Spammers need images to get past word filters and to make an ad "stand out." Images can't be sent with the e-mail so src tags are used. href tags are also used for links they expect people to click on. "http://" is a unique identifier that absolutly cannot be obfuscated or it will not work. You can add a lot of junk before an @ symbol but eventually the real link must be there. Simply block that link and poof, no more spam from spammers advertising using that domain. You can block countless spammers by blocking a single 100% unique URL that no legitimate e-mail will ever contain.
The full write up of my take on what I see as horribly flawed ways to combat spam and source code for the custom programs I use to strip links out of e-mails.
I have an example of spam posted there where everything is just a mess in the e-mail. The headers are forged, the text is all obfuscated. But there, clear as day is an "HTTP://"
Poof, killed the spam domain. And there's no way to circumvent my method except by not having links of any form in the e-mail. If you put a link in a spam, I will find it and I will block it.
The idea isn't to keep people from reading the messages. It's to keep people from knowing who sent it.
You know, like an anonymous tip line. If you're ever in a situation where you know something and need to get it out to everyone you can with out revealing it was you who sent it, forging headers an excellent first step to going about it.
If you lived in China, you'd probably want to get to know a few spammers or at least their tricks if you wanted to experience some form of free speech.
By "fixing" SMTP in such a way that headers must be accurate, the ability to exercise free speech is greatly hampered for everyone.
The road to the destruction of our rights is paved with tragedies.
Apparently getting "spammed" is a great enough tragedy for some people to warrent the destuction of the right to privacy. 3000+ dead civilians and our bags are searched at airports. I can buy that. Getting advertisments and suddenly privacy goes out the window? WTF? THAT is the point.
If I want to send an e-mail and I don't want you to know who sent it, I demand that ability. As of now the best you can do is trace an e-mail back to a server. But FU if you think you're getting a confirmation on who actually sent it.
Maybe you don't have a use for being anonymous. Maybe nobody on the planet has a need to be anonymous. But we have a right to privacy should such a need arise.
Can't figure out what domain actually sent the e-mail. Too f-ing bad. If you can trace the domain you can trace the owner of the domain. If you can trace the owner you've got 10 fingers to start smashing to get information about who's giving out such and such information about a such and such operation or movement or whatever taking place.
If you want to block spam, block the links it contains. It's that simple. You can't obfuscate links. There's your technical solution. HTML does not allow for href or src tags to be obfuscated or they are rendered useless. It doesn't matter how deceitful the headers are or who the spammer is, if they're advertising a domain I've put filter on, it's not getting through.
And that spammer's right (they have them, too) to privacy is not infringed and my right to restrict my private server is not infringed.
Stop looking to destroy a right or two every time you get inconvienced or pissed off. We raised hell with the Patriot Act and GPS cell phones but spam...now there's an excuse to restrict the rights of citizens.
My ISP blocks outgoing port 25 activity but not incomming so my sig points to a catch all on my home connection for analyzing spam. Recieving on port 25 is no different than getting mail any other way. The ISP only cares about one way communication.
To get around the port 25 block I run my mail server on an alternate port for myself and then use RinetD on port 25 which fowards to the mail server. My e-mail going out is none of my ISP's business. The server that actually sends the mail is hosted by another ISP. Which doesn't break any clauses since I'm not running a server on my home system.
I've had people using AOL signup for subscriptions since I started back when I was running out of house. But then I had a business connection.
Residential connections tend to have clauses about not being allowed to run servers. My home ISP doens't block port 80 but I'm still not allowed to run an HTTP server.
If AOL is blocking residential accounts that are allowed to run mail servers then you have a case. However, if you're violating your TOS then too bad. Get a business connection like you're supposed to.
Blocking non static IPs is a good thing. If you're seriously trying to run a mail server then you need a static IP. So pay for it.
"You actually *can* get a digital certificate for your email, but it costs money"
Yeah, you can get those in your BIOS and media files and anywhere else. "Trusted Computing" EVIL. "Trusted E-Mail" GOOD.
What is wrong with you people?
You know what I do to block spam?
I filter out links contained in e-mails and block the COMPANIES.
I don't care how forged the header is. If the e-mail contains a link to spam domain it doesn't get through.
