You've obviously shared the secret of eternal life with the CGI that processes applications for "Free Eternal Life Rings" via 40 referrals - it gives no response whatsoever, but never dies a timeout death. Eternal life indeed.
Are you willing to impart the details of eternal life to a CGI on my server?
>How does a computer thousands of miles away knowing that you're
>interested in travel, politics, and fine art *really* affect your
>life, except that the spam you receive is tailored for your
>interests, instead of being completely random?
It doesn't matter whether the computer's in Siberia, or two blocks down the road. Your theoretical computer which knows my tastes stores those tastes in a database, and that database exists for one purpose. To be accessed. Accessed by who? That's what I don't know, and that's why I don't like it.
>People are naturally observant by nature. When you go out in public,
>you notice what people are doing, wearing, saying, etc. After a
>while, you come to conclusions based on those observations. Have you
>invaded those people's privacy?
Yes, if you returned home and wrote all of those facts down in a dossier. Seeing someone wearing Dockers (and presuming he likes Dockers), or someone who's eating pizza (and presuming he likes pizza) isn't the same as storing that information for later retrieval. You're never going to see most of those people again, and you're likely not going to be selling their preferences to someone else, either.
>A library keeps track of what books people are reading so that
>they can keep their library stocked with books that will be useful
>or interesting to the local population. Have they invaded those
>people's privacy?
Yes, if those records contain a list of all the books I've ever checked out. Why do they have to know who checked out the books to figure out whether or not people are interested in them? A list that says "400 people checked out books about Topic A," without keeping track of who checked those books out, is just as effective at determining what books to stock in the library. The bookstore figures out what to stock based on how well stuff sells, not based on who's doing the buying.
>If volume is to pick up, it will likely come
>from those using Google's posting service,
>rather than an unreliable or unavailable (esp.
>in the case of AOL) ISP news server.
You forgot to mention that there are numerous companies whose sole business model is to provide you with Usenet access. Forget Google, and forget your ISP, get one of the premium news services.
I'm told there are still upwards of 10,000 charter accounts. 10K isn't much out of AOL's near 30 million subscriber base now, but it's a big chunk of the QLink leftovers. Probably damn near all of them;)
PortSentry, the stateful firewall I use on my linux box, picks up a ton of attempts from.ro domains. A friend of mine had his box owned by a.ro. Someone from a.ro host ran a CGI-scanner against one of my commercial websites, generating about 3,000 404 email reports in 10 minutes. A lot of fraudulent orders (on that same site) come from IPs in Romania.
I get more problems from Romania than I do from Russia. For a country with such a "poor networking infrastructure," they have no shortage of crackers and carders. And it doesn't surprise me in the least that they're getting their punk asses DoS'd!
Along I-40 (Westbound, approx. exit 14) there's a billboard that completely rips off IBM's campaign. It's for a wireless company - Cingular I think - and it says, "Peace. Love. Wireless." It has three icons, the first two being a peace symbol and a heart. The last, if I remember right, is the Cingular logo.
Not only is IBM getting a lot of publicity off this, so are the copycats. If you ask me, anyone who's copied their campaign (whether on sidewalks or on billboards) ought to be just as liable as IBM. I hate people who can't come up with their own ideas.
Shaun
You forgot to mention: It's voluntary
on
"Not a Mini-Spy"
·
· Score: 3
Although the article makes it fairly clear, the blurb here skips by it. These wristwatches aren't some government's new plan to keep tabs on naysayers, and as far as I can tell, they don't even record anything. They're given out by Nielsen to voluntary participants... Just like those crazy thingamajigs that hook up to your cable box, to see which channels you watch and how long you watch them. Nielsen doesn't record-and-store the porno videos you pop in late at night, the dongle just keeps track of which cable channels you're flipping to.
Even still, I can't envision a whole lot of people who would be willing to wear these, at least not in the US. The article mentions over 22K Swiss folks wear the thing, seems a bit much. IIRC Nielsen doesn't pay you to participate in the cable ratings program; instead you're just supposed to be honored that they've chosen you. The article doesn't mention any compensation for sporting the "listening watch," so I doubt there's money involved.
