your case was indeed one of deliberate fraud and Google was smart enough to figure it out. In this sense, Google is acting responsibly.
I don't think so. The poster you responded to didn't do anything fraudulent. He/she ran ads on a site. Someone tried to cheat. Where in the terms of service does it say "I will install mind control rays in my users' heads to keep them from doing that"? It's not there because it's impossible. The most Google can do and yet be fair is to just not pay the site for the script-generated clicks, and ask the site admins, if they know who did it, to warn the user not to do that again.
Which is true; however, back then it was harder to track someone down and harder to gather evidence. You leave a lot more of a trail these days than you did in the 1920s.
spam is such a huge problem because there's so much of it - it's entire reason for existing is because there's a flood of the stuff! Therefore, there will necessarily be a flood of responses, therefore a (partial) DDoS on the target site is all-but inevitable.
So you basically claim that we are not able to ask people to leave us alone but have to bend over and take it? This client automatically sends an opt-out request in response to unwanted junk email. That's all it does. All a site has to do to not get a flood of unsubscribes is to not spew floods of unwanted email. It's that simple. They're bringinging the resulting response on themselves. It's like being warned that breaking into my house is dangerous because I have a shotgun, and then whining that you got shot.
In other words, the spammers harvested the contents of the Blue Security server.
Which is precisely what they got stung for. They are specifically told that if they spam those addresses, there will be consequences. They are supposed to be able to figure out who is on the list. They abused it. So of course they're in deep shit now. It's like a baby who does something just because you tell them not to. But then, we all knew that spammers were childish assholes...
If your computer is bombarding me with spam, I will have no qualms about reporting you to your ISP and getting you cut off. Why? Because you are sending spam in violation of the terms of service. But you claim it's not your fault? Yes, it is, because you are responsible for your own equipment. It is up to you to not allow strangers to install stuff, and if they do, you are expected to remove it.
So no, it's not pointless to take out the resources the spam is coming from. Don't want to be taken out? Don't fucking spam people.
If I made just one PENNY for each spam e-mail I sent out, I'd quit my day job and just become a spammer. $1 million is NOTHING these days. (This is tax-free as well.)
I guess you didn't notice the line on the IRS forms where you have to declare illegal income. It is not tax-free, and if you fail to declare you will go to jail for a very long time. Just ask Al Capone. I know you were trying to be funny, but at least do some damn research first!
And what about people like me who had only vaguely heard of this service, weren't sure how effective it was, and decided it was worth the time to go sign up after all while it was still on our minds? So now the blame is on people who want to -- OMG -- patronize a business that wants people to sign up for what it offers!? Good heavens, then, if that is bad then why does anyone run a business!?
That would be because SixApart got the registrar/dns host to point bluesecurity.com to localhost (127.0.0.1) so unless you're running a webserver on your own box, you won't get anything.
Not according to dig, they didn't. And SixApart doesn't own bluesecurity.com so they have no authority to change the DNS entries anyway.
I have an old Mac you're welcome to. If you're serious, you're quite welcome to it. It's late 68K or early PPC era (not at home now, can't check the model info) but I really do want it out of the basement and I'd prefer to give it to someone who really wants it even over the local e-recycling dropoff.
The Golf is hardly the cheapest car out there and is in fact quite nice -- poke your nose into a Golf or GTI (it's the same thing) or Jetta (same thing with a trunk). But you'd be surprised at how decent 1920s cars are -- a while back I rode around in a restored Model A and it was pretty nice. No radio or anything of course (but you can add one these days) but it was impressive, especially for the time it was made.
Anyway, I don't think we're disagreeing on the overall point either; I'm trying to point out that you can get stuff that is more than adequate for less than the prices you cited, and it's quality stuff that doesn't break. Overall the prices on all of those things have stayed the same or gone down... but music hasn't gotten cheaper.
