That's all fine and dandy.. spend 10 hours to extract a crappy picture and save $10 in developing. I have a better idea. Turn the camera into a mp3 player, voice recorder or something better than it was.
Compared to A.I., Battlefield earth was Citizen Kane. A.I. is proof positive that cinematography, even the best of its kind, is doomed when Mr. Spielberg gets ahold of someone else's script and makes a mess out of it.
A.I. is also irrefutable proof that there is no life after death. Because you can bet that Kubrick would have risen from the grave or sent some kind of message from the great beyond after seeing what Spielberg did to his screenplay.
The natural dynamic range of musical instruments is effectively "squashed" using compression. What they do is they pipe the instruments and vocals through a compressor/limiter, set the threshold so that even a whisper registers at a sizeable volume level, and when the singer gets louder or screams, the dynamic range is "compressed" so that there is an unnatural disparity in the dynamics of a track. You hear hard-pounding drums at almost the same volume as a light rimshot; singers go from mellow to high-energy in 1db. All the tracks are taken out of context, amplified and polished.
If you ever wonder why a live band doesn't sound like their album, it's because the way they produce albums nowadays is nothing like what the actual performance sounds like.
The tech community is being systemmatically infected with the same virus the mainstream has, whereas the mainstream has been programmed into ADHD via television commercials, the tech community is being infected with shallow gaming experiences that revolve around first-person shooters, virtual crime, and magic mushrooms.
I do lament the new breed of techies, who think any movie that has the wherewithall to incorporate 10 seconds of a computer screen showing a shell prompt as worthy of respect.
I'd like to still think there are core groups of tech people who are motivated by solving problems (that don't involve remotely finding out how many Mountain Dews are in the vending machine down the hall). But you're right, the tech community has changed. And entertainment has changed as well.
It makes you wonder if a movie like 2001:A Space Odyssey would even get made now? Hollywood would have to spruce it up with a naked shower scene, a slo-mo CGI battle between apes and evil aliens, and an epic space chase through a mythical gothic future city. HAL's voice would be dubbed by Angelina Jolie and she wouldn't be cold and logical, but bitter and evil-toned. There's be a Coca-Cola emblem on the Monolith. And of course the movie would start off with "Episode 8".
The first movie was good, or the first half. The premise was quite interesting and innovative, and then it slowed down and turned into a Kung Fu movie. I still never understood why the tech community was so quick to embrace this series as an icon. It is not worthy. Have we stooped so low as to think the Matrix' goofy "which reality is real" premise as something worth using brain cells to contemplate? This is only a notch away from the other, equally-cerebral dilemma: "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"
And thus began the "Matrix Revolution" of an endless array of technical FX as a substitute for a decent plot and character development.
Not that things haven't been this way since the dawn of cinema, but most movies nowadays are just big-budget, formulaic, television-level dramas designed less to make you think, less to entertain than they are to distract and take your money and serve as a vehicle for a plethora of merchandising efforts.
With few exceptions, most of the great classic movies of the last 20-30 years have been neutered in a progressive attempt to capitalize on the originals' success via a string of contrived sequels.
The same thing has happened to the music industry. Instead of great lyrics and creative musicianship, we're bombarded with cute-faces, dance moves and regurgitated hooks that are over-produced and heavily compressed. There should be a new category for this crap music, like there should be a new category for these new movies which do little more than feed our ever-increasing ADD.
Who is this Strauss guy? Is he yet another student-turned-teacher that has no real world experience? Nothing chaps my hide more than perpetual academics, who have never built or run a successful company preaching their superior wisdom and insight on business development.
Take a look at this guy - He can't even select a decent hairpiece. I certainly wouldn't trust his technical advice.
Isn't it amazing what happens when industry decides to innovate rather than regulate?
This should be a lesson to all the dumbass music distributors that if they pay some attention to their consumers' needs and interest, and spend more time exploring ways to enhance and expand their market's choices and experience, they will profit.
Then again, they could just go about suing more people, raising prices and marketing even more crap music, and then go back to whining about how they're suffering.
I am not in favor of IPv6 being rolled out. I think at the present time, it will amplify all the existing problems we have yet to solve.
