTX squad would win.
There is no substitute for real training.
If you want to "complement" FTX's, then I'd recommend 24-hour firing ranges so the troops can practice their shooting skills whenever they want to and 24-hour paint ball arenas to practice squad tactics against other HUMANS.
The hardest thing was getting people to UNLEARN the bad habits they had acquired.
Practice does NOT make perfect.
Perfect practice makes perfect.
If you are practicing with a simulator, you will be practicing the flaws of that simulator. The "mechanics" of shooting are simple and can be taught in 5 minutes (correct position, aim, breathing, trigger squeeze).
But mastering them so that you do it correctly every time is what takes practice and REAL bullets.
"You can't be on the rifle range every night, but if you wanted you could take some down time and practice when you had a few minutes."
Why can't our troops be at the range every night? If I was focusing on military training, that is what I would have.
"You would prefer to send them into harm's way with no training or preparation for what they're going to encounter?"
This isn't an either/or situation.
A far better means of training is what we've been doing for years. One unit is assigned a task and another unit is assigned as OPFOR. That way, you don't get just what the programmer wrote.
The problem is the situation briefly described in the article. We don't even have ammo for training because it is all going to the mid-East.
The best way to train is to have combat units who have just rotated back be the OPFOR. The next best way is to have a unit that has played OPFOR regularly. Video game simulations are way, way down on the list.
The real business plan is: #1. Find people with lots of money who want to make more money but don't understand technology/games and are unwilling to do the basic research.
#2. Sell these people a line of crap.
#3. Live large on the "investments" these people are making in your company.
#4. Try for an IPO and cash out "Dot.Com"-style.
Really, anyone who would put any money into another gaming console right now needs his/her head examined.
The only way to educate them is to stop replying to the mortgage spam. As long as they can buy leads, they will because it is profitable for them to do so.
Which is the case with ALL spam. As long as the price of sending the spam is lower than the profit of selling the "product", we will have spam.
So, you talk to someone who's having problems with her Win98 machine on a broadband connection.
#1. Advise her to go out and purchase an inexpensive hardware firewall.
#2. Advise her to go out and purchase a decent CD-rewritable burner and a few rewritable CD's.
#3. Backup all of her data.
#4. Wipe the drive and partition it into 3 segments. OS/swap-n-temp/data.
#5. Re-install the OS and apps. Patch. Configure. Google toolbar is she must use IE. etc. Anti-virus set to auto-update every hour and auto-delete infected files (see #7 before you start screaming).
#6. Copy her data back to the machine. Make sure it is in the data partition.
#7. Show her how to backup the data partition onto the rewritable CD's. Inform her that here hard drive WILL fail sometime in the future and that this is will keep her data safe from that.
These are the basic steps whenever I'm asked to fix someone's computer. And it does not take 10.5 hours. Like you said, 1.5 hours tops.
Well, they have DOS systems connected to a private network.
The weird thing is that they're looking at moving to the Internet to get away from the limitations of their DOS system.
Why don't they keep the current, private network and just upgrade the machines and the software on that? Why do the upgrade AND move to a less secure network?
"If people just stop buying stuff from the spam, the success rates will go down low enough that spam will no longer be effective and go away, right?"
Actually, that is correct. The PROBLEM is that it costs almost NOTHING to send a million spam messages.
So ANY sales will be enough to justify the expense.
It's all statistics. A certain percentage of the population will buy this crap.
"That's why my answer is not to go after the spammers who are slime but often out of US jurisdiction, or even the ISPs because while some of them are evil & look the other way, a lot of them are trying, but it's hard work."
Actually, most of the spammers are in the US. Spamhaus even lists them.
"No don't bother with them, I think they should go after the companies selling the crap."
I agree with that for the most part.
But/. had an article about mortgage spam a while back. The banks would buy "leads" from companies... who had bought the "leads" from other companies... who had bought the "leads" from spammers.
