Is it just me, or is SciFi (with a few notable exceptions such as Farscape) a fairly big diappointment? They're getting rid of Farscape, but not crap like Beyond Belief and Crossing Over with whatever-that-fraud's-name is?
No, this doesn't prevent spam. This automates hitting the delete key. The spam is still sent, processed, received, but hidden from your view at the last possible moment.
I'm not saying filtering doesn't have it's place, but it's a stopgap measure that treats only the symptoms, while the disease rages on.
The Sprint lawyer quoted in the article says, "The purported purpose of all these statutes is mainly to stop unsolicited pornography and scams." Funny, I thought the point of the anti-spam law was to stop spam, not porn.
Secondly, without using tagged addresses, how are we, as end users, supposed to know if we've "opted in" to receiving an email? (This assumes the email in question in this article was not sent by AudioGalaxy on behalf of Sprint, but by Sprint itself to a list it bought from AudioGalaxy.) For example, if I sign up for AudioGalaxy on Monday, they sell their list of addresses to Sprint on Tuesday, and Wednesday I get emails from both Sprint and MCI. The Sprint one is "legit," the MCI one is not, but there's no way to differentiate between them.
I could never stand those tile interfaces. The little 16x16 or even 8x8 tiles were always too small for me. It was much easier to visually discern a D rather than a blob of green and red pixels.
I can't stand the tiles, either. My main complaint is that the level no longer fits in the window.
I started using ChrHack around version 3.2, and I'm addicted to it. It takes a bit of tweaking to use with the latest versions (due to the addition of graves and trees), but it replaces the item and dungeon symbols with something a little more item and dungeon-looking, but keeps the monsters as their ASCII letters. Best of all, everything has the original aspect ratio, so it doesn't look *too* much different.
It reduces the number of people that they can call and try to get to buy their crap, therefore it doesn't work. Remember your idea of a DNC list "working" and the DMA's idea of "working" are different.
No, he's guilty of creating a tool that could possibly be used for stealing, but doesn't necessarily have to be used for stealing.
To really nitpick, he's guilty of creating a tool that could possibly be used for copyright infringement, not theft. To my knowledge, and rhetoric aside, no one claims that piracy is stealing (in the legal sense), but rather a violation of the copyright.
It's more like he's being prosecuted for having invented the crowbar.
A better (but still flawed) analogy would be to suggest he's being prosecuted for having invented the Xerox machine.
So what the hell's the big deal? Or are we all just being slash-paranoid?
Perhaps I'm just old fashioned, but the big deal in my book is that this sort of thing is none of their damn business!
I would be highly offended if some clerk came up to me and asked, "Hello, Sir, welcome to S-Mart, and may I ask what brand of underwear you're wearing today?" The fact they they're trying to do so surreptitiously makes it no less inappropriate.
We ditched SPEWS and started using SpamCop's BL. Much nicer
Except that the SCBL is currently experimental. It specifically says it should not be used to block mail.
The fact that you are posting as an AC makes me strongly suspect you are one of the spammer sockpuppets running AntiSpews.
I don't use it (don't have my own server) but as far as I'm concerned, SPEWS is doing a great thing. Namely, applying pressure to ISPs to not support spam in the first place.
Agreed. Large institutions tend to move a bit slower than smaller ones, it sometimes seems. My preference would be for bombardment from orbit within 30 minutes, but no one ever said the world was a perfect place.
I have some experience with Ifriends. I can almost assure you that they are not the spammers themselves -- not out of any ethical concerns, but just because they're smart enough to not want to deal with their upstreams and such. It's just another case where the business model they've chosen incents them to turn a blind eye to spammers who promote their business.
OK, maybe I did jump the gun a bit, but my main point remains: these sites that depend on affiliate programs to bring in traffic / customers are simply begging for abuse.
If their business model is so easily and widely abused, then they're not "innocent bystanders," but part of the problem.
The matchmaker service probably has an affiliate program ("send us traffic and we'll give you 50% of all signups"), and some enterprising college kid (or adult) discovered that they could set up geocities websites that link to the matchmaker site, spam the entire world, and make a few bucks from the affiliate commissions.
Based solely on my observations, this probably isn't "some enterprising college kid" so much as their business model.
1) The matchmaker site is probably not enforcing its TOS, if they have one. There's a temptation to turn a blind eye to what affiliates do to generate traffic; if people get upset enough about a particular spammer, you can always say "Gosh! They were violating our TOS. We'll kick them off!"
At which point they turn around and sign up as another "affiliate" within seconds. Assuming, of course, it wasn't the main site doing it through shills in the first place.