I can appreciate the improved security and anti-spoofing provisions but the cons outweigh the pros. Most of what people are expecting to see with IPv6 will likely not be available to them. It's unlikely that broadband ISPs will give their customers more address space in order to avoid using NAT.
NATs and VPNs serve very valuable uses within a safe and secure-computing model. If more address space means less people will be using VPNs, that's a bad thing. It will result in more vulnerability of more machines and more headaches for everyone.
We also have the spamming/DOS issue, which is completely out of hand. There are measures that could be taken with the existing system which would dramatically reduce these problems. Moving to IPv6 will only make things worse until we adopt more regulation of the existing network systems.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of RBLs. A move to IPv6 would largely wipe out all smtp-based anti-spam blacklisting.
There's been a technology in place for decades that has been used to render a population incapable and uninterested in resisting an authoritative force.
It's called television. It's very effective. What else would you need? If the government were smart, they'd start cloning Bill O'Reillys and deploy them throughout the world.
Where do relays come into this? We are talking about end users running whitelists, right?
No. ISPs use a RBL-style system to whitelist relays from which they receive mail.
Agreed - which is why this system takes the administration of lists out of the senders' hands - they may be told how many people they're sending to but not to whom (although they could try getting this info through other means). Spammers would most likely try their own rogue bulk server (which would fail to be whitelisted by the majority of ISPs), stick with SMTP (which will be less and less effective as rate limiting cuts in) or leave the party and go elsewhere.
I can appreciate your attempt to find a solution but the bottom line is your idea is impractical. It requires spammers to adhere to certain rules, which they have demonstrated with virtual unwaivering consistency they won't do.
In fact, the idea of a bulk mail protocol would likely be an addendum to the existing problem, and would actually create a new, additive form of spam that would encourage others who aren't in the business to actually get involved, therefore increasing the amount of spam. As an ISP, I would never subscribe to any new system, and the idea that it might generate revenue is about as exciting as all those other affiliate programs that promise new revenue sources. Bad idea.
If spammers are really behind these virii, and we're able to verify it, then it is probably that even the blind and computer-ignorant gov. offices, like FBI, or whoever, will eventually get the same info others have.
You would think so wouldn't you?
The problem is spammers have been breaking federal laws since the beginning of the Internet. Hijacking a mail relay has never been legal -- it's a felony. Ever heard of anyone getting jail time for a flood ping even though it is illegal?
It's interesting. You can DDOS an entire network into the stone age, interrupting commerce and costing tons of money and lost productivity, but if you put up a web site selling a tobacco pipe, you'll get 10 years in jail. Ask Tommy Chong.
1. Print out all the new laws and proposed regulations; bind them into a big, thick book.
2. Get some competent network admins (who are obviously nowhere near any government cyber-crime unit) and can easily track down the source of the spam and worms.
3. Go to the perpetrators home or residence.
4. Beat the perpetrator over the head with the book of laws.
The more laws we pass, the heavier the book becomes and the more brain damage it will do. Considering the trend our leaders have in thinking more laws will stop this when the existing laws aren't being enforced, the only reasonable solution is to use the actual laws themselves as some form of blunt instrument.
Um, yes. Does anyone see any benefit to this? Spammers by their very nature refuse to follow rules, industry best practices or laws. So it's ludicrous to assume yet another set of laws or rules will make any difference.
I have said over and over, smtp whitelisting - a sanctioned centralized list set up not unlike how TLDs are regulated, is the way to go.
My detailed outline of how to solve this problem can be found here. So far, nobody has come up with a better solution or a good reason why this wouldn't work. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.
A sanctioned SMTP whitelist could be easily employed and cost-effective. It's so effective that you can expect if it was seriously considered, there would be a very powerful corporate lobby against it.
Every time you hear about crap like this, complain to your local District Attorney. The only reason this stuff is happening is because the authorities refuse to prosecute spammers and the black hat hackers they employ. MANY cases against spammers have been made by hundreds of ISPs that the DAs in jurisdictions all around the country have refused to pursue. The attackers of these networks can be tracked down, but if the authorities won't prosecute, what can we do?
The problem with a whitelist is that it removes the ability to receive email from anyone (which is an important ability for some and required for others, e.g. support addresses).
I do not think so. It might make it slightly more difficult for someone to spontaneously set up a SMTP relay, but the benefits exponentially outweigh any inconveniences imposed.
