It may be that Red Nova is a valid news site, but they should really check the status of their sources. The Mail will run just about any sensational piece of b*ll*cks doing the rounds. They are not the sort of organ that would want to cloud the reader's faith in the paranormal with any of that cynical questioning. Please insert the phrase 'Top scientists believe...' at the begining of the piece to make it more credible.
Click here and search for "Crop Circles", "MI6" or "UFO".
Funny? Probably because when moderating in IE, you select the appropriate category from the dropdown control, then you 'wheel' down to read the next comment. Before IE starts to move the page it pauses briefly while it changes your selection, then whips it away before you see it.
What's really funny is that I usually manage to mark the good ones as trolls.
Even in the UK you have no rights unless you have worked for the company at least a year. Even after a year you don't get that many, but they do have to give you a reason. I found this out the hard way.
However, in this case I think he would have a fair case, because they seem to have branded him as a security risk. This would make it difficult for him to get another job in the same line. He should pursue a case to get them to admit that he was not a risk, and that they had no real reason to believe he was. He woun't get his job back, but at least he will be able to get another.
A good many years ago, a friend of mine was an IT coordinator for a health trust. He did a evalutation of several tenders for systems and made a recommendation. A very well know systems company were unhappy with not being selected. They wrote lots of letters, passed a few sweeteners and eventually got him sacked for incompetence.
He took his employers to a tribunal and won. Not only did he get his reputation back, he got enough money to take a couple of years out and do an MBA. However, it was a long process.
We note with disapointment that you have opted-out from our Department XXYYAAZZZ01 mailing list. Please be assured that we will honour your wishes accordingly.
Yours sincerely,
The Online Porn Service, Customer Care Team.
P.S. We feel sure that you will be interested in our other products, so we have added your address to the HHHQQQWWZZZ03 and PPPSSWWMMQQ04 department mailing lists. You will of course have the option to opt-out of these lists when you receive our spam.
Hmm... May be Linux gets used on PDAs, file/print servers and set top boxes with 32mb or less, but I don't think there are many using 32mb Linux boxes for desktop machines.
I recently came across a knopplix CD on a computer mag. I put it in the CD drive of my 64mb/200mhz box and rebooted.
Linux booted OK, but KDE failed to start. It politely told me that it needed 80mb before it could startup.
Not true. As long as the spammer can convince some jerk that spam works, then the jerk will pay for it to be sent wheither it works or not.
At least with a phone call you get the opportunity to hurl abuse at the caller. Shame it's just a low paid nobody on the other end. May be the best approach is to sound interested and string them along for a hour or two and push their numbers right down.
I think the problem you will find is this: the spammers don't actually want to pay you anything. This is probably why they try to avoid being identified (and therefore sued) by using open relays and all those other tricks.
Lets face it, there is a spam problem because there is a hole in the SMTP protocal. Fixing the hole is the best bet for solving spam.
The main problem as I see it is that we cannot identify the senders of most spam. Some do not hide their origin and could be identified but these are a small proportion and they are generally of a nature that is not offensive.
If we don't know who they are, we cannot chase them with legal action. If they can be found, then laws stand a chance and the threat of legal action will reduce the numbers. Those who remain can be made an example of.
You can argue that legal options are limited as spam is sent from outside of the country, and that filtering is the only real option. However, even filtering becomes more effective if you can identify where the spam is really coming from. To avoid being blacklisted the multi-million message spammer would have to keep moving domain name and that would prove expensive.
Here is my solution to "Who sent the spam?".
I originally thought that we should ditch SMTP. But now I don't think that is really the case. Besides that would be such a major change that it would probably stop the change happening. SMTP works, it gets the mail there, the only problem is you only have the sender's word for who sent it. We just need to extend the idea a little bit to check who sent the mail, and then wait until the whole world has adopted the extension.