As far as I'm concerned, if your system is this trivially easy to abuse, then you aren't an innocent bystander, you are part of the problem.
Geocities is pretty notorious for being slow to respond to abuse complaints.
Really? I don't think I've ever had Geocities take more than 48 hours to nuke a site, except over the weekend.
To get specific, I've been having some problems with a chatroom spammer that has persistently been spamming ifriends.com / webpower.com for quite some time. They're always geocities or tripod pages that link to an ifriends "affiliate" page. Geocities and Tripod take the pages down within a day or so. Ifriends has left them running for six weeks or more. They're either unwilling to deal with the problem, unable to do so, or (as I suspect) they are the spammers themselves.
Once a backbone provider (like Level3 or %Bell%) gets up the gusto to throw this kind of lawsuit at spammers (and offshore spammers), we may actually see some reprieve.
Seeing as how many of the backbone providers, especially Level3, appear perfectly willing to host the spammers, they're probably not likely to start suing them anytime soon.
Some of the porn companies have piles of cash that are too large to shake a stick at.
OK, at least one poster has said that porn companies are barely holding their own, and more that one has said they're rolling in the dough. Anyone have any facts?
These aren't quite so necessary since Mozilla came out with the "Block images from this server function" (not that many people use Moz) but they work quite nicely:
Personally, I prefer the Proxomitron because it allows you to do other things, like turn off Flash and certain Javascript annoyances (like sites that stuff moving text in the status bar).
U.S. Army experts are trying to embed microscopic electromechanical machines in paint that could detect and heal cracks and corrosion in the bodies of combat vehicles, as well as give vehicles the chameleon-like quality of rapidly altering camouflage to blend in with changing operating environments.
Well, "trying" sounds like they're actually doing stuff. If you look a little farther down on the article, it looks like they haven't finished brainstorming what they want to do with smart paints that don't even exist yet. This sounds to me like they are about to convene a committee that will put out a document title "Neat Things We Could Do With Smart Paint." It's not like this stuff is even close to being anything other than vaporware, even in a lab setting.
At the moment, this stuff is about as mature a technology as replicators from Star Trek.
Recent studies show that there is no 100% effective method in preventing STD transmission if you're having sex with someone with and STD.
Of course there isn't. Nothing anywhere is 100% effective. But you can, however, take reasonable precautions that reduce your risk significantly.
If you engage in an activity with potential consequences, then you are consenting to those consequences.
Utter hogwash. Everytime I drive on the highway, I know there is a chance that I will be hit by a drunk driver. A slim chance, but non-zero. I take reasonable precautions against serious injury, wearing my seatbelt, drving a car with an airbag, driving defensively, etc. This vastly reduces my chances of being killed by a drunk driver. It does not mean I consent to being in an accident with one.
Similarly, everytime I post to Usenet, I understand that I may start getting spam to that email address. This does not mean I consent to receiving that spam.
If they had sex, then they consented to the possibility of having sex.
If you go to a bad part of town, does that mean you consent to the possibility of being mugged?
OK, maybe that analogy is a bit extreme. How about this one: if you have sex, does that mean you consent to the possiblity of contracting an STD, even though you took all reasonable precautions against it?
A CD-R is still a CD-R. Find a really old, first-generation CD player. Try playing a CD-R in it. It won't, simply because it can comprehend the physical format.
I believe this is not due to different data formats but due to decreased reflectivity of the CD-R polymer layer as compared to the aluminum layer of a CD. The optical reciever in older drives required more light to be reflected.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or is SciFi (with a few notable exceptions such as Farscape) a fairly big diappointment? They're getting rid of Farscape, but not crap like Beyond Belief and Crossing Over with whatever-that-fraud's-name is?
No, this doesn't prevent spam. This automates hitting the delete key. The spam is still sent, processed, received, but hidden from your view at the last possible moment.
I'm not saying filtering doesn't have it's place, but it's a stopgap measure that treats only the symptoms, while the disease rages on.
Secondly, without using tagged addresses, how are we, as end users, supposed to know if we've "opted in" to receiving an email? (This assumes the email in question in this article was not sent by AudioGalaxy on behalf of Sprint, but by Sprint itself to a list it bought from AudioGalaxy.) For example, if I sign up for AudioGalaxy on Monday, they sell their list of addresses to Sprint on Tuesday, and Wednesday I get emails from both Sprint and MCI. The Sprint one is "legit," the MCI one is not, but there's no way to differentiate between them.
I started using ChrHack around version 3.2, and I'm addicted to it. It takes a bit of tweaking to use with the latest versions (due to the addition of graves and trees), but it replaces the item and dungeon symbols with something a little more item and dungeon-looking, but keeps the monsters as their ASCII letters. Best of all, everything has the original aspect ratio, so it doesn't look *too* much different.