Of course they were all SHOCKED that they were purchasing leads from spammers. And the spammers promptly were no long retained. So the spammers changed their name and the companies will happily buy leads from CompanyY which happens to have the same address and phone as the old CompanyX.
In that scenario, NOTHING will change until the banks stop paying for the leads. But the banks have arranged it so they have complete deniability.
"I guess it's kinda like going after the Johns instead of the prositutes."
I think that is exactly the point.
There's also the bandwidth to consider.
on
Spam's U.S. Roots
·
· Score: 1
Spam can be considered a DDoS attack. Your mailserver uses up bandwidth accepting all those messages.
Once they've been accepted, then SpamBayes can filter them. But the bandwidth has already been taken.
I've seen instances where legit email was defered because the receiving server used up all of its mail threads on incoming spam messages.
And it doesn't take too many zombie spam machines to start seriously impacting a business's T-1 line. Particularly if you run a few different domains on that that T-1.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be considered a "Liberal" on most people's scale.
But I'm pro-gun. And I favour a strong military (but I oppose "Star Wars" because I don't think it is necessary now nor do I believe that it would work even if it was necessary). I also believe in more State's rights and a reduced federal government.
"Conservatives tend to believe that people behave in the way they do as a result of something about them in particular - their nature."
I also believe that. But I also believe that the way they were raised affects their choices. Someone who craves power can go into politics or religion or financials or just be an abusive husband.
"Some people are just good and some people are just bad."
Good and bad are personal evaluations. Saddam is "bad" but the US government thought Saddam was "good" when he was fighting Iran.
Personally, I thought one tin-pot dictator was fighting a authoratarian theocracy and I didn't see any "good" in either side.
"Liberals, on the other hand, see everyone as more or less products of our environment - the way we are nurtured."
But our environments do shape the choices we have. It takes someone with a LOT of self-focus to overcome the obstacles of his environment.
So, someone with a lot of character (an internal trait) can overcome his environment, but most people do not have that and become products of their environment.
"To illustrate my point, consider gun control."
I'm completely in favour of the 2nd Amendment.
-but-
I'm also in favour of a waiting period. I don't want someone buying a gun because he just found out his wife is cheating on him. I'm also in favour of registering guns which includes ballistics. A bullet pulled from a murder victim should be traced back to the gun that fired it and the person who purchased it.
I believe that 99%+ of the people who own guns are responsible gun owners and no threat to themselves or society.
But I also believe that a responsible gun owner would register his weapons, properly secure them and immediately report any that were stolen. This is his responsibility to society. When you exercise certain rights, you take on certain responsibilities.
So, is that "Conservative" or "Liberal"?
"Poverty is another example of the difference."
Easily answered by my previous statement about character and environment. Those with weak to average character will end up as products of their environment. Those with strong character will overcome those obstacles.
Now, take Enron and such. Crime does not depend upon poverty.
"How does this tie into free will? Conservatives make no effort or attempt to explain why bad people are bad. They just are."
Which is why I am not a Conservative.
"Liberals, on the other hand, attempt to explain bad behavior. They say it's a result of our upbringing or our environment. By attempting to explain it, they don't leave a lot of room for free will to say that the people made the choice to be bad."
I believe that people do make their own choice.
Here's an example: Exercise.
Everyone (Conservatives and Liberals) knows that you should exercise. Yet not many people do. Is that because they are "bad" people who have chosen not to exercise? Or is it because the parents didn't love them enough?
I believe that it is because most people do not have the character to force themselves to do what they know is good for them and would rather take the easy way.
As in the exercise example, so as in Life.
Skinner is my favorite psychologist. I recommend reading "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and "Walden Two".
But he wasn't talking about biology as being the determining factor on behaviour.
He was all about conditioning. If you raise a child in a specific manner, the adult will behave in a specific manner. Unless their environment changes (environment meaning just about anything, not just the weather).