Look at it this way. The way the current SMTP system is set up, it's analagous to a TLD system that requires no registration: anyone can flip on a SMTP relay and start spewing crap to the Internet with bogus header information which in turn creates DDOS situations. You can't arbitrarily employ a new TLD without first going through a registration process to legitimize your new domain name. These processes are now fully-automated. The exact same thing could be done with SMTP relays, and this would:
a) make it much more difficult for spammers to remain anonymous
b) make it much more expensive and time-consuming for spammers to operate
c) eliminate the most destructive method of virus/worm propagating by cutting down on rogue software that secretly turn unauthorized client machines into smtp relays
d) help identify the networks, registrars and the people involved in spamming, making it easier to enforce all the existing laws
The most effective method in my view, would be to create a separate protocol for bulk email
Your idea still doesn't deal with the worst problem of spamming, which is the theft of bandwidth. I should not be paying for the bandwidth that a spammer uses on my network, regardless of the protocol.
There are already numerous industry-best practices which address what you're talking about, the most obvious of which is simple responsible mailing practices and opt-in+confirm mailing lists.
In addition to this, enforcement of your bulk-specific protocol would be virtually impossible. You can't find a spammer on the planet who would call his crap "unsolicited", therefore nobody would even claim they're bound by rules forcing them to use such an ineffective method in the first place.
I'm curious how you determined that there were no legitimate messages blocked if you are rejecting the message on connection rather than based on analysis of its content. If you reject the message fefore you even look at it can you make any valid statements regarding the message content i.e. spam vs. legitimate?
Believe me. My clients let me know pretty darn quickly if any legitimate mail gets blocked. Our system bounces the e-mail with a URL to a page where they can contact us to let us know that their legitimate mail was blocked.
I am aware Spamcop isn't the "tightest" RBL, and most ISPs, including me, use multiple RBLs that have different, yet complimentary criteria for listing. If you're a network admin and you're tweaking your mail system, there are a number of factors to take into consideration, as well as priorities. My goal was to employ the tightest anti-spam protection with the least impact on legitimate mail. I could cut down on the spam that gets through by tightening things a little more, but I'd rather be conservative in this respect.
Spamcop does make money and charges its members for its service. Obviously Spamcop profits from spam as well, but unlike Symantec and other producers of client-side filtering systems, the use of Spamcop *reduces* user and network resources whereas the client-side systems consume even more.
As far as Spamcop and the DDOS vulnerability, it's an issue; it's an issue for everyone online. My advice to Spamcop is to have them host a small government web site for free... that way when they're DDOS'd, it would be considered an act of "terrorism" and the attacker could get the death penalty under the Patriot Act...
Forget a distributed blacklist. Why create a list of billions of hosts, when it's easier to create a centralized, sanctioned SMTP Whitelist that's a fraction of the size?
Right now, even though it seems like spitting in the wind, your efforts do make a difference. All of us ISPs who use Spamcop's BL rely on diligent, responsible people such as yourself to report spam. It helps. If nobody else will say Thank You, please allow me!
There are several levels. The "complain to the ISP" is just one of Spamcop's services. Their network employs an automated system maintaining a real-time relay blacklist based on spam reports. Even if the ISP doesn't respond or take action, rogue smtp relays will be automatically blacklisted and participating networks will begin to refuse to accept mail from these systems, whether the ISP chooses to deal with it or not.
Right now, Spamcop is THE most effective anti-spam solution bar none. End users don't realize the effect Spamcop has on overall network performance and the reduction of spam they receive in their inbox. Most users naively think client-side filtering helps when it's little more than a band-aid on a severed artery.
In the last 24 hours, one of my modest-sized mail servers reported these stats:
This is with no legitimate mail being blocked and a rather conservative set of relay blacklist rules.
That's more than 70% of the e-mail we receive clearly identified as spam and rejected at the server level.
But at least we stop the spammer as soon as he connects. We don't receive any of the junk e-mail once we identify mail coming from a known spam source. This reduces our operational costs, tax on hardware and software and available bandwidth to all users. Client-side filtering consumes all these resources and offloads the burden on the end-user to pay for software that still does not effectively deal with spam.
When you employ client-side filtering you do NOT stop spam; you do NOT reduce anyone's operational cost. When you deny mail relay access from spammers you DO cost the spammers time and money!