Supposedly "Its inbuilt computer then identifies from which radio or television program the sound is coming," but that's a longshot if you ask me. Some stations broadcast their call letters or station name embedded into their programming (if you have a fairly new car stereo, you've probably seen how it displays, say, "ROCK 103" instead of "102.7"). But unless all stations start doing this, I don't see how it's possible for the watch to automagically tie a sound to a station.
>If he could find some good project management he might stand a chance.
I think that's the whole idea, at least to some extent. UO2 got behind schedule under the "management" of EA's Origin Assimilation Team, not RG. Origin was doing pretty well (deadline wise and product wise, not necessarily money wise) until EA scooped them up. Perhaps when you speak of missed deadlines and buggy releases on Richard's watch, you're thinking Ultima 9, but IIRC, EA was primarily responsible for that bungle too.
In any case, it's gonna be a fun ride. I can't wait to see what Destination comes up with.
Oh, what the hell, here's mine. I took a different approach and asked him why they sued to begin with. -1, Redundant away.
Dear Mr. Hyman,
I just finished reading your open letter to the community regarding your lawsuit against Roxio/Adaptec (http://www.gracenote.com/open_letter.html).
What your letter fails to mention, and what I - along with numerous others - still don't understand, is why you're suing Roxio/Adaptec in the first place. From what I gather, Roxio/Adaptec has chosen not to use your CDDB service, instead opting to use a free competitor. In capitalist societies, the right to choose from whom you receive a particular product or service is a given, and in many cases, the lowest bidder gets the job.
Nowhere in your letter do you say that Roxio/Adaptec has any contract with Gracenote mandating that they use your database and your database only. Is there such a contract? If so, then Roxio/Adaptec is clearly in breach, and you've got every right to exercise your legal options. But if you don't have a prior arrangement, why exactly are you suing?
I look at your lawsuit, and I see McDonald's suing me because I decided to eat at Burger King today. That's how I'll continue to see it until Gracenote explains why the lawsuit was filed to begin with.
>Isn't it theoretically possible to create a "second Internet"
>using technology like gnutella over the current Internet?
In theory, yes; the problem is those last four words, "over the current Internet." If you want to get data to China, but China happens to be blocking packets which originated anywhere outside of China, good luck. It wouldn't matter what program, protocol, or network was involved; your data wouldn't make it.
Peekabooty looks like a good idea, and because China isn't yet at the point of blocking all foreign data, it's probably going to be effective. But I wouldn't be surprised to see some countries (I'm trying hard not to pick on China here; many middle east nations also filter net access) implement a cutoff from the "harmful outside world."
cDc's stuff is always useful and fun to play with - I don't think Peekabooty will let us down.
>You all should try it before you complain about SPAM--
>You too will get a lot less...
Nah, it didn't do any good for me. I was on a spam reporting kick for awhile, and if anything, the volume of spam I got increased. Writing abuse@ just adds 10 minutes to the spammer's workday; it doesn't get you off any lists. Earthlink doesn't call up Joe Spammer and say "bob@some.com just complained about your spam. We're shutting you down. We advise that you remove bob@some.com from your list, so that you don't get reported next time."
Even when the abuse reports are effective (questionable in and of itself - effective for what, a few minutes, while the spammer makes a new account?), the spammer just gets cut off and moves on. He doesn't know who complained, and he doesn't know not to spam you again.
Reporting spam is a good thing in general, but there's no logical reason why it would reduce the amount you get.
Am I the only one who sees Usenet archives like this as a bad thing? I've always been of the opinion that Usenet is a discussion medium, *not* a publication medium. If I wanted my text to linger forever, I'd be publishing it to a web page, not posting it to an informal Usenet discussion.
Surely I can't be the only person who's received email about posts, months or even years after I made them! This in particular drives me crazy and I put these messages on the same level as spam. The fact that I happened to post to alt.hackintosh two years ago doesn't mean my mailbox is a 24/7 Mac Hack Helpdesk.
Yet thanks to Deja (and now Google), if you forget that X-No-Archive header, your text - and perhaps your email address or an inane signature - will be there for the rest of the world to see forever. From my experience, a large portion of these people also like to revive year-old discussions, via email, and at their whim.
