These people are suffering. Doesn't that mean anything to you?
Suffering according to your viewpoint. Whether people are suffering due to economic depressions, repressive leadership, poor living conditions, a bad hair day, or the fact that they work with carcinogens, is irrelvant.
If you look at all the world's problems as if everyone can have a nice cushy life you're either stupid or naive. Think about this: if every single person in the world suddenly got $10,000,000 cash (other than an immediate jump in inflation), the poverty line would likewise jump by an equivalent amount.
Suffering is not defined as being poor. Nor is it defined as having "poor living conditions" or a "crummy job" (by what standards?). May I remind you that the world is not a utopia? Are these people suffering? I might think so... but only because I imagine myself in that position, and compare that to my current position, and I would not want to be scavenging computer corpses for parts.
If you want to spend your hard earned money to help give these people a leg up on life, go right ahead. But what about all the other people who need a leg up too? Are you going to help them too? What exactly would your criteria be for people who "need our help?"
Are you afraid you'll end up "like them?" Do you think if you make your little payments that you'll be spared that "suffering?"
Your post was interesting. Not insightful, but interesting. However, since I have chosen to opt-out of Slashdot's moderation round-robin I will instead post this reply (which, BTW, uses 100% recycled electrons, so you can feel good reading it).
Do you believe in the concept of the noble savage? For example, many Americans believe that the Native Americans ("indigenous peoples") were "in harmony with their environment" and that the (savage) white man destroyed that and forced them to live on reservations. Well, that's half-right... but do you know which half?
Also, note that the European mentality during the "age of exploration" was very similar, and many of the "primitive" tribes found by the Spanish/Dutch/English/French were seen as "noble savages."
Technologically advanced civilizations often look at "primitive" societies and believe that the primitive societies are "doing it right" because they can make a living without all the technology (and harsh chemicals, factories, etc). The mistake many people make is that they assume that if the "noble savages" had these options they would not use them, since they are (and want to be) "one with nature."
With reference to the Native Americans, many of their rituals and culture were designed to promote the "one with nature" idea. I would imagine this was more of a survival instinct in itself; they realized that if they raped the land they would eventually run out of land (and food).
If you ask an anthropologist you will discover that human beings have been raping the environment for as long as we have existed. Humans have never been "in harmony" with nature. Nomadic peoples would live in an area for a short while and dump their refuse in a certain location. Then, it would pile up, and they would move to another location -- this was easy because the number of people in a nomadic group was relatively small. Since the refuse was basically natural it would (after a year or more) be decomposed enough where the nomads would leave their trash heap at their current location and move back. Thus, many archeological digs will find multiple layers of refuse from nomadic peoples. Remember, though, that at the time, the refuse was 100% organic so it was "safe" to come back later because any "dangerous" materials would have decomposed.
Now, along comes agriculture and now some humans decide to stop their nomadic tendencies. Now the problem is you can't easily move when you generate waste. So you put the waste far away from your home and don't worry about it. As societies grew, the waste disposal became a serious problem, as it had to be dumped far away as to not affect the local population, but at the same time the population and city were expanding... and running into the waste disposal locations. At the same time, the waste being generated was becoming more and more toxic, as it was less and less organic matter.
You might be surprised to know that there is a speces of ants that also does something like this (I can't remember their name at the moment). The ants, which IIRC are in South America, can completely destroy the area where they live, and when they are done, they move on to another area. This is the true nature of plants and animals. The only thing to keep us (or the ants) in check is other predators. When those don't exist, there is nothing to stop us, as natural creatures, from destroying our environment and ourselves.
At least humans have the advantage of intelligence, so theoretically we could stop ourselves. But realize that most people aren't willing to go hungry and die just to save the environment -- a human life is incredibly short in the "big picture" of our environment. On those who have the luxury to worry about the environment will want to protect it... everyone else is just trying to make it until tomorrow.
Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets.
I hope the RIAA has an internet connection from AT&T, or whoever else they claim is responsible. Then AT&T (or whoever) can simply cut off the RIAA and the problem is solved... blacklist the RIAA's internet connection and it will be pretty difficult for them to track "offenders" (although not to sue them).
Example: 10 spams get the word 'blunderbuss' but he has no regular email with that word. Therefore, any future email may be rejected because of the word 'blunderbuss', even though there is no basis to know whether the word CAN be used legitamately.