Nobody's right to privacy is infringed and it's 100% effective and 100% accurate. Nobody is going to be sending a legtimate e-mail with a link to and/or an image from www.topofferz.com or with an affiliate link to click-com
I'm not going to regurgitate the whole system I use here, you can find it talked about in older posts of mine and it will be posted on my site this weekend along with all the source code for the programs I use to automate some of the process.
I can't believe how quick and eager people are to burry their rights over nothing more than ADVERTISMENTS.
Or anonymous e-mail. That's where this "signed" e-mail crap is going.
Imagine every message you send being tracible right back to you.
But hey, what's the trashing of rights in the name of convienience.
If you can send e-mails without being traced, so can spammers.
If spammers can't send e-mails without being traced, neither can you.
"Spammers are most afraid of being tracked and identified. "
Yeah, and nobody has a legitimate reason to not want to be traced.
I spent all of 2 hours modifying RinetD to do proper logging in between senders and my mail server. I spent another 3 hours writting a simple program to parse that log pulling out who a message is from, who it's going to, the subject line and what links it contains and the domains of those links.
Any entry "to" entry that isn't one of my e-mail addresses is deleted. The remaining are then examined for spam domains by looking at the froms and subject lines and the domains themselves.
A short list:
If expression both matches "*imgehost.com*" Delete "" If expression both matches "*mydailyoffer.com*" Delete "" If expression both matches "*topofferz.net*" Delete "" If expression both matches "*adweawen.biz*" Delete "" If expression both matches "*divineprice.com*" Delete "" If expression both matches "*stamps.com*" Delete ""
And poof, no more ads from those companies and nobody's right to privacy is infringed. If they happen to have multiple domains for the same campaign I'll catch them as they come.
I will not support a means to subvert my right to privacy over some stupid ads.
How much are your rights worth to you? Not much apparently.
Terrorists blow up buildings and we get the patriot act. "terrorists" flood inboxes and you demand tracable e-mail.
lets assume we're not going to validate URLs before commencing the highest click thru rate of all time and then pretend we have an argument.
If spammers can DDoS sites the nasty ways by corrupting packets, I don't think clicking on a link sent to me in an e-mail excessivly is going to raise any eyebrows.
If a spam message has a link to an image, let it go through and view it lots and lots of times. It's trivial to make a simple browser app that you feed URLs and it repeatly grabs the data from that URL. Most spammers use affiliate programs so if you want to be really mean you can call the affiliated link a few million times so that they get paid nothing (or even kicked off the program for cheating) or you bankrupt the affiliate company if they don't have rules against such things. (pay per click and not pay per sale). 1 million click thrus times a few pennies per click really adds up.
A 25KB image sent to 25 million people takes around 667GB of transfer. So if lots of people just sacrifice a few hundred megs of transfer, the spammer's servers will choak and die or the bandwidth costs will put them out of business.
Oxygen is a poison. Acetone (which is one of the first in line on the "bad things in cigarettes" ads) is naturally produced in plants which we eat regularly. But people see acetone and think paint thinner. There are genuinly bad things in cigarettes. Acetone isn't really one of them. But the ones that are really bad no one recognizes.
Natually occuring tobacco is much healthier (relativly speaking) before the cigarette manufacturers get to it.
Like all things you need to know the limits. It's not what you eat or drink that matters but how much.
And she'd have to be a pretty good liar to pull that one off anyway.
It not a trivial task to make a realistic picture depicting yourself some place you couldn't have been. If you just made a slap together picture the judge would go "fake fake fake fake...real." You lose.
And anyone with two eyes (even one) and a brain can tell that's a real picture of her. Classic crap (35mm) picture with all the proper shadowing in a poorly lit room.
She'd be better off being very sorry and take a slap on the wrist plea bargain and not listening to crackpot "lawyers" who think they can play dumb and get away with a crime.
I was getting a dozen or so spam a day. I started filtering based on the links in the e-mail (which can't be obfuscated or they don't work) and now I find myself checking my mail server just to make sure it's actually working.
Spammers like to use images because that gets them past filters based on words. But images take up a large amount of bandwidth. 25 million messages sent with a 25KB image will take 667GB of transfer. So I simply filter out the domain that's hosting that image.