With this news, those of us who thought our long-ago blunders were in buried the bitbucket now see that they've been revived.
Archiving Usenet is, IMO, as insane as archiving IRC^H^H^HNevermind, I don't want to give Google any ideas...
>I think at that point he should have stepped in a said "Hey
>listen, you guys might be great in your own respective
>fields, but you don't know what you're doing in this one.
>Step away from the console...."
According to Philip's side of the story, this is exactly what he did. The VCs essentially responded with "Fuck off. And by the way, you aren't invited to the board meetings anymore." Assuming Phil's account is true (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), he got dicked over. I didn't read the full transcript of the lawsuit, so I'm not sure what exactly the VCs are seeking; but Phil should end up back in the CEO spot when all is said and done.
I'm with Philip on this one. Now to wait and see who the judge is with.
>Does anyone know why the USAF would fly it to RAAF Edinburgh
>in Adelaide, rather than RAAF Townsville or RAAF Williamtowm?
The US military discovered that a Japanese fishing trawler was located offshore of Townsville. For unknown reasons, the flight was mysteriously diverted to Edinburgh...
I like the idea. Unfortunately, it's not going to work as proposed, for reasons already pointed out earlier in the thread.
I've always thought it would be much simpler (and more effective) to implement IP volume checking at the relay level. There are very few users who generate more than 100 legitimate emails per hour. There are likely NO users who generate 1000 legitimate emails in an hour. Thus there's no reason that smtp.ignorant-admin.tw should accept 5,000 distinct RCPT TOs from 153-122-05.dialup.uu.net in an hour's time!!
Why don't the sendmail folks integrate some sort of IP filter, which prevents more than X (100, 1000, or whatever user-configurable default is reasonable) distinct messages from the same IP in an hour? If that limit gets exceeded, the admin gets alerted and the IP gets tempbanned. As best I can tell, this shouldn't cause a problem for large ISPs who are legitimately generating large email volume - they (should) know better than to be running open relays to begin with, and they'll be able to adjust their "Max incoming messages per IP per hour" setting to something they see as logical. For example, AOL would want to accept more than 1000 messages an hour from Hotmail (and vice versa) but the guy running a wide-open linux box on RoadRunner wouldn't be such relay rape potential if his copy of sendmail defaulted to blocking IPs who tried to send more than 100 mails an hour.
Granted, most of the relay rapes are due to people running outdated versions of sendmail, so adding IP filters to a future version wouldn't stop spam immediately... But if they were to implement a filter now, we could perhaps see a reduction in the "efficiency" of relay abuse in the future. If a spammer found a relay, but that relay only allowed him to send 100 separate messages in an hour, spamming wouldn't be quite so easy.
Why hasn't this been done? Am I missing something?
Not if you grew up in the UK; the King's English (or is that the Queen's English?) sometimes uses plurality when discussing companies, e.g. "Microsoft are planning world domination." Don't ask me why, though; I guess they see a company as a group of people, and use the corresponding indicative. Oddly enough, this is only the case some of the time; for example you'd never hear "America Online are an ISP" but you might hear "America Online are launching a new service this week." Are seems to be used primarily in conjunction with verbs, and is is used with most other objects.
Someone mod the parent up, it's the most insightful post in the thread.
I run a lot of domains, and I keep rollover boxes active on all of them. I'm simply amazed at the number of seemingly legitimate companies who are perfectly willing to take any email address you give them, add it to their mailing list, and start flooding the inbox. What's worse, many of these mailing lists require that you reply with "UNSUBSCRIBE" (ala majordomo, listserv) in order to be removed - and because the addresses they're spamming don't even exist, it's impossible for me to remove them from the lists.
For example, I own shat.net. There's no such email address as "niva@shat.net," but I get tens of messages a week which are sent to that address. Until or unless I actually take the time to create a POP3 account named niva, I will have absolutely no way to remove myself from these mailings.
On the bright side, I've compiled a list of some of the most intrusive, high-volume mailers. Anytime someone spams me from a valid address (::cough:: TrafficMagnet::cough::) I turn around and sign them up for some email.