My car cost $17,000 and that's for a nicely equipped VW Golf fuel-efficient five-door. It's a little more than basic transportation (mods not counted) and is perfectly adequate. No SUV or luxuries required.
My flat-screen CRT TV cost about $300. I do have an HDTV flatscreen now in an effort to save space (I live in a small house; it's all I need) that did cost $1400 on sale, but just like the car you can get a perfectly adequate TV for less than what you list.
My DVD player cost $50, and it's a nice Pioneer -- not high-end, not low-end, but it does the job just fine.
Acquisition dates: car, May 2000; CRT TV, fall 2001 or early 2002 or so; DVD player, mid-2002 or so.
And they don't get it as it is to file your tax return? I'm careful too (shred things, as many e-bills as possible to keep them out of the mail where they could be stolen, have written in to stop junk mail and credit card offers, etc.)... but if they're going to get the information anyway, why worry?
certain software like tax preparation stuff just isn't available for Linux.
Why not use the Web-based versions of TurboTax or H&R Block's Taxcut? Don't need to install anything, accessible from anywhere, keeps your previous-year tax returns on file, and is platform-neutral. Taxcut at least works fine on Firefox -- I've used it for 3-4 years straight now.
However, I was a bit disappointed to discover how many different applications demanded payment, again and again, and quickly found that Apple and all its hangers-on are every bit as rapacious as Microsoft.
Then why did you choose to use shareware, which is known for this no matter what the platform? This is an honest question: what apps or what purposes? I haven't had an excessive problem with this and there is a lot of freeware (as in speech AND beer) for Macs just like there is for Windows and there is for Linux.
But you can disable system tray balloons using a registry hack, which does basically the same thing. I posted this link farther up in another thread, but I think it's relevant here too.
There is very little in the userland side of an operating system that cannot be easily removed... likely this will be the same, they just won't provide a mechanism or instructions on how to remove it.
There is already a way to modify the registry to remove the system tray warning balloons.
Sorry, but the guy you replied to is doing nothing wrong and is going out of his way to make sure his server plays nice? And you accuse him (or her) of being an idiot and tell him it's all his fault anyway? Wow. Only on slashdot.
And how precisely do you mean to stop someone who chooses to write about you or who chooses to draw something inspired by you? You didn't create the work of art (writing is a type of art, in this context). So you have no say over how it is used. You may not LIKE it, but you have no power to stop it.
And what else would you be running it on? Remember, IE for Mac, which was the only other platform it was available for, isn't distributed or supported anymore.
That statement falls into the "no *@%#@!!ing SHIT" pile.
"I've never bought a car radio/stereo. The reason? My car came with a perfectly good radio, and I don't need anything better."
And what if it's not good enough? VW didn't get off its ass and make an MP3-CD/iPod-compatible stereo for my car -- which is still sold as new at dealers -- so I wrote to VW asking them to produce one. Their excuse for an iPod adapter was wholly unacceptable. I wrote them again to tell them that they had lost a rather sizeable sale to my local Alpine dealer -- and then bought the Alpine. VW and its local dealership lost out on several hundred dollars of aftermarket/optional-item purchase. And I'm not the only one who did this.
Customers will often buy from you because you can integrate well with your other products and because they know they won't have to deal with "we don't support third-party products" attitudes when something breaks, but they have only so much tolerance for corporate attitudes of "here's our sorry excuse for what you asked for, now give us money" and will show you the door if someone else makes a better product than you.
Carmakers are notoriously behind the curve. You may be willing to accept the drek most cars come with, but many others are not.
And I'm more than happy with my purchase -- it's far better than what VW is now shoveling into even its newest cars.
Slashdot Mirror
your case was indeed one of deliberate fraud and Google was smart enough to figure it out. In this sense, Google is acting responsibly.
I don't think so. The poster you responded to didn't do anything fraudulent. He/she ran ads on a site. Someone tried to cheat. Where in the terms of service does it say "I will install mind control rays in my users' heads to keep them from doing that"? It's not there because it's impossible. The most Google can do and yet be fair is to just not pay the site for the script-generated clicks, and ask the site admins, if they know who did it, to warn the user not to do that again.