Spamcop has proven itself to be the most effective and productive solution at present, which is why it's being targetted by spammers. Using Spamcop's RBL, spammers can't even connect to participating networks. When you employ client-side filtering, you help spammers because their argument for de-regulation of spam involves putting the cost burden on the users - all they care about is delivering X messages and that is still accomplished, whether your mail filter catches it or you manually delete the junk, so this "solution" encourages future spam activity and also breathes more life into companies like Symantec that actually profit from the spam epidemic.
There are only two more-effective solutions to the spam problem: 1. The Federal Government finally deciding to pursue the spammers who break into computer systems (which has been illegal since before the Internet existed), and the employment of a sanctioned smtp whitelist.
No annoying commercials! At least in game you can put people on/ignore !! If I could stop the constant bombardment of advertisements, I'd probably go back to watching TV, but you can't seem to sit for more than six minutes before you're interrupted by the network news propagating FUD teasers, being told you're too fat or too poor, or that the new H2 will give your life meaning. The invasion of television commercials has made the signal-to-noise ratio of television unbearable (not that most programming isn't mindless in the first place, but you can't even watch the Discovery channel anymore without having your train of thought mowed down by that dumbass from Video Professor hawking "FREE CDs!!")
It's ridiculous. It's like someone set up a drum set in my living room and goes into a solo every six minutes, for six minutes.
Does anyone have any data on the proliferation of commercial air time compared to actual content on television? It seems to me that commercial breaks are even more numerous and longer. This is the one defining element of gaming that has not been so brutally co-opted, though I know we're seeing that change as well.
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That's all fine and dandy.. spend 10 hours to extract a crappy picture and save $10 in developing. I have a better idea. Turn the camera into a mp3 player, voice recorder or something better than it was.
Compared to A.I., Battlefield earth was Citizen Kane. A.I. is proof positive that cinematography, even the best of its kind, is doomed when Mr. Spielberg gets ahold of someone else's script and makes a mess out of it.
A.I. is also irrefutable proof that there is no life after death. Because you can bet that Kubrick would have risen from the grave or sent some kind of message from the great beyond after seeing what Spielberg did to his screenplay.
What the hell does over compressed mean?
The natural dynamic range of musical instruments is effectively "squashed" using compression. What they do is they pipe the instruments and vocals through a compressor/limiter, set the threshold so that even a whisper registers at a sizeable volume level, and when the singer gets louder or screams, the dynamic range is "compressed" so that there is an unnatural disparity in the dynamics of a track. You hear hard-pounding drums at almost the same volume as a light rimshot; singers go from mellow to high-energy in 1db. All the tracks are taken out of context, amplified and polished.
If you ever wonder why a live band doesn't sound like their album, it's because the way they produce albums nowadays is nothing like what the actual performance sounds like.
The tech community is being systemmatically infected with the same virus the mainstream has, whereas the mainstream has been programmed into ADHD via television commercials, the tech community is being infected with shallow gaming experiences that revolve around first-person shooters, virtual crime, and magic mushrooms.
I do lament the new breed of techies, who think any movie that has the wherewithall to incorporate 10 seconds of a computer screen showing a shell prompt as worthy of respect.
I'd like to still think there are core groups of tech people who are motivated by solving problems (that don't involve remotely finding out how many Mountain Dews are in the vending machine down the hall). But you're right, the tech community has changed. And entertainment has changed as well.
It makes you wonder if a movie like 2001:A Space Odyssey would even get made now? Hollywood would have to spruce it up with a naked shower scene, a slo-mo CGI battle between apes and evil aliens, and an epic space chase through a mythical gothic future city. HAL's voice would be dubbed by Angelina Jolie and she wouldn't be cold and logical, but bitter and evil-toned. There's be a Coca-Cola emblem on the Monolith. And of course the movie would start off with "Episode 8".
Holy, shit dude - That would make Revolutions just about the worst movie ever made!
No, the worst movie ever made is undoubtedly Spielberg's "A.I.", which would rank a -4096.