Opt-in is NOT ENOUGH, it leaves the door wide open for typos or intentional use of someone else's email address. Any company who wants to send legitimate mass mailings needs to use a double-opt-in system, where the user not only subscribes to the list, but must also confirm the subscription.
>Even when you think you're anonymous your really only relying
>on the fact that a proxy or other server is committing
>to being anonymous and not keeping logs.... but are they?
Not if you're the one who set up the proxy;)
As an AC already pointed out, there's no way to be truly anonymous on the web, but there *are* ways to be "anonymous enough." Using a private proxy (as opposed to Anonymizer or Magusnet) is often a good start, and there are lists of proxies on a number of sites... They're effective enough that the majority of sites you visit won't be able to "trace" you, even if they wanted to.
For the truly paranoid, do your sensitive computing from a public facility. Colleges are especially good for this; I've taken classes at two, and neither of them had any physical security at any of their computer labs. You could literally walk in, sit down at a puter, and browse away (or compile some source code, or...) without having to prove to anyone that you were a student.
Enemy of the State was a good movie (and hey, some NSA agents even got capped). Yes, some of the satellite technology they displayed does exist, but don't worry too much about it; it's mostly used for geological mapping. If the government is willing to spend the money to focus that technology on YOU, you have much bigger problems than browsing the web anonymously!
>They specialize in a no-TOS hosting plan, which would take a
>court order to remove your site.
Since it's a little late for an April Fool's joke, I'll bite...
When you say no-TOS, do you mean there's no terms of service / usage agreement? The client just agrees to pay the bill, with no restrictions on content? Part of me loves the idea and wants to find out more, the other part of me thinks you're opening yourself up to a shitload of legal problems (not to mention being RBL'd the day you open for business). In any case, I'd appreciate some clarification - visited the site to get more info, but it's still in the works, I see:)
It's just a poor choice of words; they should have said "proactive" instead of "offensive." The point they're trying to make is that their software can (supposedly) be used to play offense instead of defense.
Whether or not that's offensive is your call, I guess:)
Not just in XP, either. MSN Messenger also installs by default under WindowsME, and what's worse, they tie it directly into Outlook Express. Any time you run Outlook, MSN Messenger fires up and starts bitching about "You haven't created your account yet!" When you tell it to stop reminding you, it still throws MSN Messenger into the systray when Outlook runs.
Deleting Outlook took care of that problem, but yes, I'd say they're trying like the dickens to get people signed up with MSN Messenger. If it keeps up, they'll have the dominant IM service in the same way that they have the dominant web browser.
As a web developer, I spend a lot of time interacting with search engines. In the past months, a lot of the big name engines like Excite! and Altavista have switched towards a pay-per-submission model.
AV, for example, wants you to spend TWO HUNDRED dollars to get listed in their directory with LookSmart. And those bills don't guarantee anything other than that your site will be "reviewed" to see whether or not it "qualifies" for inclusion. You can still submit to AV for free, but only after jumping through hoops. They generate a random GIF and you have to type in the characters contained inside, before you can submit... And even then, your "code" is only good for 5 URLs. If you want to submit more, you have to generate a new GIF and type in the new code. They're doing their best to make free submission a huge pain in the ass, especially if you have a lot of URLs.
I wouldn't be surprised (though I'd be rather disappointed) if the day comes when you can't submit to any search engine without paying a fee.
>Any other free-beer services you've noticed being shut down
>or leaning suspiciously of late?
MailStart (www.mailstart.com) used to be the most useful site around. It would let you check any POP3 account, read your mail, reply to the messages, etc. through their web interface. The ads on their site were, surprisingly, quite non-intrusive. They recently closed down their free services.
On the brighter side, it only took me about 5 minutes to install a PHP script that does the same thing. Sure we're used to getting a lot of things for free, but if those places go under or start charging fees, quite a few of those services can be replaced with "do it yourself" projects.
Slashdot Mirror
Golf Manor is the name of the subdivision, not the city. Commerce Township, MI is all over Google.
Course, I'm still not convinced this is for real.
Shaun
Alex:
You've obviously shared the secret of eternal life with the CGI that processes applications for "Free Eternal Life Rings" via 40 referrals - it gives no response whatsoever, but never dies a timeout death. Eternal life indeed.