If you look at spam, spammers use affiliate programs. So although you're getting spam from hundreds or thousands of spammers, there are only a handful of domains they're wanting you to click on or are linking images from.
So you can try to block those thousands of spammers or you can block that handful of domains they're linking to.
And since I'm only filtering links that only spammers use, it's 100% effective and 100% accurate.
Nobody I know is going to be sending me e-mails with a link to www.2004hosting.org but dozens of spammers have and now that I've filtered it, dozens are trying and failing regardless of who they are. So I've effectivly blocked dozens of spammers by filtering a single company.
Lots of spammers also use common click-thru sites to claim their commission. By blocking that handful of domains I've just blocked thousands of spammers.
I now get a spam maybe once every few days and I simply VNC into my server and block the domain used to host the image and I'll never get a spam from any spammer who's using that domain to host their ad pics.
Simple. Effective. I also block mail domains as possible because there is no silver bullet. You have to attack on as many fronts as you can. I've just found blocking companies to be the best out of the bunch. But it's litter and every little measure helps.
so one guy claims that Occam's Razor forces the case to the people who want to claim it's not a hoax
and now you're using Occam's Razor to argue it's true.
I guess that's what happens when you use an old argument to excuse your brain from the discussion.
Is the argument:
The paper is a hoax.
In which case the negative is that it's not and by Occam's razor it can't be proven so the burden of proof is on those who think it's a hoax.
or is the argument:
The paper is legitimate.
In which case the negative is that it's not, putting the burden of proof on those who think it's legitimate.
Perhaps instead of using pointless razors to excuse one's brain from having to think, you should seek to prove your side no matter what it is.
Anytime someone mentions Occum's Razor substitute it with "I don't have to think, therefore"
For example:
"Occam's Razor makes it seem more likely that there some kind of language operating in the manuscript than a random system of patterns"
becomes
"I don't have to think, therefore it seem more likely that there some kind of language operating in the manuscript than a random system of patterns"
It's amazing how much is true when you don't have to think about it. That goes for the other guy who attempted to use Occam's Razor is well.
You can prove DNA doesn't belong to someone. You can prove DNA does belong to someone.
You can prove this is fake like the Salamander Papers. You can prove it's legitimate like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The fact is, there are many people working on both sides of the argument because they have to. There are a lot of people in the world who want to assume everything is false unless proven otherwise. And since they believe it's false it's up to everybody else to do the thinking for them to convince them otherwise.
Maybe hiding your brain behind Occam's Razor suits you but fortunatly the people working on this problem aren't.
Occam's Rasor only works when there are infinite possibilities and you can't do intellectual judo with the question.
Assume the universe is infinite. Prove it.
Assume the universe is finite. Prove it.
Both negate the other but neither are asking to prove a negative.
Ever since I've started filtering based on URLs that spams link to (text in a src or href can't be obfuscated or it won't work), the amount of spam I get is amost none.
However that still wastes a bit of bandwidth. It guarentees at least a 50% savings since the spam only makes it in and not out which isn't bad.
It'll still be nice to be able to reasonably expect that the header information is accurate so I can block that and save even more bandwidth.
If Rawlsky follows the rules, not only will he be paying more to send spam but filters will be infinitly more effective.
The rules force spammers to reveal themselves. While spammers could avoid the rules without legal reprocusions they could circumvent filters that depended on those rules for effectiveness. Now that they have to follow the rules, filters will do their job much better.
For example, I've never gotten a spam that followed the rule of putting ADV: in the subject.
Yes spam is legal so more spam will be sent. But filtering out legal spam (hey wow, a federal distinction finally) will be child's play.
Sure you'll still have to put up with foreign crap but spam is like litter. Every little bit helps.
I can't believe how many people fell for the spammers' lies that this law would be good for them. Now that it's show time, the lie is falling apart.
It's not the resolution that's the problem with DVDs. It's the obvious pixelation that can be seen when playing them on a monitor, Plasma, or LCD screen. Plasma being the worst I've seen. CRT televisions blend it all together so you can't see the compression artifacts.
I was at a Best Buy and they were "showing off" a very expensive plasma display with a DVD. It looked terrible. That's not motivating me to spend several thousand on a TV. I'd rather spend $1200 on an LCD projector and every time I want to upgrade I just move it back a foot or two.