Matrix hovers somewhere in the area of ~ -1200
The first movie was good, or the first half. The premise was quite interesting and innovative, and then it slowed down and turned into a Kung Fu movie. I still never understood why the tech community was so quick to embrace this series as an icon. It is not worthy. Have we stooped so low as to think the Matrix' goofy "which reality is real" premise as something worth using brain cells to contemplate? This is only a notch away from the other, equally-cerebral dilemma: "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"
And thus began the "Matrix Revolution" of an endless array of technical FX as a substitute for a decent plot and character development.
Not that things haven't been this way since the dawn of cinema, but most movies nowadays are just big-budget, formulaic, television-level dramas designed less to make you think, less to entertain than they are to distract and take your money and serve as a vehicle for a plethora of merchandising efforts.
With few exceptions, most of the great classic movies of the last 20-30 years have been neutered in a progressive attempt to capitalize on the originals' success via a string of contrived sequels.
The same thing has happened to the music industry. Instead of great lyrics and creative musicianship, we're bombarded with cute-faces, dance moves and regurgitated hooks that are over-produced and heavily compressed. There should be a new category for this crap music, like there should be a new category for these new movies which do little more than feed our ever-increasing ADD.
Who is this Strauss guy? Is he yet another student-turned-teacher that has no real world experience? Nothing chaps my hide more than perpetual academics, who have never built or run a successful company preaching their superior wisdom and insight on business development.
Take a look at this guy - He can't even select a decent hairpiece. I certainly wouldn't trust his technical advice.
Isn't it amazing what happens when industry decides to innovate rather than regulate?
This should be a lesson to all the dumbass music distributors that if they pay some attention to their consumers' needs and interest, and spend more time exploring ways to enhance and expand their market's choices and experience, they will profit.
Then again, they could just go about suing more people, raising prices and marketing even more crap music, and then go back to whining about how they're suffering.
I am not in favor of IPv6 being rolled out. I think at the present time, it will amplify all the existing problems we have yet to solve.
I can appreciate the improved security and anti-spoofing provisions but the cons outweigh the pros. Most of what people are expecting to see with IPv6 will likely not be available to them. It's unlikely that broadband ISPs will give their customers more address space in order to avoid using NAT.
NATs and VPNs serve very valuable uses within a safe and secure-computing model. If more address space means less people will be using VPNs, that's a bad thing. It will result in more vulnerability of more machines and more headaches for everyone.
We also have the spamming/DOS issue, which is completely out of hand. There are measures that could be taken with the existing system which would dramatically reduce these problems. Moving to IPv6 will only make things worse until we adopt more regulation of the existing network systems.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of RBLs. A move to IPv6 would largely wipe out all smtp-based anti-spam blacklisting.
There's been a technology in place for decades that has been used to render a population incapable and uninterested in resisting an authoritative force.
It's called television. It's very effective. What else would you need? If the government were smart, they'd start cloning Bill O'Reillys and deploy them throughout the world.
Where do relays come into this? We are talking about end users running whitelists, right?
No. ISPs use a RBL-style system to whitelist relays from which they receive mail.
Agreed - which is why this system takes the administration of lists out of the senders' hands - they may be told how many people they're sending to but not to whom (although they could try getting this info through other means). Spammers would most likely try their own rogue bulk server (which would fail to be whitelisted by the majority of ISPs), stick with SMTP (which will be less and less effective as rate limiting cuts in) or leave the party and go elsewhere.
I can appreciate your attempt to find a solution but the bottom line is your idea is impractical. It requires spammers to adhere to certain rules, which they have demonstrated with virtual unwaivering consistency they won't do.
In fact, the idea of a bulk mail protocol would likely be an addendum to the existing problem, and would actually create a new, additive form of spam that would encourage others who aren't in the business to actually get involved, therefore increasing the amount of spam. As an ISP, I would never subscribe to any new system, and the idea that it might generate revenue is about as exciting as all those other affiliate programs that promise new revenue sources. Bad idea.
If spammers are really behind these virii, and we're able to verify it, then it is probably that even the blind and computer-ignorant gov. offices, like FBI, or whoever, will eventually get the same info others have.
You would think so wouldn't you?
The problem is spammers have been breaking federal laws since the beginning of the Internet. Hijacking a mail relay has never been legal -- it's a felony. Ever heard of anyone getting jail time for a flood ping even though it is illegal?