Are you willing to impart the details of eternal life to a CGI on my server?
Shaun
>How does a computer thousands of miles away knowing that you're
>interested in travel, politics, and fine art *really* affect your
>life, except that the spam you receive is tailored for your
>interests, instead of being completely random?
It doesn't matter whether the computer's in Siberia, or two blocks down the road. Your theoretical computer which knows my tastes stores those tastes in a database, and that database exists for one purpose. To be accessed. Accessed by who? That's what I don't know, and that's why I don't like it.
>People are naturally observant by nature. When you go out in public,
>you notice what people are doing, wearing, saying, etc. After a
>while, you come to conclusions based on those observations. Have you
>invaded those people's privacy?
Yes, if you returned home and wrote all of those facts down in a dossier. Seeing someone wearing Dockers (and presuming he likes Dockers), or someone who's eating pizza (and presuming he likes pizza) isn't the same as storing that information for later retrieval. You're never going to see most of those people again, and you're likely not going to be selling their preferences to someone else, either.
>A library keeps track of what books people are reading so that
>they can keep their library stocked with books that will be useful
>or interesting to the local population. Have they invaded those
>people's privacy?
Yes, if those records contain a list of all the books I've ever checked out. Why do they have to know who checked out the books to figure out whether or not people are interested in them? A list that says "400 people checked out books about Topic A," without keeping track of who checked those books out, is just as effective at determining what books to stock in the library. The bookstore figures out what to stock based on how well stuff sells, not based on who's doing the buying.
Shaun
>Few sane people argue that minors should enjoy
>all the rights and privileges of adult citizens
Call me insane, but as long as we're trying them as adults for their crimes, they might as well be able to smoke cigarettes and see R-rated movies.
Shaun
>If volume is to pick up, it will likely come
>from those using Google's posting service,
>rather than an unreliable or unavailable (esp.
>in the case of AOL) ISP news server.
You forgot to mention that there are numerous companies whose sole business model is to provide you with Usenet access. Forget Google, and forget your ISP, get one of the premium news services.
Shaun
I'm told there are still upwards of 10,000 charter accounts. 10K isn't much out of AOL's near 30 million subscriber base now, but it's a big chunk of the QLink leftovers. Probably damn near all of them ;)
Shaun
PortSentry, the stateful firewall I use on my linux box, picks up a ton of attempts from .ro domains. A friend of mine had his box owned by a .ro. Someone from a .ro host ran a CGI-scanner against one of my commercial websites, generating about 3,000 404 email reports in 10 minutes. A lot of fraudulent orders (on that same site) come from IPs in Romania.
I get more problems from Romania than I do from Russia. For a country with such a "poor networking infrastructure," they have no shortage of crackers and carders. And it doesn't surprise me in the least that they're getting their punk asses DoS'd!
Shaun
Along I-40 (Westbound, approx. exit 14) there's a billboard that completely rips off IBM's campaign. It's for a wireless company - Cingular I think - and it says, "Peace. Love. Wireless." It has three icons, the first two being a peace symbol and a heart. The last, if I remember right, is the Cingular logo.
Not only is IBM getting a lot of publicity off this, so are the copycats. If you ask me, anyone who's copied their campaign (whether on sidewalks or on billboards) ought to be just as liable as IBM. I hate people who can't come up with their own ideas.
Shaun
Although the article makes it fairly clear, the blurb here skips by it. These wristwatches aren't some government's new plan to keep tabs on naysayers, and as far as I can tell, they don't even record anything. They're given out by Nielsen to voluntary participants... Just like those crazy thingamajigs that hook up to your cable box, to see which channels you watch and how long you watch them. Nielsen doesn't record-and-store the porno videos you pop in late at night, the dongle just keeps track of which cable channels you're flipping to.
Even still, I can't envision a whole lot of people who would be willing to wear these, at least not in the US. The article mentions over 22K Swiss folks wear the thing, seems a bit much. IIRC Nielsen doesn't pay you to participate in the cable ratings program; instead you're just supposed to be honored that they've chosen you. The article doesn't mention any compensation for sporting the "listening watch," so I doubt there's money involved.