I don't claim to understand the article fully, but I'll take a stab at responding to your example...
Let's say you have an email with 200 words in it (including the header, etc). Let's assume that your friend the history buff is sending you some pictures of a blunderbuss. Of course he's kind enough to provide a description of the pictures and a short history of the blunderbuss.
Now, this goes through the filter which splits up the words into 200 tokens. Even if blunderbuss has a.99 probability of being a spam word, the message is not rejected based simply by matching this word. This one word will influence the final probability calculation (eg, moving towards a "hit" for spam), but the other 199 words could (and will) push the email towards the "valid mail" threshold. Thus, the.99 is negated by the near-zero probabilities of other words in the email (sorry, I'm not a mathematician -- my apoligies if that's confusing). There is an example in the article which explains this.
If the email contained only the word blunderbuss (disregarding the words in the header), then it's probably spam. However, if the email contained only the word blunderbuss it's probably not very useful in the first place (unless you're an international spy;)).
UltraSparc, Linux, and RAID1
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GCC 3.2 Released
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· Score: 3, Informative
In the past few weeks I've been working on moving my main (home) server from Slackware on i386 to Debian on UltraSparc.
The Debian 3.0r0 install went fine (although for those trying it, be sure to select "rescue" when you boot off the CD). I recompiled my kernel using egcs64 and added RAID1 support into the kernel (with RAID0 as a module). I was able to setup my RAID partitions without difficulty, and the RAID0 arrays mount just fine. Unfortunately, when I try to mount the RAID1 arrays I get an oops, and any attempts to access the RAID device after that simply hang (that's a technical term;)).
After a few searches on various mailing list archives, I found this post on the Linux-Sparc list. I tried this particular patch and was able to mount the RAID1, but after a few minutes copying data to the drive gave me another oops.
So, one supposition was that the oops was due to a compiler bug, but since egcs64 is so old (from 1998 I think) it's not going to get fixed. So I was looking at GCC 3.1.1 yesterday and got it installed but I was unable to compile a kernel with it (make couldn't find the compiler).
Is GCC 3.2 usable for Sparc? The GCC site had a report of a successful build of 2.4.18 using GCC 3.1.1 so I expect 3.2 would also work for UltraSparc. However, I tried to get GCC 3.1 working on a Gentoo install I did on my U30 and it died a horrible death. If GCC 3.2 will work, how do I install it as a replacement for GCC 2.95 and egcs64? When I installed the debs for 3.1.1 they didn't seem to replace either GCC or egcs. Can I pass some arguments to make-kpkg to provide the location of the compiler, as well as the -m64 option for UltraSparc?
The one bright point of this whole fiasco is that maybe, just perhaps, the investment community will have wisened up and won't tolerate this is the future.
You forgot your closing </sarcasm> pseudo-HTML tag.
I, for one, would love to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen. I think it would be a great experience.
A few months after the Matrix was released (IIRC), the Sony Metreon theaters in San Francisco (4th and Mission) had a one-night showing of the Matrix on their IMAX screen. I attended the showing.
Other than the screen being rediculously big, I don't recall it being all that special. I think the film was simply enlarged to 70mm (and as I recall the picture's edges were a bit soft). Perhaps this new transfer method will magically fix this.
Perhaps some other slashdotters attended that showing... and if so they can post their thoughts.
I did think it was cool though (but tickets were expensive!).
...should be limited to $1000 per individual per year, per candidate. Donations of $2000 per individual per year will be the limit for registered political parties. Limit donations to registered votes who voted in their last local elections if you want (yes, this may be a bit extreme). Corporations or groups may not donate to political parties/candidates. Ever.
Now let's see how much that stops the corporate favoritism. Probably not entirely, but my guess is it would have a very pleasant effect... because the more overt forms of favoritism would be much more likely to land the respective parties in jail.
Just an idea.
Unfortunately, though, I agree with your statements, and sadly I see the US very slowly spiraling down towards its own destruction (perhaps not in the sense that it will completely disappear, but rather that it becomes something which its founding fathers had tried to protect against).
We will see a change when politicians actually make unpopular decisions. That is their job. And it can start with extensive changes to how they are elected. When money drives their campaigns, who do you think will have the greatest influence on their decisions?
Re:a web-marketing company came to me...