You are blaming the victim.
Which is true; however, back then it was harder to track someone down and harder to gather evidence. You leave a lot more of a trail these days than you did in the 1920s.
spam is such a huge problem because there's so much of it - it's entire reason for existing is because there's a flood of the stuff! Therefore, there will necessarily be a flood of responses, therefore a (partial) DDoS on the target site is all-but inevitable.
So you basically claim that we are not able to ask people to leave us alone but have to bend over and take it? This client automatically sends an opt-out request in response to unwanted junk email. That's all it does. All a site has to do to not get a flood of unsubscribes is to not spew floods of unwanted email. It's that simple. They're bringinging the resulting response on themselves. It's like being warned that breaking into my house is dangerous because I have a shotgun, and then whining that you got shot.
In other words, the spammers harvested the contents of the Blue Security server.
...
Which is precisely what they got stung for. They are specifically told that if they spam those addresses, there will be consequences. They are supposed to be able to figure out who is on the list. They abused it. So of course they're in deep shit now. It's like a baby who does something just because you tell them not to. But then, we all knew that spammers were childish assholes
If your computer is bombarding me with spam, I will have no qualms about reporting you to your ISP and getting you cut off. Why? Because you are sending spam in violation of the terms of service. But you claim it's not your fault? Yes, it is, because you are responsible for your own equipment. It is up to you to not allow strangers to install stuff, and if they do, you are expected to remove it.
So no, it's not pointless to take out the resources the spam is coming from. Don't want to be taken out? Don't fucking spam people.
If I made just one PENNY for each spam e-mail I sent out, I'd quit my day job and just become a spammer. $1 million is NOTHING these days. (This is tax-free as well.)
I guess you didn't notice the line on the IRS forms where you have to declare illegal income. It is not tax-free, and if you fail to declare you will go to jail for a very long time. Just ask Al Capone. I know you were trying to be funny, but at least do some damn research first!
And what about people like me who had only vaguely heard of this service, weren't sure how effective it was, and decided it was worth the time to go sign up after all while it was still on our minds? So now the blame is on people who want to -- OMG -- patronize a business that wants people to sign up for what it offers!? Good heavens, then, if that is bad then why does anyone run a business!?
That would be because SixApart got the registrar/dns host to point bluesecurity.com to localhost (127.0.0.1) so unless you're running a webserver on your own box, you won't get anything.
Not according to dig, they didn't. And SixApart doesn't own bluesecurity.com so they have no authority to change the DNS entries anyway.
I have an old Mac you're welcome to. If you're serious, you're quite welcome to it. It's late 68K or early PPC era (not at home now, can't check the model info) but I really do want it out of the basement and I'd prefer to give it to someone who really wants it even over the local e-recycling dropoff.
The Golf is hardly the cheapest car out there and is in fact quite nice -- poke your nose into a Golf or GTI (it's the same thing) or Jetta (same thing with a trunk). But you'd be surprised at how decent 1920s cars are -- a while back I rode around in a restored Model A and it was pretty nice. No radio or anything of course (but you can add one these days) but it was impressive, especially for the time it was made.
... but music hasn't gotten cheaper.
Anyway, I don't think we're disagreeing on the overall point either; I'm trying to point out that you can get stuff that is more than adequate for less than the prices you cited, and it's quality stuff that doesn't break. Overall the prices on all of those things have stayed the same or gone down
My car cost $17,000 and that's for a nicely equipped VW Golf fuel-efficient five-door. It's a little more than basic transportation (mods not counted) and is perfectly adequate. No SUV or luxuries required.
My flat-screen CRT TV cost about $300. I do have an HDTV flatscreen now in an effort to save space (I live in a small house; it's all I need) that did cost $1400 on sale, but just like the car you can get a perfectly adequate TV for less than what you list.