Supposedly "Its inbuilt computer then identifies from which radio or television program the sound is coming," but that's a longshot if you ask me. Some stations broadcast their call letters or station name embedded into their programming (if you have a fairly new car stereo, you've probably seen how it displays, say, "ROCK 103" instead of "102.7"). But unless all stations start doing this, I don't see how it's possible for the watch to automagically tie a sound to a station.
Anyone have a photo of one of these puppies?
Shaun
Flamebait or not, this is worth a reply:
>If he could find some good project management he might stand a chance.
I think that's the whole idea, at least to some extent. UO2 got behind schedule under the "management" of EA's Origin Assimilation Team, not RG. Origin was doing pretty well (deadline wise and product wise, not necessarily money wise) until EA scooped them up. Perhaps when you speak of missed deadlines and buggy releases on Richard's watch, you're thinking Ultima 9, but IIRC, EA was primarily responsible for that bungle too.
In any case, it's gonna be a fun ride. I can't wait to see what Destination comes up with.
Shaun
Oh, what the hell, here's mine. I took a different approach and asked him why they sued to begin with. -1, Redundant away.
Dear Mr. Hyman,
I just finished reading your open letter to the community regarding your lawsuit against Roxio/Adaptec (http://www.gracenote.com/open_letter.html).
What your letter fails to mention, and what I - along with numerous others - still don't understand, is why you're suing Roxio/Adaptec in the first place. From what I gather, Roxio/Adaptec has chosen not to use your CDDB service, instead opting to use a free competitor. In capitalist societies, the right to choose from whom you receive a particular product or service is a given, and in many cases, the lowest bidder gets the job.
Nowhere in your letter do you say that Roxio/Adaptec has any contract with Gracenote mandating that they use your database and your database only. Is there such a contract? If so, then Roxio/Adaptec is clearly in breach, and you've got every right to exercise your legal options. But if you don't have a prior arrangement, why exactly are you suing?
I look at your lawsuit, and I see McDonald's suing me because I decided to eat at Burger King today. That's how I'll continue to see it until Gracenote explains why the lawsuit was filed to begin with.
Regards,
Shaun
>Isn't it theoretically possible to create a "second Internet"
>using technology like gnutella over the current Internet?
In theory, yes; the problem is those last four words, "over the current Internet." If you want to get data to China, but China happens to be blocking packets which originated anywhere outside of China, good luck. It wouldn't matter what program, protocol, or network was involved; your data wouldn't make it.
Peekabooty looks like a good idea, and because China isn't yet at the point of blocking all foreign data, it's probably going to be effective. But I wouldn't be surprised to see some countries (I'm trying hard not to pick on China here; many middle east nations also filter net access) implement a cutoff from the "harmful outside world."
cDc's stuff is always useful and fun to play with - I don't think Peekabooty will let us down.
Shaun
>You all should try it before you complain about SPAM--
>You too will get a lot less...
Nah, it didn't do any good for me. I was on a spam reporting kick for awhile, and if anything, the volume of spam I got increased. Writing abuse@ just adds 10 minutes to the spammer's workday; it doesn't get you off any lists. Earthlink doesn't call up Joe Spammer and say "bob@some.com just complained about your spam. We're shutting you down. We advise that you remove bob@some.com from your list, so that you don't get reported next time."
Even when the abuse reports are effective (questionable in and of itself - effective for what, a few minutes, while the spammer makes a new account?), the spammer just gets cut off and moves on. He doesn't know who complained, and he doesn't know not to spam you again.
Reporting spam is a good thing in general, but there's no logical reason why it would reduce the amount you get.
Shaun
Am I the only one who sees Usenet archives like this as a bad thing? I've always been of the opinion that Usenet is a discussion medium, *not* a publication medium. If I wanted my text to linger forever, I'd be publishing it to a web page, not posting it to an informal Usenet discussion.
Surely I can't be the only person who's received email about posts, months or even years after I made them! This in particular drives me crazy and I put these messages on the same level as spam. The fact that I happened to post to alt.hackintosh two years ago doesn't mean my mailbox is a 24/7 Mac Hack Helpdesk.
Yet thanks to Deja (and now Google), if you forget that X-No-Archive header, your text - and perhaps your email address or an inane signature - will be there for the rest of the world to see forever. From my experience, a large portion of these people also like to revive year-old discussions, via email, and at their whim.