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Meet the Spammers
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· Score: 2
Remember, many CEOS and upper management read the trashy industry trade mags to pretend like they know what's going on. They buy Microsoft/Sun/Dell/HP/Compaq marketing hook, line, and sinker.
These are people who are easily swayed if you merely provide a hint of truth and either A) an easy way to profit or B) things to avoid that cause losses.
So spammers are using A. But point out that spam can drive away the savvy users guaranteed, and will likely drive away 90% of the rest of the recipients of the emails (make up a number, spammers do). Then drop some hints about how spamming is unethical and illegal (no need to back this up, use FUD).
Also, you might want to suggest that their own marketing department actually do their own marketing rather than outsourcing it. At least this way if they do spam, they can be held directly responsible (and understand what the true consequences of an irate customer base are).
I have received commercial emails from IBM. However, I have signed up for some of their services, like the DeveloperWorks, so they weren't unsolicited. Since they have multiple divisions and each keeps separate data on me, I think I've even signed up more than once (and probably forgot to specify I didn't want their ads). At any rate, I have received some ads from IBM.
However, and a big however, is that these messages are 100% valid commercial emails: they have a full, valid header, and most importantly, the subject line begins with "ADV:" or "(ADV)" so they're easily cought (and bounced) by my Sendmail rules.
I have received spams from some other companies, though, on an email account which should **never** receive email. What is this mythical account? It's the text-messaging account on my Nextel work phone. I have never used this as an email address on the web, because it can only receive 255 character messages.
Yet what do spammers care? I have received (improperly labelled) spams from Verizon, and a few other "major" companies which should know better, and could easily get sued. Most of the emails get cut off before I find out who it is and what they're selling. But some don't -- and if I had any means to collect damages from these companies I would do so.
One might go so far as to argue that since the matter which the building is constructed out of has not really changed in the past few billion years, that the building is simply the reincarnation of it's ancestors, or your ancestors, or our planet's ancestors.
OpenFirmware is an open standard. Apple uses it, although apparently has not implemented it fully (at least according to the Sun spec). I don't see why PCs couldn't use it. Maybe because it would require new firmware on any bootable PCI devices (IDE controllers, SCSI controllers, etc).
"I think that CDex is crappy. It doesn't do half of what this software does. I will only give my support for this software. I mean is this software not turtle enough for you????" -- blinkboy
"Ever since I downloaded this, my e-mail box has been full of great, insightful advertisements! Also, all of my pop-ups are custom-tailored to my browsing preferences!" -- JarJar24
"I have used this software and cdex and it is NOT a rip off. You are all making false accusations based on nothing. They are a little similiar but this is NOT a clone of cdex. If you want more proof then feel free to email me at jetonia@yahoo.com if not then STFU and quit posting this non-sence about it being a rip off because ITS NOT!" -- Jetonia@yahoo.com
I'm surprised NeoNapster isn't planning a ResellerRating-esque "censoring" of these posts. Anyone recall that particular episode? I recall one company performed the classic iBait-And-Switch on their online store... followed by a quick assaulting on ResellerRatings and other such sites. They complained, and the ratings sites caved, removing the deluge of negative reports. In their defense, though, they were later reinstated. Check HardOCP for more info... this was a year ago or more.
Why isn't there an "-1, misinformation" or alternately "-1, wrong" option when scoring messages?
If you're going to karma whore by defining acronyms, at least get it right. You can look these kinds of things up on everything2.com or dictionary.com. And better yet, you can even link to the definition (since moderators like these kinds of things... it's a "safe" use of moderation points).
which was overrun by mice when they demolished a run-down building beside us
The mice demolished a building!?! Did they hire an outside contractor or did they do it themselves? Either way, though, that's definitely an effective way to get back at the prior owners for the mousetraps and rat poison.
Did they enjoy the popups? Or maybe they were too busy trying to punch the monkey and so they accidentally clicked the wrong option. Or maybe they use Mozilla, and thus aren't bothered by popup ads.
Then again, perhaps that's just statistical error.
Better yet, does anyone have a pre-compiled list of ad servers for insertion into my Mozilla prefs? I've blocked a few ad sites in the weeks I've been using Mozilla, but I'm guessing someone has a list already...
What stops an attacker with root privs from removing the attributes?
I may have misunderstood chrysalis, but the attributes can only be changed in single user mode. So you absolutely have to have local console access to set (or change) the attributes. But at that point you've got physical security issues which outweigh any sort of ACL/attribute-based protections you have.