He said that behaviour is physiological responses to external stimuli.
And contrary to what people may read on the 'web, his daughter did not commit suicide.
"The false dichotomy you present is that we can either have computerized simulations, or we can have live-fire/OPFOR exercises, and that is precisely the false dichotomy you continue to pursue in your followup post."
That's very strange when I SPECIFICALLY included FTX's with games in my statement:
"In fact, 10 FTX's vs 5 FTX's + 10,000 games and I'd still say the 10 FTX squad would win."
"Going to build a twenty or thirty square-mile replica of a middle eastern city, complete with resident population for the troops to train in, are you?"
Hardly. 9 square blocks would be more than enough.
I don't care if they aren't happy about it. It is very visible security for the passengers.
And I'd have the salary of the air marshals funded by the airlines.
How much money are we talking about anyway? Per ticket. $5? $10? $20? It sounds like a lot until you break it down per ticket sold.
We're always going to have nut-cases running around and there's no way we can stop them from killing people. Sometimes a lot of people.
But! Statistically, they are less of a threat to you than your own family. More people in the US are killed by family members than by terrorists.
The only reason the terrorists seem like such a threat is because our government plays it up and the media constantly harps on it BECAUSE it is so unusual. So the public's PERCEPTION of the threat is far greater than the actual threat.
So the public allows their freedom to be erroded for the ILLUSION of safety.
Particularly if you're mid-Eastern or from any country that doesn't use our alphabet. Your name can be spelt many different ways.
Yep, adding a drivers license number to the name would do away with false positives, but the terrorists will just use a different name in the first place and bypass it that way.
Names and documents are the easiest things to change.
Yep, they wouldn't get far trying to take over a plane now.
But what about if one of them takes the pilot course, becomes a pilot, flies for a few years until he gets put on a route he can use and THEN flies the plane into a building?
Maybe he wouldn't be able to get a pilot job in the US. But what about from a different country? Fuel up the plane for the flight back and WHAM!
#1. Change the cockpit doors so the terrorists can't get into them.
#2. Rotate the first 2 seats in the plane to face the rest of the passengers.
#3. An air marshal with a pistol or uzi and rubber bullets (no hull penetration) sits here, facing the passengers.
#4. The air marshal has an intercom to the pilots.
#5. Improve training at the baggage inspectors. They are the first line of defense.
That way, a terrorist has to get past the first inspectors, get past the air marshal who will have alerted the pilot who will be calling in for emergency landing instructions and military support and then get past the door to get to the cockpit.
Defense in depth.
Weak old guys and fat senators don't pose any problems to that system.
The old guy MAY be hiding a bomb in his oxygen mask.
On the other hand, if he wanted to destroy the plane, he's put the bomb in his checked luggage and the remote detonator in his cell phone.
This isn't about how convoluted you can make things. The real terrorists seem to rather simplistic and direct in their approach. The simpler the plan, the fewer things that can go wrong.
The problem is that we are focusing on the once in a lifetime and never to be repeated incidents rather than looking at the actual problem.
It's the ILLUSION of safety that we're pursuing here.
If the only viable attack method the terrorists have is some old guy's medical kit, then terrorism has long since been defeated.
I can see fixing the security on planes (mostly by fixing the door so no one can get to the pilots).
But you're right. Any terrorist would have to be an idiot to try that again right now. If nothing else, the passengers would fight back this time.
This isn't about making anything "safer". This is about providing the ILLUSION that we are "safer" now because we are "taking these steps".
But illusions are not reality. Rep. John Lewis used to be tagged by the "security" issue. But he can bypass that if he registers as John R. Lewis. Which tells you how reliable that "security" measure is.
The "security" we've put in place is whatever is easiest for the "security" people to do. And that results in the stupid incidents we keep reading about.