I suggest a new header which indicates that the sender's mail server supports verification. A receiver's mail server that also supports verification then has the option of sending a checksum of the mail (or some token sent with the header) back to the sending server, to ask "did you really send this mail?". Upon no reply or a denial the user settings can elect not to have the mail delivered.
At first only some of your mail will be verified, but you will be certain who sent the verified ones. Later as most of the world begins to use the system, people will elect not to receive unverified mail.
I like this idea because it does not break the existing infrastructure, it does not demand big new central servers, nor does it demand everyone gets a new mail reader. It's just the mail servers that need extending, and they can be done one at a time (or may be not at all) without anything breaking. Also there is nothing about it that will stop people receiving the unsolicited porn spam if they want it, they only have elect to receive unverified mail.
Fair enough, but I find myself repeating elements a variable number of times while just trying to present data as HTML. The most problematic is the display of styled tables suitable for Netscape 4.7 (don't ask me why, it's a company thing). The borders and the padding can only be consistently done by using empty cells (with a clear one pixel gif) and setting a background colour. When it come to showing a horizontal line across the table you need insert:
borderCell + n*(3*paddingCell + borderCell)
(1 + n*4)*borderCell
borderCell + n*(3*paddingCell + borderCell)
Where n is the number of data items across the table.
It's not my choice to use XSLT. The company bought the idea that if we use XSLT all we have to do is substitute a different stylesheet for each skin or target platform. Lucky there is only one target platform, because when it comes to this sort of thing I insert JavaScript to do the interation when it finally hits the browser.
I get very irritated with XSLT. Either it isn't powerful enough to finish the job or the features for doing these things are too well hidden. It is awful to debug (worse even than parsing XML). And the verboseness of the syntax hides what's going on.
XML I don't mind, although the include mechanism is tricky.
DTD is a little strange.
Schemas are very strange.
XSLT is beyond a joke, the idea is sound by the syntax is bizzare (try looping from 1 to 10).
XML databases, no where near as good as proper RBDMS, but better than sticking XML in your RBDMS.
We did once use XDR as a middleware, but this we replaced with XML. It is 100 times bigger and 100 times slower. Use XML as an import/export format, don't try to use it as a middleware.
One good thing, it doesn't crash when both ends don't agree on the content of the data and the bytes are not aligned. Instead it just silently ignores the data. (Did I say this was a good thing?).
I have to admit I have completely mis-moderated posts. My only excuse is that I was using a wheel mouse.
Click the drop down, choose the correct option, wheel the mouse to scroll on down (or up). There is just a short delay while the drop down scrolls to the end of the list, then the page starts to scroll as expected. Later when you submit the page, you see the message "One excellent post moderated as trash". Argghhh.
So guys. Remember to click the focus away from the drop down before you scroll.
Mr Taco can we have radio buttons for moderation please?
Mr Gates can we have mouse wheeling restricted to vertical scrolling?
Agreed. Let's dump SMTP and start again. All the spam is coming through with bogus headers. It is crazy to only have the sender's word for where it is coming from. It can not be filtered by sender, the sender can not be traced and legal action cannot be taken.
Businesses are transfering information between themselves all the time, and they are not using SMTP. They use HTTPS in the form of soap calls. Both ends can verify the each other's IP addresses by a reverse call, and you can refuse the connection if you want to.
Of course, some idiot will probably want to build in an unauthenticated relay facility into the protocol.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah ha. Look at the source at the bottom.
...' at the begining of the piece to make it more credible.
Source: Daily Mail; London (UK)
It may be that Red Nova is a valid news site, but they should really check the status of their sources. The Mail will run just about any sensational piece of b*ll*cks doing the rounds. They are not the sort of organ that would want to cloud the reader's faith in the paranormal with any of that cynical questioning. Please insert the phrase 'Top scientists believe
Click here and search for "Crop Circles", "MI6" or "UFO".
I don't think Mussolini operated trains under the Railtrack.