You are not the only country that has the expertise and extra money to devote to saving the world.
Agreed. Unfortunately, the USA is the only country that is immediately labeled as imperialistic when trying to "save the world."
No one said it would be easy to be the world's traffic cop.
I'd be very happy if the US could just sit back and let everyone go on the merry way, and everyone could love each other and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, there are a great deal of people in this world who have demonstrated their complete lack of ability to participate in the world community... one which they are a part of whether they like it or not. And I'm not talking about France here (<rimshot>).
While there are many other competent nations, and some, like France, which have more of a "say" in some areas of the world, the majority of the world looks to the USA when the shit hits the fan. The USA has the money, power, and military might to "get things done" -- it would be foolish to believe that with all that control they would decide to act against their own interests.
Re:OMG! A sucker *is* born every minute!!!!
on
Spam Doesn't Work?
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· Score: 2
Premise: For every 10,000 pieces of spam mail sent at least 1 gets a 'buyer'
<lots of math>
Conclusion: A sucker is born every minute
While you may be correct in your math, you fail to realize that while there may be 600000 suckers born each year, 90% or more of them will not have email addresses. So while the number of suckers may be high, the valid email address to sucker ratio is not nearly as good as an e-marketer might like.
T.M.D.A. It stands for tagged message delivery agent. Read more here
Thanks for posting the link, I had heard about this product but couldn't recall the name.
After reading over the features, though, I should note that the mail is accepted whether it is spam or not. It just doesn't get delivered to your inbox if it is not "confirmed." To the end user, such as my father or sister, this is great -- they don't get spammed.
However, as a system administrator and bandwidth hoarder, I would hesitate to install TMDA, and only TMDA on a mail server. The problem is that the spammers' mail systems will believe the message was successfully delivered (250 OK - message accepted for delivery, etc at the end of SMTP session). This has two downsides: 1) The spammer knows your address is valid, and 2) Repeated delivery of spams wastes (precious/expensive) bandwidth.
Now, let's consider the outgoing messages... remember that confirmations are sent out to the sender (by the way, is this the header's From: address or the Return-path: address?). As most from addresses are forged, or quickly fill with flames, etc, your messages will simply bounce. And if your mail system (or perhaps TMDA) isn't smart enough, it will repeatedly try to deliver the confirmation request. Again, a waste of bandwidth, and possibly a waste of storage space.
I'm very interested in TMDA, and I will definitely try it out. However, I also believe that some sane Sendmail rules and use of various DNS blacklists will stop the majority of spam. In fact, I don't recall the last time I got spam at my personal account. My email address is easily spiderable on my website...
My Sendmail rules will bounce messages during the SMTP transaction... not after. This way a bounce message is returned immediately to the sender. If spammers are listening to my mail server, they will remove my address from their list, believing it is invalid.
The goal in fighting spam should be to reduce the list of "valid" email addresses. If we accept spam but simply delete it (eg, using client-side MUA filtering or TMDA) then that is just another "miss" on the spammer's mailing list. But if their list starts shrinking due to "invalid" addresses then it will be less and less economical to send out so much spam.
Think about it for a moment. If a spammer sends out a million emails, and 10% are filtered on the client side, that's still 900,000 addresses from which they may get a "hit." Let's say the spammers expect.1% of their targets/victims to respond. That's 1000 responses (remember, this is calculated on the million initial messages). What if the 10%, though, rather than deleting the message after delivery, denied delivery to begin with. Now the spammer's list shrinks by 10%. Now spammers have to expect a.111% hit rate to make the same amount of sales. By continuing this process, at some point their victim list will be too small to "reasonably" generate a profitable response.
Those of you in California may choose to add a "this server located in California" to your SMTP greeting message. It should help if you decide to prosecute a spammer for UCE. SBC/PacBell has some good information on California spam laws.
Obviously, a better solution would be a combination of the two... TMDA and some good Sendmail rules (or whatever MTA you like). But I would hope that TMDA could deliver fake bounce messages to those who do not confirm their messages.
Slashdot Mirror
These people are suffering. Doesn't that mean anything to you?
Suffering according to your viewpoint. Whether people are suffering due to economic depressions, repressive leadership, poor living conditions, a bad hair day, or the fact that they work with carcinogens, is irrelvant.