It's not bad enough to warrent me upgrading my collection of DVDs. I even have VHS tapes that I'm not about to upgrade except by digitizing and putting them on DVD myself.
I don't care about more scanlines. I'd rather have less compression. Resolution is secondary to that.
Ben
In yet another failed attempt to remain free
on
Wikipedia Needs $20K
·
· Score: 1
$20,000 for hardware is insane. Especially considering they waited for it to break before figuring out how they were going to pay for it.
It might be a good idea to consider figuring out what's broke and just fixing that. If it's just the memory that flaked out, buy new memory. If it's the MB, buy a new MB.
It's quite apparent you don't have the business plan or the funds to warrent $20,000 in new hardware.
It's just another case of "you owe us." "We don't need to plan ahead because if we need anything, the community owes us."
There's exactly zero reason to drop the whole project just because they can't afford the latest and greatest.
Put it on lesser hardware and a lesser connection if they have to, until they can rebuild on something a little better.
My server is surviving just fine with standard consumer level parts except for the 1U case which isn't something consumers tend to buy. I won't be buying 20,000 worth of server equipment until the site earns it.
They don't even sell advertising for crying out loud. Allowing people to view for free but charge them a small monthly amount to submit information is an option. Selling the encyclopedia on DVD is another option. Or charging a small yearly fee to view is an option. Heck, you could even sell budget copies of Linux distroes. Get Linux and Support Wikipedia.
Apparently the new fairy in town is the Slashdot Fairy where you cry your woes and it gives you gobs of free money to make your problems go away.
No thanks. You at need to learn how to help yourself first. Even beggers play a tune. And no I don't use Wikipedia so don't reply claiming I somehow owe them something.
I block ertdfg.biz and I block 100% of spam from them no matter what forged domain sends the e-mail. And no legitimate e-mail will ever be filtered out.
Spammers can't obfuscate the domains for the links or the images (aside from character codes but that's the only one and it's 100% unique) so blocking them is highly effective.
Blocking words doesn't work nearly as well because words get used a lot for many purposes so a program can't really be sure. ertdfg.biz has exactly one purpose.
I don't know if baysian filters take image domains and linked domains into consideration but they should. It blocks the company and not the spammer. Filters should give the user a complete list of the domains found in e-mails and allow the EU to decide which ones are spam (and how much of the link is spam: i.e. www.geocities.com/bigboobies you wouldn't want to filter geocities.com but you would want to filter that subfolder) and then the filter should add them to the expression watch and delete on sight.
When January 1st rolls around in a few days, anyone who pulls something like that can be tracked down and heavily fined and/or jailed.
And considering it would be against the government, the chances of you getting tracked down are much higher.
You can campaign "for" an opposing candidate to make them look bad but you must not forge any headers or you will be in a deep pile of trouble.
If a candidate were to do something like that against the opposition, they'd likely be kicked out the race. Breaking a brand spanking new federal law to try to win an election wouldn't look very good on one's record.
That may have worked in 2000 (if people didn't mind the trickery which would come to light quickly). In 2004 we have laws against such things.
Government officials will be following the rules. You're not going to be getting e-mails with "v0t3 f0r 930r93 6u5h"
If you don't want policitical spam, as soon as one arrives, look for the tell and block it. They're not going to be faking domains and it's going to be professionally written. A preemptive expression block of "vote for" would probably knock out close to 100% of political spam.
The problem with spam isn't spam itself. It's that it's designed to be difficult to filter out.
As long as spammers of any sort follow the rules, I don't have a problem with them. I can filter them out without any trouble if I choose.
Howard Dean is praised for exploiting the internet to build his campaign. Now you're whining that they would dare use e-mail. It's a public medium. Anyone can use it. Calling it "spam" doesn't make it any less e-mail. Politicials will be sending out a few million (if that) not billions. How many voters gave out e-mail addresses? Those are the only people who will be getting e-mails. I wouldn't call it spamming when you volunteer your e-mail address. That's "opt-in."
If they abuse it, don't vote for them. If they use it intelligently, encourage others to do the same. That's what the internet is for.
The only issue is the black out period. And no one has done anything yet. I'd be more impressed if a politician didn't take advantage of a legal situation than if they were forced not to.