No. I'm pretty sure this is just another stunt of Richard's just to sell more copies of Tubular Bells
Funny? Probably because when moderating in IE, you select the appropriate category from the dropdown control, then you 'wheel' down to read the next comment. Before IE starts to move the page it pauses briefly while it changes your selection, then whips it away before you see it.
What's really funny is that I usually manage to mark the good ones as trolls.
Even in the UK you have no rights unless you have worked for the company at least a year. Even after a year you don't get that many, but they do have to give you a reason. I found this out the hard way.
However, in this case I think he would have a fair case, because they seem to have branded him as a security risk. This would make it difficult for him to get another job in the same line. He should pursue a case to get them to admit that he was not a risk, and that they had no real reason to believe he was. He woun't get his job back, but at least he will be able to get another.
A good many years ago, a friend of mine was an IT coordinator for a health trust. He did a evalutation of several tenders for systems and made a recommendation. A very well know systems company were unhappy with not being selected. They wrote lots of letters, passed a few sweeteners and eventually got him sacked for incompetence.
He took his employers to a tribunal and won. Not only did he get his reputation back, he got enough money to take a couple of years out and do an MBA. However, it was a long process.
Dear Mr Wagner,
We note with disapointment that you have
opted-out from our Department XXYYAAZZZ01
mailing list. Please be assured that we
will honour your wishes accordingly.
Yours sincerely,
The Online Porn Service, Customer Care Team.
P.S. We feel sure that you will be
interested in our other products, so we
have added your address to the HHHQQQWWZZZ03
and PPPSSWWMMQQ04 department mailing lists.
You will of course have the option to
opt-out of these lists when you receive
our spam.
So in summary:
Please email us with the IP of your mail server. Until you do so, you will not be able to send us email.
Isn't there a slight catch here?
You should call your telco and get the caller's number blocked :-)
Thanks 'newbroom'. This has been the most thoughtful discussion for some time on Slashdot.
Please post again.
Of course. Of course. That is what I meant. Well spotted. There is no C in C# minor either.
Hah! Well there is no C in the key of C# major. The note one semitone above B is B#.
See Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Second note for the right hand, on the second line. Quite clearly a B#.
Smart arse? Mooey? You are so kind.
Ops. I didn't realise. I just went and turned the fan off thinking it was interfering with my vision.
Hmm... May be Linux gets used on PDAs, file/print servers and set top boxes with 32mb or less, but I don't think there are many using 32mb Linux boxes for desktop machines.
I recently came across a knopplix CD on a computer mag. I put it in the CD drive of my 64mb/200mhz box and rebooted.
Linux booted OK, but KDE failed to start. It politely told me that it needed 80mb before it could startup.
Oh well back to Win95 and Cygwin.
And there is no Java Stored Procedures/SQLJ yet.
Not important to some, but it is important to those of us that support the same product across many RDBMS.
So, to string these people along by sounding interested until the advert break finishes, is actually helping to protect the vunerable?
Not true. As long as the spammer can convince some jerk that spam works, then the jerk will pay for it to be sent wheither it works or not.
At least with a phone call you get the opportunity to hurl abuse at the caller. Shame it's just a low paid nobody on the other end. May be the best approach is to sound interested and string them along for a hour or two and push their numbers right down.
Lets face it, there is a spam problem because there is a hole in the SMTP protocal. Fixing the hole is the best bet for solving spam.
Good point. However, whatever the actual move, this will have an effect on those previously MS only shops thinking of buying into the Linux thing.
The clear water is muddied.
The manager pauses.
The moment passes.
A small victory is made.
Why would they do that?
The main problem as I see it is that we cannot identify the senders of most spam. Some do not hide their origin and could be identified but these are a small proportion and they are generally of a nature that is not offensive.
If we don't know who they are, we cannot chase them with legal action. If they can be found, then laws stand a chance and the threat of legal action will reduce the numbers. Those who remain can be made an example of.