It's interesting. You can DDOS an entire network into the stone age, interrupting commerce and costing tons of money and lost productivity, but if you put up a web site selling a tobacco pipe, you'll get 10 years in jail. Ask Tommy Chong.
1. Print out all the new laws and proposed regulations; bind them into a big, thick book.
2. Get some competent network admins (who are obviously nowhere near any government cyber-crime unit) and can easily track down the source of the spam and worms.
3. Go to the perpetrators home or residence.
4. Beat the perpetrator over the head with the book of laws.
The more laws we pass, the heavier the book becomes and the more brain damage it will do. Considering the trend our leaders have in thinking more laws will stop this when the existing laws aren't being enforced, the only reasonable solution is to use the actual laws themselves as some form of blunt instrument.
Does anyone see drawbacks to this plan?
Um, yes. Does anyone see any benefit to this? Spammers by their very nature refuse to follow rules, industry best practices or laws. So it's ludicrous to assume yet another set of laws or rules will make any difference.
I have said over and over, smtp whitelisting - a sanctioned centralized list set up not unlike how TLDs are regulated, is the way to go.
My detailed outline of how to solve this problem can be found here. So far, nobody has come up with a better solution or a good reason why this wouldn't work. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.
A sanctioned SMTP whitelist could be easily employed and cost-effective. It's so effective that you can expect if it was seriously considered, there would be a very powerful corporate lobby against it.
Every time you hear about crap like this, complain to your local District Attorney. The only reason this stuff is happening is because the authorities refuse to prosecute spammers and the black hat hackers they employ. MANY cases against spammers have been made by hundreds of ISPs that the DAs in jurisdictions all around the country have refused to pursue. The attackers of these networks can be tracked down, but if the authorities won't prosecute, what can we do?
The problem with a whitelist is that it removes the ability to receive email from anyone (which is an important ability for some and required for others, e.g. support addresses).
I do not think so. It might make it slightly more difficult for someone to spontaneously set up a SMTP relay, but the benefits exponentially outweigh any inconveniences imposed.
Look at it this way. The way the current SMTP system is set up, it's analagous to a TLD system that requires no registration: anyone can flip on a SMTP relay and start spewing crap to the Internet with bogus header information which in turn creates DDOS situations. You can't arbitrarily employ a new TLD without first going through a registration process to legitimize your new domain name. These processes are now fully-automated. The exact same thing could be done with SMTP relays, and this would:
a) make it much more difficult for spammers to remain anonymous
b) make it much more expensive and time-consuming for spammers to operate
c) eliminate the most destructive method of virus/worm propagating by cutting down on rogue software that secretly turn unauthorized client machines into smtp relays
d) help identify the networks, registrars and the people involved in spamming, making it easier to enforce all the existing laws
The most effective method in my view, would be to create a separate protocol for bulk email
Your idea still doesn't deal with the worst problem of spamming, which is the theft of bandwidth. I should not be paying for the bandwidth that a spammer uses on my network, regardless of the protocol.
There are already numerous industry-best practices which address what you're talking about, the most obvious of which is simple responsible mailing practices and opt-in+confirm mailing lists.
In addition to this, enforcement of your bulk-specific protocol would be virtually impossible. You can't find a spammer on the planet who would call his crap "unsolicited", therefore nobody would even claim they're bound by rules forcing them to use such an ineffective method in the first place.
I'm curious how you determined that there were no legitimate messages blocked if you are rejecting the message on connection rather than based on analysis of its content. If you reject the message fefore you even look at it can you make any valid statements regarding the message content i.e. spam vs. legitimate?
Believe me. My clients let me know pretty darn quickly if any legitimate mail gets blocked. Our system bounces the e-mail with a URL to a page where they can contact us to let us know that their legitimate mail was blocked.
I am aware Spamcop isn't the "tightest" RBL, and most ISPs, including me, use multiple RBLs that have different, yet complimentary criteria for listing. If you're a network admin and you're tweaking your mail system, there are a number of factors to take into consideration, as well as priorities. My goal was to employ the tightest anti-spam protection with the least impact on legitimate mail. I could cut down on the spam that gets through by tightening things a little more, but I'd rather be conservative in this respect.
Spamcop does make money and charges its members for its service. Obviously Spamcop profits from spam as well, but unlike Symantec and other producers of client-side filtering systems, the use of Spamcop *reduces* user and network resources whereas the client-side systems consume even more.