Whether the sun is up or down my job isn't affected by it. Most people's jobs don't depend on the time of day. But if you ask a farmer, it matters quite a bit.
For you it's just a pissing contest. For people who run massivly computationally intensive programs, this kind of thing matters a great deal. Time is money. You have to consider the cost of the hardware and the cost of the time for it to complete the project. A 500Mhz system could render LotR. But it wouldn't be released in our lifetime and that time would cost more than the movie could possibly bring in.
You're not a troll. You're just shortsighted. One, maybe 2 inches depending on the length of your nose.
"It doesn't matter to me so how can it matter to anybody?"
mythic allows 1GB of transfer a month and 200MB of space for a fee. I do over 1GB a day. And if I made the site 100% free I'd be paying thousands a month in bandwidth costs. They're also taking advantage of cheaper high speed connections elsewhere in the world.
My version, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited space and you get paid. You're comparing apples and oranges. My service is for hosting large files that need massive amounts of bandwidth and the owners would like to be compensated for their efforts.
Mythic and freeshell are for hosting small stuff that don't demand much where owners just want some place to shove their files. The other one is subsidised by members. Which is also a method. The bandwidth fairy doesn't exist. The money has to come from somewhere. I chose the subscription route. That works for me.
And I wasn't aware that my finance records were publically accessible that you could tell me I'm not making money.
Tell that to www.windrivers.com and every other subscription based site. WinDrivers.com used to charge $50 a year. I charge $30 a year. Now they charge $29.95. They charge $5 a day to get access to their drivers, I charge $1 for 7 days and you get access to everything else on the site.
I find it hilarious when people tell me things aren't working when I'm doing them and seeing that they work with my own eyes.
It's as silly as telling birds they can't fly.
Like it or not, PayPal is the standard for on-line transactions. Nothing can compete with their rates.
They didn't do their job. They made a promise. They had a means to fullfill it. They made asses of themselves. I didn't say a thing for two weeks. I filled out their forms and sent in the part like they told me to. I gave them plenty of time to hold up their end of the deal. They decided pissing off an otherwise perfectly content customer was a better idea than following through with their policies.
They're morons. No matter how much you want to hold to the idea that NewEgg is great, they fucked up big time. Two weeks with not so much as a notice is inexcusable. Only Qwest has managed to be that obnoxious.
They can either eat the black mark or do their job. That's the problem with idiot companies on-line. They can just delete e-mails and pretend upset customers don't exist. That's a pretty shitty way to run a company.
I used to work tech support. No matter how angry a customer was when I picked up the line they never were angry when I was done. People have a right to be angry and express their anger. Companies and their employees have a duty to address the customer and make the problem go away or make the customer understand why the problem is out of the companies control. NewEgg has failed on all accounts.
And over something that was no cost to themselves. Truly a new level of dumb.
Slashdot Mirror
Spammers need images to get past word filters and to make an ad "stand out." Images can't be sent with the e-mail so src tags are used. href tags are also used for links they expect people to click on. "http://" is a unique identifier that absolutly cannot be obfuscated or it will not work. You can add a lot of junk before an @ symbol but eventually the real link must be there. Simply block that link and poof, no more spam from spammers advertising using that domain. You can block countless spammers by blocking a single 100% unique URL that no legitimate e-mail will ever contain.
The full write up of my take on what I see as horribly flawed ways to combat spam and source code for the custom programs I use to strip links out of e-mails.
I have an example of spam posted there where everything is just a mess in the e-mail. The headers are forged, the text is all obfuscated. But there, clear as day is an "HTTP://"
Poof, killed the spam domain. And there's no way to circumvent my method except by not having links of any form in the e-mail. If you put a link in a spam, I will find it and I will block it.
Ben
The idea isn't to keep people from reading the messages. It's to keep people from knowing who sent it.
You know, like an anonymous tip line. If you're ever in a situation where you know something and need to get it out to everyone you can with out revealing it was you who sent it, forging headers an excellent first step to going about it.
If you lived in China, you'd probably want to get to know a few spammers or at least their tricks if you wanted to experience some form of free speech.
By "fixing" SMTP in such a way that headers must be accurate, the ability to exercise free speech is greatly hampered for everyone.
Ben
The road to the destruction of our rights is paved with tragedies.