You can argue that legal options are limited as spam is sent from outside of the country, and that filtering is the only real option. However, even filtering becomes more effective if you can identify where the spam is really coming from. To avoid being blacklisted the multi-million message spammer would have to keep moving domain name and that would prove expensive.
Here is my solution to "Who sent the spam?".
I originally thought that we should ditch SMTP. But now I don't think that is really the case. Besides that would be such a major change that it would probably stop the change happening. SMTP works, it gets the mail there, the only problem is you only have the sender's word for who sent it. We just need to extend the idea a little bit to check who sent the mail, and then wait until the whole world has adopted the extension.
I suggest a new header which indicates that the sender's mail server supports verification. A receiver's mail server that also supports verification then has the option of sending a checksum of the mail (or some token sent with the header) back to the sending server, to ask "did you really send this mail?". Upon no reply or a denial the user settings can elect not to have the mail delivered.
At first only some of your mail will be verified, but you will be certain who sent the verified ones. Later as most of the world begins to use the system, people will elect not to receive unverified mail.
I like this idea because it does not break the existing infrastructure, it does not demand big new central servers, nor does it demand everyone gets a new mail reader. It's just the mail servers that need extending, and they can be done one at a time (or may be not at all) without anything breaking. Also there is nothing about it that will stop people receiving the unsolicited porn spam if they want it, they only have elect to receive unverified mail.
Fair enough, but I find myself repeating elements a variable number of times while just trying to present data as HTML. The most problematic is the display of styled tables suitable for Netscape 4.7 (don't ask me why, it's a company thing). The borders and the padding can only be consistently done by using empty cells (with a clear one pixel gif) and setting a background colour. When it come to showing a horizontal line across the table you need insert:
borderCell + n*(3*paddingCell + borderCell)
(1 + n*4)*borderCell
borderCell + n*(3*paddingCell + borderCell)
Where n is the number of data items across the table.
It's not my choice to use XSLT. The company bought the idea that if we use XSLT all we have to do is substitute a different stylesheet for each skin or target platform. Lucky there is only one target platform, because when it comes to this sort of thing I insert JavaScript to do the interation when it finally hits the browser.
I get very irritated with XSLT. Either it isn't powerful enough to finish the job or the features for doing these things are too well hidden. It is awful to debug (worse even than parsing XML). And the verboseness of the syntax hides what's going on.
We did once use XDR as a middleware, but this we replaced with XML. It is 100 times bigger and 100 times slower. Use XML as an import/export format, don't try to use it as a middleware.
One good thing, it doesn't crash when both ends don't agree on the content of the data and the bytes are not aligned. Instead it just silently ignores the data. (Did I say this was a good thing?).
I have to admit I have completely mis-moderated posts. My only excuse is that I was using a wheel mouse.
Click the drop down, choose the correct option, wheel the mouse to scroll on down (or up). There is just a short delay while the drop down scrolls to the end of the list, then the page starts to scroll as expected. Later when you submit the page, you see the message "One excellent post moderated as trash". Argghhh.
So guys. Remember to click the focus away from the drop down before you scroll.
Mr Taco can we have radio buttons for moderation please?
Mr Gates can we have mouse wheeling restricted to vertical scrolling?
Sorry to be offTopic, but this is important.
May be, may be not.
a ci je/F/F3/F3_f.pdf
Some have been talking about similar techniques since before this patent was filed:
http://www.carnet.hr/cuc/cuc2000/radovi/prezent
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/context/856618/0
Agreed. Let's dump SMTP and start again. All the spam is coming through with bogus headers. It is crazy to only have the sender's word for where it is coming from. It can not be filtered by sender, the sender can not be traced and legal action cannot be taken.
Businesses are transfering information between themselves all the time, and they are not using SMTP. They use HTTPS in the form of soap calls. Both ends can verify the each other's IP addresses by a reverse call, and you can refuse the connection if you want to.
Of course, some idiot will probably want to build in an unauthenticated relay facility into the protocol.