If you look at all the world's problems as if everyone can have a nice cushy life you're either stupid or naive. Think about this: if every single person in the world suddenly got $10,000,000 cash (other than an immediate jump in inflation), the poverty line would likewise jump by an equivalent amount.
Suffering is not defined as being poor. Nor is it defined as having "poor living conditions" or a "crummy job" (by what standards?). May I remind you that the world is not a utopia? Are these people suffering? I might think so... but only because I imagine myself in that position, and compare that to my current position, and I would not want to be scavenging computer corpses for parts.
If you want to spend your hard earned money to help give these people a leg up on life, go right ahead. But what about all the other people who need a leg up too? Are you going to help them too? What exactly would your criteria be for people who "need our help?"
Are you afraid you'll end up "like them?" Do you think if you make your little payments that you'll be spared that "suffering?"
</flamebait>
Your post was interesting. Not insightful, but interesting. However, since I have chosen to opt-out of Slashdot's moderation round-robin I will instead post this reply (which, BTW, uses 100% recycled electrons, so you can feel good reading it).
Do you believe in the concept of the noble savage? For example, many Americans believe that the Native Americans ("indigenous peoples") were "in harmony with their environment" and that the (savage) white man destroyed that and forced them to live on reservations. Well, that's half-right... but do you know which half?
Also, note that the European mentality during the "age of exploration" was very similar, and many of the "primitive" tribes found by the Spanish/Dutch/English/French were seen as "noble savages."
Technologically advanced civilizations often look at "primitive" societies and believe that the primitive societies are "doing it right" because they can make a living without all the technology (and harsh chemicals, factories, etc). The mistake many people make is that they assume that if the "noble savages" had these options they would not use them, since they are (and want to be) "one with nature."
With reference to the Native Americans, many of their rituals and culture were designed to promote the "one with nature" idea. I would imagine this was more of a survival instinct in itself; they realized that if they raped the land they would eventually run out of land (and food).
If you ask an anthropologist you will discover that human beings have been raping the environment for as long as we have existed. Humans have never been "in harmony" with nature. Nomadic peoples would live in an area for a short while and dump their refuse in a certain location. Then, it would pile up, and they would move to another location -- this was easy because the number of people in a nomadic group was relatively small. Since the refuse was basically natural it would (after a year or more) be decomposed enough where the nomads would leave their trash heap at their current location and move back. Thus, many archeological digs will find multiple layers of refuse from nomadic peoples. Remember, though, that at the time, the refuse was 100% organic so it was "safe" to come back later because any "dangerous" materials would have decomposed.
Now, along comes agriculture and now some humans decide to stop their nomadic tendencies. Now the problem is you can't easily move when you generate waste. So you put the waste far away from your home and don't worry about it. As societies grew, the waste disposal became a serious problem, as it had to be dumped far away as to not affect the local population, but at the same time the population and city were expanding... and running into the waste disposal locations. At the same time, the waste being generated was becoming more and more toxic, as it was less and less organic matter.
You might be surprised to know that there is a speces of ants that also does something like this (I can't remember their name at the moment). The ants, which IIRC are in South America, can completely destroy the area where they live, and when they are done, they move on to another area. This is the true nature of plants and animals. The only thing to keep us (or the ants) in check is other predators. When those don't exist, there is nothing to stop us, as natural creatures, from destroying our environment and ourselves.
At least humans have the advantage of intelligence, so theoretically we could stop ourselves. But realize that most people aren't willing to go hungry and die just to save the environment -- a human life is incredibly short in the "big picture" of our environment. On those who have the luxury to worry about the environment will want to protect it... everyone else is just trying to make it until tomorrow.
Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets.
I hope the RIAA has an internet connection from AT&T, or whoever else they claim is responsible. Then AT&T (or whoever) can simply cut off the RIAA and the problem is solved... blacklist the RIAA's internet connection and it will be pretty difficult for them to track "offenders" (although not to sue them).
Example: 10 spams get the word 'blunderbuss' but he has no regular email with that word. Therefore, any future email may be rejected because of the word 'blunderbuss', even though there is no basis to know whether the word CAN be used legitamately.
.99 probability of being a spam word, the message is not rejected based simply by matching this word. This one word will influence the final probability calculation (eg, moving towards a "hit" for spam), but the other 199 words could (and will) push the email towards the "valid mail" threshold. Thus, the .99 is negated by the near-zero probabilities of other words in the email (sorry, I'm not a mathematician -- my apoligies if that's confusing). There is an example in the article which explains this.