Apparently getting "spammed" is a great enough tragedy for some people to warrent the destuction of the right to privacy. 3000+ dead civilians and our bags are searched at airports. I can buy that. Getting advertisments and suddenly privacy goes out the window? WTF? THAT is the point.
If I want to send an e-mail and I don't want you to know who sent it, I demand that ability. As of now the best you can do is trace an e-mail back to a server. But FU if you think you're getting a confirmation on who actually sent it.
Maybe you don't have a use for being anonymous. Maybe nobody on the planet has a need to be anonymous. But we have a right to privacy should such a need arise.
Can't figure out what domain actually sent the e-mail. Too f-ing bad. If you can trace the domain you can trace the owner of the domain. If you can trace the owner you've got 10 fingers to start smashing to get information about who's giving out such and such information about a such and such operation or movement or whatever taking place.
If you want to block spam, block the links it contains. It's that simple. You can't obfuscate links. There's your technical solution. HTML does not allow for href or src tags to be obfuscated or they are rendered useless. It doesn't matter how deceitful the headers are or who the spammer is, if they're advertising a domain I've put filter on, it's not getting through.
And that spammer's right (they have them, too) to privacy is not infringed and my right to restrict my private server is not infringed.
Stop looking to destroy a right or two every time you get inconvienced or pissed off. We raised hell with the Patriot Act and GPS cell phones but spam...now there's an excuse to restrict the rights of citizens.
Stop bitching and start listening to yourselves.
Ben
My ISP blocks outgoing port 25 activity but not incomming so my sig points to a catch all on my home connection for analyzing spam. Recieving on port 25 is no different than getting mail any other way. The ISP only cares about one way communication.
To get around the port 25 block I run my mail server on an alternate port for myself and then use RinetD on port 25 which fowards to the mail server. My e-mail going out is none of my ISP's business. The server that actually sends the mail is hosted by another ISP. Which doesn't break any clauses since I'm not running a server on my home system.
I've had people using AOL signup for subscriptions since I started back when I was running out of house. But then I had a business connection.
Residential connections tend to have clauses about not being allowed to run servers. My home ISP doens't block port 80 but I'm still not allowed to run an HTTP server.
If AOL is blocking residential accounts that are allowed to run mail servers then you have a case. However, if you're violating your TOS then too bad. Get a business connection like you're supposed to.
Blocking non static IPs is a good thing. If you're seriously trying to run a mail server then you need a static IP. So pay for it.
Ben
"You actually *can* get a digital certificate for your email, but it costs money"
Yeah, you can get those in your BIOS and media files and anywhere else. "Trusted Computing" EVIL. "Trusted E-Mail" GOOD.
What is wrong with you people?
You know what I do to block spam?
I filter out links contained in e-mails and block the COMPANIES.
I don't care how forged the header is. If the e-mail contains a link to spam domain it doesn't get through.
Nobody's right to privacy is infringed and it's 100% effective and 100% accurate. Nobody is going to be sending a legtimate e-mail with a link to and/or an image from www.topofferz.com or with an affiliate link to click-com
I'm not going to regurgitate the whole system I use here, you can find it talked about in older posts of mine and it will be posted on my site this weekend along with all the source code for the programs I use to automate some of the process.
I can't believe how quick and eager people are to burry their rights over nothing more than ADVERTISMENTS.
Ben
if you couldn't send anonymous snail mail.
Or anonymous e-mail. That's where this "signed" e-mail crap is going.
Imagine every message you send being tracible right back to you.
But hey, what's the trashing of rights in the name of convienience.
If you can send e-mails without being traced, so can spammers.
If spammers can't send e-mails without being traced, neither can you.
"Spammers are most afraid of being tracked and identified. "
Yeah, and nobody has a legitimate reason to not want to be traced.
I spent all of 2 hours modifying RinetD to do proper logging in between senders and my mail server. I spent another 3 hours writting a simple program to parse that log pulling out who a message is from, who it's going to, the subject line and what links it contains and the domains of those links.
Any entry "to" entry that isn't one of my e-mail addresses is deleted. The remaining are then examined for spam domains by looking at the froms and subject lines and the domains themselves.