"Playing a game for a few hours a night doesn't teach you how to effectively handle anything but that game. Real Life is consisted of ever-changing rules and possibilities, and until I can find a game that has a perfect model of real life, with no constraints, scripting, and perfect A.I., nothing will come close to substituting it."
And the BIGGEST limitation is the programmer who wrote the code.
Scenario: Your squad is pinned down by a few snipers in a couple of apartment buildings up the street. What do you do?
In the game, the programmer only gives the snipers certain options.
In real life, the snipers fire a few shots, you take cover, they toss a grenade and go out the window across a board to a building on the next block, down the stairs and sit in their living room.
Again: "Playing a game for a few hours a night doesn't teach you how to effectively handle anything but that game."
Exactly. You are "training" against the pre-conceived notions of the programmer LIMITED by what he was able to make work.
Learning a game gives you a false sense of your own abilities. This will get you killed.
Only Canada and Mexico can mount an easy invasion and that's rather unlikely.
Everyone else would have to LAND AN INVASION FORCE.
In which case, we don't need a "huge military". We just need the 2nd amendment.
The only reason we "need" a "huge military" is to enforce our policies on other countries.
"That's not an either/or situation either - you've inserted your own false dichotomy now."
Incorrect. I was replying to this statement by the parent:
"You would prefer to send them into harm's way with no training or preparation for what they're going to encounter?"
That's phrased as an either/or statement. A "dichotomy".
Note where I identify at least two other options in addition to the video games / no training dichotomy.
"The best way to train is to have combat units who have just rotated back be the OPFOR. The next best way is to have a unit that has played OPFOR regularly. Video game simulations are way, way down on the list."
"best"
"next best"
"Obviously it's not a good idea to entirely replace live-fire exercises or OPFOR exercises in the field with simulations, but as a complement to such things, I don't see why it's a particularly bad idea."
So, exactly, how would this "complement" such training? And no generalities or fuzzy-feeling crap.
I'd put a squad that went through 10 FTX's together against a squad that's played 10,000 games and I'm sure the FTX squad would win.
In fact, 10 FTX's vs 5 FTX's + 10,000 games and I'd still say the 10 FTX squad would win.
There is no substitute for real training.
If you want to "complement" FTX's, then I'd recommend 24-hour firing ranges so the troops can practice their shooting skills whenever they want to and 24-hour paint ball arenas to practice squad tactics against other HUMANS.
You end up playing a disabled veteran holding a cardboard sign on a street corner.
The hardest thing was getting people to UNLEARN the bad habits they had acquired.
Practice does NOT make perfect.
Perfect practice makes perfect.
If you are practicing with a simulator, you will be practicing the flaws of that simulator. The "mechanics" of shooting are simple and can be taught in 5 minutes (correct position, aim, breathing, trigger squeeze).
But mastering them so that you do it correctly every time is what takes practice and REAL bullets.
"You can't be on the rifle range every night, but if you wanted you could take some down time and practice when you had a few minutes."
Why can't our troops be at the range every night? If I was focusing on military training, that is what I would have.
"You would prefer to send them into harm's way with no training or preparation for what they're going to encounter?"
This isn't an either/or situation.
A far better means of training is what we've been doing for years. One unit is assigned a task and another unit is assigned as OPFOR. That way, you don't get just what the programmer wrote.
The problem is the situation briefly described in the article. We don't even have ammo for training because it is all going to the mid-East.
The best way to train is to have combat units who have just rotated back be the OPFOR. The next best way is to have a unit that has played OPFOR regularly. Video game simulations are way, way down on the list.
That's just what they publish.
The real business plan is:
#1. Find people with lots of money who want to make more money but don't understand technology/games and are unwilling to do the basic research.
#2. Sell these people a line of crap.
#3. Live large on the "investments" these people are making in your company.
#4. Try for an IPO and cash out "Dot.Com"-style.
Really, anyone who would put any money into another gaming console right now needs his/her head examined.
"The Tragedy of the Commons"
Why do we have to allow ANY unsolicitated commercial email?