My DVD player cost $50, and it's a nice Pioneer -- not high-end, not low-end, but it does the job just fine.
Acquisition dates: car, May 2000; CRT TV, fall 2001 or early 2002 or so; DVD player, mid-2002 or so.
And they don't get it as it is to file your tax return? I'm careful too (shred things, as many e-bills as possible to keep them out of the mail where they could be stolen, have written in to stop junk mail and credit card offers, etc.) ... but if they're going to get the information anyway, why worry?
certain software like tax preparation stuff just isn't available for Linux.
Why not use the Web-based versions of TurboTax or H&R Block's Taxcut? Don't need to install anything, accessible from anywhere, keeps your previous-year tax returns on file, and is platform-neutral. Taxcut at least works fine on Firefox -- I've used it for 3-4 years straight now.
However, I was a bit disappointed to discover how many different applications demanded payment, again and again, and quickly found that Apple and all its hangers-on are every bit as rapacious as Microsoft.
Then why did you choose to use shareware, which is known for this no matter what the platform? This is an honest question: what apps or what purposes? I haven't had an excessive problem with this and there is a lot of freeware (as in speech AND beer) for Macs just like there is for Windows and there is for Linux.
... so fuck off. ;)
But you can disable system tray balloons using a registry hack, which does basically the same thing. I posted this link farther up in another thread, but I think it's relevant here too.
Tips & Tricks: Kill the System Tray Balloons
There is very little in the userland side of an operating system that cannot be easily removed... likely this will be the same, they just won't provide a mechanism or instructions on how to remove it.
There is already a way to modify the registry to remove the system tray warning balloons.
Tips & Tricks: Kill the System Tray Balloons
(I am not sure why there is no UI for this. You'd think it'd be a common request).
Sorry, but the guy you replied to is doing nothing wrong and is going out of his way to make sure his server plays nice? And you accuse him (or her) of being an idiot and tell him it's all his fault anyway? Wow. Only on slashdot.
Flamebait huh? Then please explain who all these people are ... or learn to fucking spell.
That doesn't make you any less ethically wrong for trying to make money off something you had no part in in the first place. At least in my book.
I have never heard of a country called Egipt. Now, if you meant Egypt, that wasn't a Disney movie, that was Dreamworks.
Now who the hell are Desney and Miky and Cinerela? And your U key seems to be malfunctioning and producing Os instead.
And how precisely do you mean to stop someone who chooses to write about you or who chooses to draw something inspired by you? You didn't create the work of art (writing is a type of art, in this context). So you have no say over how it is used. You may not LIKE it, but you have no power to stop it.
And the "mystery shopper" system has worked fine for years. You were saying?
And what else would you be running it on? Remember, IE for Mac, which was the only other platform it was available for, isn't distributed or supported anymore.
That statement falls into the "no *@%#@!!ing SHIT" pile.
"I've never bought a car radio/stereo. The reason? My car came with a perfectly good radio, and I don't need anything better."
And what if it's not good enough? VW didn't get off its ass and make an MP3-CD/iPod-compatible stereo for my car -- which is still sold as new at dealers -- so I wrote to VW asking them to produce one. Their excuse for an iPod adapter was wholly unacceptable. I wrote them again to tell them that they had lost a rather sizeable sale to my local Alpine dealer -- and then bought the Alpine. VW and its local dealership lost out on several hundred dollars of aftermarket/optional-item purchase. And I'm not the only one who did this.
Customers will often buy from you because you can integrate well with your other products and because they know they won't have to deal with "we don't support third-party products" attitudes when something breaks, but they have only so much tolerance for corporate attitudes of "here's our sorry excuse for what you asked for, now give us money" and will show you the door if someone else makes a better product than you.
Carmakers are notoriously behind the curve. You may be willing to accept the drek most cars come with, but many others are not.
And I'm more than happy with my purchase -- it's far better than what VW is now shoveling into even its newest cars.