A short list:
If expression both matches "*imgehost.com*" Delete ""
If expression both matches "*mydailyoffer.com*" Delete ""
If expression both matches "*topofferz.net*" Delete ""
If expression both matches "*adweawen.biz*" Delete ""
If expression both matches "*divineprice.com*" Delete ""
If expression both matches "*stamps.com*" Delete ""
And poof, no more ads from those companies and nobody's right to privacy is infringed. If they happen to have multiple domains for the same campaign I'll catch them as they come.
I will not support a means to subvert my right to privacy over some stupid ads.
How much are your rights worth to you? Not much apparently.
Terrorists blow up buildings and we get the patriot act. "terrorists" flood inboxes and you demand tracable e-mail.
Get bent.
Ben
it's copying.
Ben
lets assume we're not going to validate URLs before commencing the highest click thru rate of all time and then pretend we have an argument.
If spammers can DDoS sites the nasty ways by corrupting packets, I don't think clicking on a link sent to me in an e-mail excessivly is going to raise any eyebrows.
Ben
If a spam message has a link to an image, let it go through and view it lots and lots of times. It's trivial to make a simple browser app that you feed URLs and it repeatly grabs the data from that URL. Most spammers use affiliate programs so if you want to be really mean you can call the affiliated link a few million times so that they get paid nothing (or even kicked off the program for cheating) or you bankrupt the affiliate company if they don't have rules against such things. (pay per click and not pay per sale). 1 million click thrus times a few pennies per click really adds up.
A 25KB image sent to 25 million people takes around 667GB of transfer. So if lots of people just sacrifice a few hundred megs of transfer, the spammer's servers will choak and die or the bandwidth costs will put them out of business.
And there's nothing illegal about it.
Ben
You know no one is going to listen that kind of thing.
It makes too much sense.
Ben
Oxygen is a poison. Acetone (which is one of the first in line on the "bad things in cigarettes" ads) is naturally produced in plants which we eat regularly. But people see acetone and think paint thinner. There are genuinly bad things in cigarettes. Acetone isn't really one of them. But the ones that are really bad no one recognizes.
Natually occuring tobacco is much healthier (relativly speaking) before the cigarette manufacturers get to it.
Like all things you need to know the limits. It's not what you eat or drink that matters but how much.
Ben
And she'd have to be a pretty good liar to pull that one off anyway.
It not a trivial task to make a realistic picture depicting yourself some place you couldn't have been. If you just made a slap together picture the judge would go "fake fake fake fake...real." You lose.
And anyone with two eyes (even one) and a brain can tell that's a real picture of her. Classic crap (35mm) picture with all the proper shadowing in a poorly lit room.
She'd be better off being very sorry and take a slap on the wrist plea bargain and not listening to crackpot "lawyers" who think they can play dumb and get away with a crime.
Ben
I was getting a dozen or so spam a day. I started filtering based on the links in the e-mail (which can't be obfuscated or they don't work) and now I find myself checking my mail server just to make sure it's actually working.
Spammers like to use images because that gets them past filters based on words. But images take up a large amount of bandwidth. 25 million messages sent with a 25KB image will take 667GB of transfer. So I simply filter out the domain that's hosting that image.
If you look at spam, spammers use affiliate programs. So although you're getting spam from hundreds or thousands of spammers, there are only a handful of domains they're wanting you to click on or are linking images from.
So you can try to block those thousands of spammers or you can block that handful of domains they're linking to.
And since I'm only filtering links that only spammers use, it's 100% effective and 100% accurate.
Nobody I know is going to be sending me e-mails with a link to www.2004hosting.org but dozens of spammers have and now that I've filtered it, dozens are trying and failing regardless of who they are. So I've effectivly blocked dozens of spammers by filtering a single company.
Lots of spammers also use common click-thru sites to claim their commission. By blocking that handful of domains I've just blocked thousands of spammers.
I now get a spam maybe once every few days and I simply VNC into my server and block the domain used to host the image and I'll never get a spam from any spammer who's using that domain to host their ad pics.
Simple. Effective. I also block mail domains as possible because there is no silver bullet. You have to attack on as many fronts as you can. I've just found blocking companies to be the best out of the bunch. But it's litter and every little measure helps.
Ben
so one guy claims that Occam's Razor forces the case to the people who want to claim it's not a hoax
and now you're using Occam's Razor to argue it's true.