As far as Spamcop and the DDOS vulnerability, it's an issue; it's an issue for everyone online. My advice to Spamcop is to have them host a small government web site for free... that way when they're DDOS'd, it would be considered an act of "terrorism" and the attacker could get the death penalty under the Patriot Act...
Forget a distributed blacklist. Why create a list of billions of hosts, when it's easier to create a centralized, sanctioned SMTP Whitelist that's a fraction of the size?
Right now, even though it seems like spitting in the wind, your efforts do make a difference. All of us ISPs who use Spamcop's BL rely on diligent, responsible people such as yourself to report spam. It helps. If nobody else will say Thank You, please allow me!
You don't understand how Spamcop works.
There are several levels. The "complain to the ISP" is just one of Spamcop's services. Their network employs an automated system maintaining a real-time relay blacklist based on spam reports. Even if the ISP doesn't respond or take action, rogue smtp relays will be automatically blacklisted and participating networks will begin to refuse to accept mail from these systems, whether the ISP chooses to deal with it or not.
Right now, Spamcop is THE most effective anti-spam solution bar none. End users don't realize the effect Spamcop has on overall network performance and the reduction of spam they receive in their inbox. Most users naively think client-side filtering helps when it's little more than a band-aid on a severed artery.
In the last 24 hours, one of my modest-sized mail servers reported these stats:
accepted mail: 2480 messages
spamcop blacklist rejected mail: 8216 messages
This is with no legitimate mail being blocked and a rather conservative set of relay blacklist rules.
That's more than 70% of the e-mail we receive clearly identified as spam and rejected at the server level.
But at least we stop the spammer as soon as he connects. We don't receive any of the junk e-mail once we identify mail coming from a known spam source. This reduces our operational costs, tax on hardware and software and available bandwidth to all users. Client-side filtering consumes all these resources and offloads the burden on the end-user to pay for software that still does not effectively deal with spam.
When you employ client-side filtering you do NOT stop spam; you do NOT reduce anyone's operational cost. When you deny mail relay access from spammers you DO cost the spammers time and money!
Spamcop has proven itself to be the most effective and productive solution at present, which is why it's being targetted by spammers. Using Spamcop's RBL, spammers can't even connect to participating networks. When you employ client-side filtering, you help spammers because their argument for de-regulation of spam involves putting the cost burden on the users - all they care about is delivering X messages and that is still accomplished, whether your mail filter catches it or you manually delete the junk, so this "solution" encourages future spam activity and also breathes more life into companies like Symantec that actually profit from the spam epidemic.
There are only two more-effective solutions to the spam problem: 1. The Federal Government finally deciding to pursue the spammers who break into computer systems (which has been illegal since before the Internet existed), and the employment of a sanctioned smtp whitelist.
I posted a previous comment with my detailed analysis of the issue and exactly how it can be realistically solved.
So I use Outlook XP for email
What's it like to live your life at Defcon 1 with Outlook?
No annoying commercials! At least in game you can put people on /ignore !! If I could stop the constant bombardment of advertisements, I'd probably go back to watching TV, but you can't seem to sit for more than six minutes before you're interrupted by the network news propagating FUD teasers, being told you're too fat or too poor, or that the new H2 will give your life meaning. The invasion of television commercials has made the signal-to-noise ratio of television unbearable (not that most programming isn't mindless in the first place, but you can't even watch the Discovery channel anymore without having your train of thought mowed down by that dumbass from Video Professor hawking "FREE CDs!!")
It's ridiculous. It's like someone set up a drum set in my living room and goes into a solo every six minutes, for six minutes.
Does anyone have any data on the proliferation of commercial air time compared to actual content on television? It seems to me that commercial breaks are even more numerous and longer. This is the one defining element of gaming that has not been so brutally co-opted, though I know we're seeing that change as well.
Since I got my wife to start playing Star Wars Galaxies we've gotten a new computer and have no plans to upgrade our 10 year old tv.
I actually get a bit of the old nausea when I watch anything on mtv (except jackass).
I'm sure Sony is quite proud to pick up the Jackass demographic.
At least that explains the Wookie I saw last night on Naboo wearing panties on his head while jumping in front of a land speeder.