;)).
I don't claim to understand the article fully, but I'll take a stab at responding to your example...
Let's say you have an email with 200 words in it (including the header, etc). Let's assume that your friend the history buff is sending you some pictures of a blunderbuss. Of course he's kind enough to provide a description of the pictures and a short history of the blunderbuss.
Now, this goes through the filter which splits up the words into 200 tokens. Even if blunderbuss has a
If the email contained only the word blunderbuss (disregarding the words in the header), then it's probably spam. However, if the email contained only the word blunderbuss it's probably not very useful in the first place (unless you're an international spy
In the past few weeks I've been working on moving my main (home) server from Slackware on i386 to Debian on UltraSparc.
;)).
The Debian 3.0r0 install went fine (although for those trying it, be sure to select "rescue" when you boot off the CD). I recompiled my kernel using egcs64 and added RAID1 support into the kernel (with RAID0 as a module). I was able to setup my RAID partitions without difficulty, and the RAID0 arrays mount just fine. Unfortunately, when I try to mount the RAID1 arrays I get an oops, and any attempts to access the RAID device after that simply hang (that's a technical term
After a few searches on various mailing list archives, I found this post on the Linux-Sparc list. I tried this particular patch and was able to mount the RAID1, but after a few minutes copying data to the drive gave me another oops.
So, one supposition was that the oops was due to a compiler bug, but since egcs64 is so old (from 1998 I think) it's not going to get fixed. So I was looking at GCC 3.1.1 yesterday and got it installed but I was unable to compile a kernel with it (make couldn't find the compiler).
Is GCC 3.2 usable for Sparc? The GCC site had a report of a successful build of 2.4.18 using GCC 3.1.1 so I expect 3.2 would also work for UltraSparc. However, I tried to get GCC 3.1 working on a Gentoo install I did on my U30 and it died a horrible death. If GCC 3.2 will work, how do I install it as a replacement for GCC 2.95 and egcs64? When I installed the debs for 3.1.1 they didn't seem to replace either GCC or egcs. Can I pass some arguments to make-kpkg to provide the location of the compiler, as well as the -m64 option for UltraSparc?
That sounds like Eliza or whatever that "computerized" psychiatrist app is called.
You were trolled by a computerized, autoresponding bot!
Any monkey with a screwdriver and half a brain can assemble a computer.
Exactly! And just think what a human, with a whole brain, could assemble with a full toolkit!
I.e. what is called RAID10 would for most of us fall under the definition of RAID5?
RAID5 and RAID10 (or, RAID1+0) are two entirely different RAID implementations.
Please read this link regarding the "Skinny on RAID"
The one bright point of this whole fiasco is that maybe, just perhaps, the investment community will have wisened up and won't tolerate this is the future.
You forgot your closing </sarcasm> pseudo-HTML tag.
I'm not surprised... in fact, it's as I predicted.
The backlash from the HardOCP incident was quite loud, and painful for the offending parties.
we want to see The Matrix on IMAX
I, for one, would love to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen. I think it would be a great experience.
A few months after the Matrix was released (IIRC), the Sony Metreon theaters in San Francisco (4th and Mission) had a one-night showing of the Matrix on their IMAX screen. I attended the showing.
Other than the screen being rediculously big, I don't recall it being all that special. I think the film was simply enlarged to 70mm (and as I recall the picture's edges were a bit soft). Perhaps this new transfer method will magically fix this.
Perhaps some other slashdotters attended that showing... and if so they can post their thoughts.
I did think it was cool though (but tickets were expensive!).
...should be limited to $1000 per individual per year, per candidate. Donations of $2000 per individual per year will be the limit for registered political parties. Limit donations to registered votes who voted in their last local elections if you want (yes, this may be a bit extreme). Corporations or groups may not donate to political parties/candidates. Ever.
Now let's see how much that stops the corporate favoritism. Probably not entirely, but my guess is it would have a very pleasant effect... because the more overt forms of favoritism would be much more likely to land the respective parties in jail.
Just an idea.
Unfortunately, though, I agree with your statements, and sadly I see the US very slowly spiraling down towards its own destruction (perhaps not in the sense that it will completely disappear, but rather that it becomes something which its founding fathers had tried to protect against).