With this news, those of us who thought our long-ago blunders were in buried the bitbucket now see that they've been revived.
Archiving Usenet is, IMO, as insane as archiving IRC^H^H^HNevermind, I don't want to give Google any ideas...
Shaun
>I think at that point he should have stepped in a said "Hey
>listen, you guys might be great in your own respective
>fields, but you don't know what you're doing in this one.
>Step away from the console...."
According to Philip's side of the story, this is exactly what he did. The VCs essentially responded with "Fuck off. And by the way, you aren't invited to the board meetings anymore." Assuming Phil's account is true (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), he got dicked over. I didn't read the full transcript of the lawsuit, so I'm not sure what exactly the VCs are seeking; but Phil should end up back in the CEO spot when all is said and done.
I'm with Philip on this one. Now to wait and see who the judge is with.
Shaun
>Does anyone know why the USAF would fly it to RAAF Edinburgh
>in Adelaide, rather than RAAF Townsville or RAAF Williamtowm?
The US military discovered that a Japanese fishing trawler was located offshore of Townsville. For unknown reasons, the flight was mysteriously diverted to Edinburgh...
Shaun
I like the idea. Unfortunately, it's not going to work as proposed, for reasons already pointed out earlier in the thread.
I've always thought it would be much simpler (and more effective) to implement IP volume checking at the relay level. There are very few users who generate more than 100 legitimate emails per hour. There are likely NO users who generate 1000 legitimate emails in an hour. Thus there's no reason that smtp.ignorant-admin.tw should accept 5,000 distinct RCPT TOs from 153-122-05.dialup.uu.net in an hour's time!!
Why don't the sendmail folks integrate some sort of IP filter, which prevents more than X (100, 1000, or whatever user-configurable default is reasonable) distinct messages from the same IP in an hour? If that limit gets exceeded, the admin gets alerted and the IP gets tempbanned. As best I can tell, this shouldn't cause a problem for large ISPs who are legitimately generating large email volume - they (should) know better than to be running open relays to begin with, and they'll be able to adjust their "Max incoming messages per IP per hour" setting to something they see as logical. For example, AOL would want to accept more than 1000 messages an hour from Hotmail (and vice versa) but the guy running a wide-open linux box on RoadRunner wouldn't be such relay rape potential if his copy of sendmail defaulted to blocking IPs who tried to send more than 100 mails an hour.
Granted, most of the relay rapes are due to people running outdated versions of sendmail, so adding IP filters to a future version wouldn't stop spam immediately... But if they were to implement a filter now, we could perhaps see a reduction in the "efficiency" of relay abuse in the future. If a spammer found a relay, but that relay only allowed him to send 100 separate messages in an hour, spamming wouldn't be quite so easy.
Why hasn't this been done? Am I missing something?
Shaun
> PSINet, who is blah blah...
:)
Not if you grew up in the UK; the King's English (or is that the Queen's English?) sometimes uses plurality when discussing companies, e.g. "Microsoft are planning world domination." Don't ask me why, though; I guess they see a company as a group of people, and use the corresponding indicative. Oddly enough, this is only the case some of the time; for example you'd never hear "America Online are an ISP" but you might hear "America Online are launching a new service this week." Are seems to be used primarily in conjunction with verbs, and is is used with most other objects.
That are the end of this off-topic post
Shaun
Someone mod the parent up, it's the most insightful post in the thread.
::cough::) I turn around and sign them up for some email.
I run a lot of domains, and I keep rollover boxes active on all of them. I'm simply amazed at the number of seemingly legitimate companies who are perfectly willing to take any email address you give them, add it to their mailing list, and start flooding the inbox. What's worse, many of these mailing lists require that you reply with "UNSUBSCRIBE" (ala majordomo, listserv) in order to be removed - and because the addresses they're spamming don't even exist, it's impossible for me to remove them from the lists.
For example, I own shat.net. There's no such email address as "niva@shat.net," but I get tens of messages a week which are sent to that address. Until or unless I actually take the time to create a POP3 account named niva, I will have absolutely no way to remove myself from these mailings.