Please tell me you didn't just use "$1400" and "as little as" in the same sentence. For a television? Are you insane?
But, then, who is the actor? The guy that did the voice, or the animators that drew the character and gave him form?
One word: Revenge
Possibly for getting them kicked off their last ISP for spamming.
Apparently so, yes.
It reduces the number of people that they can call and try to get to buy their crap, therefore it doesn't work. Remember your idea of a DNC list "working" and the DMA's idea of "working" are different.
To really nitpick, he's guilty of creating a tool that could possibly be used for copyright infringement, not theft. To my knowledge, and rhetoric aside, no one claims that piracy is stealing (in the legal sense), but rather a violation of the copyright.
A better (but still flawed) analogy would be to suggest he's being prosecuted for having invented the Xerox machine.
When did MTV start playing music videos again? I thought they'd changed to the all-Real-World-and-Road-Rules channel?
Perhaps I'm just old fashioned, but the big deal in my book is that this sort of thing is none of their damn business!
I would be highly offended if some clerk came up to me and asked, "Hello, Sir, welcome to S-Mart, and may I ask what brand of underwear you're wearing today?" The fact they they're trying to do so surreptitiously makes it no less inappropriate.
Except that the SCBL is currently experimental. It specifically says it should not be used to block mail.
The fact that you are posting as an AC makes me strongly suspect you are one of the spammer sockpuppets running AntiSpews.
I don't use it (don't have my own server) but as far as I'm concerned, SPEWS is doing a great thing. Namely, applying pressure to ISPs to not support spam in the first place.
Agreed. Large institutions tend to move a bit slower than smaller ones, it sometimes seems. My preference would be for bombardment from orbit within 30 minutes, but no one ever said the world was a perfect place.
OK, maybe I did jump the gun a bit, but my main point remains: these sites that depend on affiliate programs to bring in traffic / customers are simply begging for abuse.
If their business model is so easily and widely abused, then they're not "innocent bystanders," but part of the problem.
Based solely on my observations, this probably isn't "some enterprising college kid" so much as their business model.
At which point they turn around and sign up as another "affiliate" within seconds. Assuming, of course, it wasn't the main site doing it through shills in the first place.
As far as I'm concerned, if your system is this trivially easy to abuse, then you aren't an innocent bystander, you are part of the problem.
Really? I don't think I've ever had Geocities take more than 48 hours to nuke a site, except over the weekend.
To get specific, I've been having some problems with a chatroom spammer that has persistently been spamming ifriends.com / webpower.com for quite some time. They're always geocities or tripod pages that link to an ifriends "affiliate" page. Geocities and Tripod take the pages down within a day or so. Ifriends has left them running for six weeks or more. They're either unwilling to deal with the problem, unable to do so, or (as I suspect) they are the spammers themselves.
Seeing as how many of the backbone providers, especially Level3, appear perfectly willing to host the spammers, they're probably not likely to start suing them anytime soon.
Proxomitron and
Guidescope
Personally, I prefer the Proxomitron because it allows you to do other things, like turn off Flash and certain Javascript annoyances (like sites that stuff moving text in the status bar).
At risk of introducing facts to this debate, would you mind giving the listed IP/SPEWS number for the listing you're talking about?
Well, "trying" sounds like they're actually doing stuff. If you look a little farther down on the article, it looks like they haven't finished brainstorming what they want to do with smart paints that don't even exist yet. This sounds to me like they are about to convene a committee that will put out a document title "Neat Things We Could Do With Smart Paint." It's not like this stuff is even close to being anything other than vaporware, even in a lab setting.
At the moment, this stuff is about as mature a technology as replicators from Star Trek.
Of course there isn't. Nothing anywhere is 100% effective. But you can, however, take reasonable precautions that reduce your risk significantly.
Utter hogwash. Everytime I drive on the highway, I know there is a chance that I will be hit by a drunk driver. A slim chance, but non-zero. I take reasonable precautions against serious injury, wearing my seatbelt, drving a car with an airbag, driving defensively, etc. This vastly reduces my chances of being killed by a drunk driver. It does not mean I consent to being in an accident with one.
Similarly, everytime I post to Usenet, I understand that I may start getting spam to that email address. This does not mean I consent to receiving that spam.
I never said anything about "the most remote possiblity." There's no such thing. The question is, did you take reasonable precautions?
OK, I don't know what you're doing, but you're doing it wrong.
OK, maybe that analogy is a bit extreme. How about this one: if you have sex, does that mean you consent to the possiblity of contracting an STD, even though you took all reasonable precautions against it?