We will see a change when politicians actually make unpopular decisions. That is their job. And it can start with extensive changes to how they are elected. When money drives their campaigns, who do you think will have the greatest influence on their decisions?
Remember, many CEOS and upper management read the trashy industry trade mags to pretend like they know what's going on. They buy Microsoft/Sun/Dell/HP/Compaq marketing hook, line, and sinker.
These are people who are easily swayed if you merely provide a hint of truth and either A) an easy way to profit or B) things to avoid that cause losses.
So spammers are using A. But point out that spam can drive away the savvy users guaranteed, and will likely drive away 90% of the rest of the recipients of the emails (make up a number, spammers do). Then drop some hints about how spamming is unethical and illegal (no need to back this up, use FUD).
Also, you might want to suggest that their own marketing department actually do their own marketing rather than outsourcing it. At least this way if they do spam, they can be held directly responsible (and understand what the true consequences of an irate customer base are).
I have received commercial emails from IBM. However, I have signed up for some of their services, like the DeveloperWorks, so they weren't unsolicited. Since they have multiple divisions and each keeps separate data on me, I think I've even signed up more than once (and probably forgot to specify I didn't want their ads). At any rate, I have received some ads from IBM.
However, and a big however, is that these messages are 100% valid commercial emails: they have a full, valid header, and most importantly, the subject line begins with "ADV:" or "(ADV)" so they're easily cought (and bounced) by my Sendmail rules.
I have received spams from some other companies, though, on an email account which should **never** receive email. What is this mythical account? It's the text-messaging account on my Nextel work phone. I have never used this as an email address on the web, because it can only receive 255 character messages.
Yet what do spammers care? I have received (improperly labelled) spams from Verizon, and a few other "major" companies which should know better, and could easily get sued. Most of the emails get cut off before I find out who it is and what they're selling. But some don't -- and if I had any means to collect damages from these companies I would do so.
still called a "new building" when it is built
One might go so far as to argue that since the matter which the building is constructed out of has not really changed in the past few billion years, that the building is simply the reincarnation of it's ancestors, or your ancestors, or our planet's ancestors.
OpenFirmware is an open standard. Apple uses it, although apparently has not implemented it fully (at least according to the Sun spec). I don't see why PCs couldn't use it. Maybe because it would require new firmware on any bootable PCI devices (IDE controllers, SCSI controllers, etc).
http://download.com.com/3302-2140-10132447.html?ob =0&pn=1&fb=1
A few gems:
"I think that CDex is crappy. It doesn't do half of what this software does. I will only give my support for this software. I mean is this software not turtle enough for you????" -- blinkboy
"Ever since I downloaded this, my e-mail box has been full of great, insightful advertisements! Also, all of my pop-ups are custom-tailored to my browsing preferences!" -- JarJar24
"I have used this software and cdex and it is NOT a rip off. You are all making false accusations based on nothing. They are a little similiar but this is NOT a clone of cdex. If you want more proof then feel free to email me at jetonia@yahoo.com if not then STFU and quit posting this non-sence about it being a rip off because ITS NOT!" -- Jetonia@yahoo.com
I'm surprised NeoNapster isn't planning a ResellerRating-esque "censoring" of these posts. Anyone recall that particular episode? I recall one company performed the classic iBait-And-Switch on their online store... followed by a quick assaulting on ResellerRatings and other such sites. They complained, and the ratings sites caved, removing the deluge of negative reports. In their defense, though, they were later reinstated. Check HardOCP for more info... this was a year ago or more.
Why isn't there an "-1, misinformation" or alternately "-1, wrong" option when scoring messages?
If you're going to karma whore by defining acronyms, at least get it right. You can look these kinds of things up on everything2.com or dictionary.com. And better yet, you can even link to the definition (since moderators like these kinds of things... it's a "safe" use of moderation points).
which was overrun by mice when they demolished a run-down building beside us
The mice demolished a building!?! Did they hire an outside contractor or did they do it themselves? Either way, though, that's definitely an effective way to get back at the prior owners for the mousetraps and rat poison.
Did they enjoy the popups? Or maybe they were too busy trying to punch the monkey and so they accidentally clicked the wrong option. Or maybe they use Mozilla, and thus aren't bothered by popup ads.
Then again, perhaps that's just statistical error.
Better yet, does anyone have a pre-compiled list of ad servers for insertion into my Mozilla prefs? I've blocked a few ad sites in the weeks I've been using Mozilla, but I'm guessing someone has a list already...