And don't anyone go into "free speech" on this. You can say anything you want. But you can not use up my bandwidth.
The economics of email ads means that there is NOTHING preventing spammers from flooding your ENTIRE pipeline with ads.
The only way to educate them is to stop replying to the mortgage spam. As long as they can buy leads, they will because it is profitable for them to do so.
Which is the case with ALL spam. As long as the price of sending the spam is lower than the profit of selling the "product", we will have spam.
So, you talk to someone who's having problems with her Win98 machine on a broadband connection.
#1. Advise her to go out and purchase an inexpensive hardware firewall.
#2. Advise her to go out and purchase a decent CD-rewritable burner and a few rewritable CD's.
#3. Backup all of her data.
#4. Wipe the drive and partition it into 3 segments. OS/swap-n-temp/data.
#5. Re-install the OS and apps. Patch. Configure. Google toolbar is she must use IE. etc. Anti-virus set to auto-update every hour and auto-delete infected files (see #7 before you start screaming).
#6. Copy her data back to the machine. Make sure it is in the data partition.
#7. Show her how to backup the data partition onto the rewritable CD's. Inform her that here hard drive WILL fail sometime in the future and that this is will keep her data safe from that.
These are the basic steps whenever I'm asked to fix someone's computer. And it does not take 10.5 hours. Like you said, 1.5 hours tops.
Well, they have DOS systems connected to a private network.
The weird thing is that they're looking at moving to the Internet to get away from the limitations of their DOS system.
Why don't they keep the current, private network and just upgrade the machines and the software on that? Why do the upgrade AND move to a less secure network?
I'm more worried about another slammer-type attack that floods the Internet.
:)
Besides, encryption and such are fine, but just keeping everyone else off your network (the old method) makes the security model much simpler.
The more access there is, the more possible attacks there are. Which means that more attention has to be spent testing and checking these systems.
Which means more jobs! So it isn't all bad.
I don't think the INTENT of this product was either racist or classist.
I think the INTENT was to cripple an inexpensive version of Windows in order to preserve the profit margin on the full version.
Now, they had a problem explaining why the crippled version was crippled without admitting the reason was the profit margin protection.
Their spin sounds either racist or classist.
"If people just stop buying stuff from the spam, the success rates will go down low enough that spam will no longer be effective and go away, right?"
/. had an article about mortgage spam a while back. The banks would buy "leads" from companies ... who had bought the "leads" from other companies ... who had bought the "leads" from spammers.
Actually, that is correct. The PROBLEM is that it costs almost NOTHING to send a million spam messages.
So ANY sales will be enough to justify the expense.
It's all statistics. A certain percentage of the population will buy this crap.
"That's why my answer is not to go after the spammers who are slime but often out of US jurisdiction, or even the ISPs because while some of them are evil & look the other way, a lot of them are trying, but it's hard work."
Actually, most of the spammers are in the US. Spamhaus even lists them.
"No don't bother with them, I think they should go after the companies selling the crap."
I agree with that for the most part.
But
Of course they were all SHOCKED that they were purchasing leads from spammers. And the spammers promptly were no long retained. So the spammers changed their name and the companies will happily buy leads from CompanyY which happens to have the same address and phone as the old CompanyX.
In that scenario, NOTHING will change until the banks stop paying for the leads. But the banks have arranged it so they have complete deniability.
"I guess it's kinda like going after the Johns instead of the prositutes."
I think that is exactly the point.
Spam can be considered a DDoS attack. Your mailserver uses up bandwidth accepting all those messages.
Once they've been accepted, then SpamBayes can filter them. But the bandwidth has already been taken.
I've seen instances where legit email was defered because the receiving server used up all of its mail threads on incoming spam messages.
And it doesn't take too many zombie spam machines to start seriously impacting a business's T-1 line. Particularly if you run a few different domains on that that T-1.