On the bright side, I've compiled a list of some of the most intrusive, high-volume mailers. Anytime someone spams me from a valid address (::cough:: TrafficMagnet
Opt-in is NOT ENOUGH, it leaves the door wide open for typos or intentional use of someone else's email address. Any company who wants to send legitimate mass mailings needs to use a double-opt-in system, where the user not only subscribes to the list, but must also confirm the subscription.
Shaun
>Even when you think you're anonymous your really only relying
;)
>on the fact that a proxy or other server is committing
>to being anonymous and not keeping logs.... but are they?
Not if you're the one who set up the proxy
As an AC already pointed out, there's no way to be truly anonymous on the web, but there *are* ways to be "anonymous enough." Using a private proxy (as opposed to Anonymizer or Magusnet) is often a good start, and there are lists of proxies on a number of sites... They're effective enough that the majority of sites you visit won't be able to "trace" you, even if they wanted to.
For the truly paranoid, do your sensitive computing from a public facility. Colleges are especially good for this; I've taken classes at two, and neither of them had any physical security at any of their computer labs. You could literally walk in, sit down at a puter, and browse away (or compile some source code, or...) without having to prove to anyone that you were a student.
Enemy of the State was a good movie (and hey, some NSA agents even got capped). Yes, some of the satellite technology they displayed does exist, but don't worry too much about it; it's mostly used for geological mapping. If the government is willing to spend the money to focus that technology on YOU, you have much bigger problems than browsing the web anonymously!
Shaun
>They specialize in a no-TOS hosting plan, which would take a
:)
>court order to remove your site.
Since it's a little late for an April Fool's joke, I'll bite...
When you say no-TOS, do you mean there's no terms of service / usage agreement? The client just agrees to pay the bill, with no restrictions on content? Part of me loves the idea and wants to find out more, the other part of me thinks you're opening yourself up to a shitload of legal problems (not to mention being RBL'd the day you open for business). In any case, I'd appreciate some clarification - visited the site to get more info, but it's still in the works, I see
Shaun
It's just a poor choice of words; they should have said "proactive" instead of "offensive." The point they're trying to make is that their software can (supposedly) be used to play offense instead of defense.
:)
Whether or not that's offensive is your call, I guess
Shaun
Not just in XP, either. MSN Messenger also installs by default under WindowsME, and what's worse, they tie it directly into Outlook Express. Any time you run Outlook, MSN Messenger fires up and starts bitching about "You haven't created your account yet!" When you tell it to stop reminding you, it still throws MSN Messenger into the systray when Outlook runs.
Deleting Outlook took care of that problem, but yes, I'd say they're trying like the dickens to get people signed up with MSN Messenger. If it keeps up, they'll have the dominant IM service in the same way that they have the dominant web browser.
Shaun
As a web developer, I spend a lot of time interacting with search engines. In the past months, a lot of the big name engines like Excite! and Altavista have switched towards a pay-per-submission model.
AV, for example, wants you to spend TWO HUNDRED dollars to get listed in their directory with LookSmart. And those bills don't guarantee anything other than that your site will be "reviewed" to see whether or not it "qualifies" for inclusion. You can still submit to AV for free, but only after jumping through hoops. They generate a random GIF and you have to type in the characters contained inside, before you can submit... And even then, your "code" is only good for 5 URLs. If you want to submit more, you have to generate a new GIF and type in the new code. They're doing their best to make free submission a huge pain in the ass, especially if you have a lot of URLs.
I wouldn't be surprised (though I'd be rather disappointed) if the day comes when you can't submit to any search engine without paying a fee.
Shaun
>Any other free-beer services you've noticed being shut down
>or leaning suspiciously of late?
MailStart (www.mailstart.com) used to be the most useful site around. It would let you check any POP3 account, read your mail, reply to the messages, etc. through their web interface. The ads on their site were, surprisingly, quite non-intrusive. They recently closed down their free services.
On the brighter side, it only took me about 5 minutes to install a PHP script that does the same thing. Sure we're used to getting a lot of things for free, but if those places go under or start charging fees, quite a few of those services can be replaced with "do it yourself" projects.
I miss MailStart, though.
Shaun