What stops an attacker with root privs from removing the attributes?
I may have misunderstood chrysalis, but the attributes can only be changed in single user mode. So you absolutely have to have local console access to set (or change) the attributes. But at that point you've got physical security issues which outweigh any sort of ACL/attribute-based protections you have.
Really, this is on the website, under the "Micro$oft" section:
"y do u wanna work at Microsoft?"
Now there's a good riddle...
You are not the only country that has the expertise and extra money to devote to saving the world.
Agreed. Unfortunately, the USA is the only country that is immediately labeled as imperialistic when trying to "save the world."
No one said it would be easy to be the world's traffic cop.
I'd be very happy if the US could just sit back and let everyone go on the merry way, and everyone could love each other and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, there are a great deal of people in this world who have demonstrated their complete lack of ability to participate in the world community... one which they are a part of whether they like it or not. And I'm not talking about France here (<rimshot>).
While there are many other competent nations, and some, like France, which have more of a "say" in some areas of the world, the majority of the world looks to the USA when the shit hits the fan. The USA has the money, power, and military might to "get things done" -- it would be foolish to believe that with all that control they would decide to act against their own interests.
Premise: For every 10,000 pieces of spam mail sent at least 1 gets a 'buyer'
<lots of math>
Conclusion: A sucker is born every minute
While you may be correct in your math, you fail to realize that while there may be 600000 suckers born each year, 90% or more of them will not have email addresses. So while the number of suckers may be high, the valid email address to sucker ratio is not nearly as good as an e-marketer might like.
T.M.D.A. It stands for tagged message delivery agent.
.1% of their targets/victims to respond. That's 1000 responses (remember, this is calculated on the million initial messages). What if the 10%, though, rather than deleting the message after delivery, denied delivery to begin with. Now the spammer's list shrinks by 10%. Now spammers have to expect a .111% hit rate to make the same amount of sales. By continuing this process, at some point their victim list will be too small to "reasonably" generate a profitable response.
Read more here
Thanks for posting the link, I had heard about this product but couldn't recall the name.
After reading over the features, though, I should note that the mail is accepted whether it is spam or not. It just doesn't get delivered to your inbox if it is not "confirmed." To the end user, such as my father or sister, this is great -- they don't get spammed.
However, as a system administrator and bandwidth hoarder, I would hesitate to install TMDA, and only TMDA on a mail server. The problem is that the spammers' mail systems will believe the message was successfully delivered (250 OK - message accepted for delivery, etc at the end of SMTP session). This has two downsides: 1) The spammer knows your address is valid, and 2) Repeated delivery of spams wastes (precious/expensive) bandwidth.
Now, let's consider the outgoing messages... remember that confirmations are sent out to the sender (by the way, is this the header's From: address or the Return-path: address?). As most from addresses are forged, or quickly fill with flames, etc, your messages will simply bounce. And if your mail system (or perhaps TMDA) isn't smart enough, it will repeatedly try to deliver the confirmation request. Again, a waste of bandwidth, and possibly a waste of storage space.
I'm very interested in TMDA, and I will definitely try it out. However, I also believe that some sane Sendmail rules and use of various DNS blacklists will stop the majority of spam. In fact, I don't recall the last time I got spam at my personal account. My email address is easily spiderable on my website...
My Sendmail rules will bounce messages during the SMTP transaction... not after. This way a bounce message is returned immediately to the sender. If spammers are listening to my mail server, they will remove my address from their list, believing it is invalid.
The goal in fighting spam should be to reduce the list of "valid" email addresses. If we accept spam but simply delete it (eg, using client-side MUA filtering or TMDA) then that is just another "miss" on the spammer's mailing list. But if their list starts shrinking due to "invalid" addresses then it will be less and less economical to send out so much spam.
Think about it for a moment. If a spammer sends out a million emails, and 10% are filtered on the client side, that's still 900,000 addresses from which they may get a "hit." Let's say the spammers expect
Those of you in California may choose to add a "this server located in California" to your SMTP greeting message. It should help if you decide to prosecute a spammer for UCE. SBC/PacBell has some good information on California spam laws.
Obviously, a better solution would be a combination of the two... TMDA and some good Sendmail rules (or whatever MTA you like). But I would hope that TMDA could deliver fake bounce messages to those who do not confirm their messages.