I guess that's what happens when you use an old argument to excuse your brain from the discussion.
Is the argument:
The paper is a hoax.
In which case the negative is that it's not and by Occam's razor it can't be proven so the burden of proof is on those who think it's a hoax.
or is the argument:
The paper is legitimate.
In which case the negative is that it's not, putting the burden of proof on those who think it's legitimate.
Perhaps instead of using pointless razors to excuse one's brain from having to think, you should seek to prove your side no matter what it is.
Anytime someone mentions Occum's Razor substitute it with "I don't have to think, therefore"
For example:
"Occam's Razor makes it seem more likely that there some kind of language operating in the manuscript than a random system of patterns"
becomes
"I don't have to think, therefore it seem more likely that there some kind of language operating in the manuscript than a random system of patterns"
It's amazing how much is true when you don't have to think about it. That goes for the other guy who attempted to use Occam's Razor is well.
You can prove DNA doesn't belong to someone. You can prove DNA does belong to someone.
You can prove this is fake like the Salamander Papers. You can prove it's legitimate like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The fact is, there are many people working on both sides of the argument because they have to. There are a lot of people in the world who want to assume everything is false unless proven otherwise. And since they believe it's false it's up to everybody else to do the thinking for them to convince them otherwise.
Maybe hiding your brain behind Occam's Razor suits you but fortunatly the people working on this problem aren't.
Occam's Rasor only works when there are infinite possibilities and you can't do intellectual judo with the question.
Assume the universe is infinite. Prove it.
Assume the universe is finite. Prove it.
Both negate the other but neither are asking to prove a negative.
Ben
Ever since I've started filtering based on URLs that spams link to (text in a src or href can't be obfuscated or it won't work), the amount of spam I get is amost none.
However that still wastes a bit of bandwidth. It guarentees at least a 50% savings since the spam only makes it in and not out which isn't bad.
It'll still be nice to be able to reasonably expect that the header information is accurate so I can block that and save even more bandwidth.
Time to find a new job Rawlsky. Or move to China.
Ben
If Rawlsky follows the rules, not only will he be paying more to send spam but filters will be infinitly more effective.
The rules force spammers to reveal themselves. While spammers could avoid the rules without legal reprocusions they could circumvent filters that depended on those rules for effectiveness. Now that they have to follow the rules, filters will do their job much better.
For example, I've never gotten a spam that followed the rule of putting ADV: in the subject.
Yes spam is legal so more spam will be sent. But filtering out legal spam (hey wow, a federal distinction finally) will be child's play.
Sure you'll still have to put up with foreign crap but spam is like litter. Every little bit helps.
I can't believe how many people fell for the spammers' lies that this law would be good for them. Now that it's show time, the lie is falling apart.
Ben
wears a tinfoil hat.
Ben
It's not the resolution that's the problem with DVDs. It's the obvious pixelation that can be seen when playing them on a monitor, Plasma, or LCD screen. Plasma being the worst I've seen. CRT televisions blend it all together so you can't see the compression artifacts.
I was at a Best Buy and they were "showing off" a very expensive plasma display with a DVD. It looked terrible. That's not motivating me to spend several thousand on a TV. I'd rather spend $1200 on an LCD projector and every time I want to upgrade I just move it back a foot or two.
It's not bad enough to warrent me upgrading my collection of DVDs. I even have VHS tapes that I'm not about to upgrade except by digitizing and putting them on DVD myself.
I don't care about more scanlines. I'd rather have less compression. Resolution is secondary to that.
Ben
$20,000 for hardware is insane. Especially considering they waited for it to break before figuring out how they were going to pay for it.
It might be a good idea to consider figuring out what's broke and just fixing that. If it's just the memory that flaked out, buy new memory. If it's the MB, buy a new MB.
It's quite apparent you don't have the business plan or the funds to warrent $20,000 in new hardware.
It's just another case of "you owe us." "We don't need to plan ahead because if we need anything, the community owes us."
There's exactly zero reason to drop the whole project just because they can't afford the latest and greatest.
Put it on lesser hardware and a lesser connection if they have to, until they can rebuild on something a little better.
My server is surviving just fine with standard consumer level parts except for the 1U case which isn't something consumers tend to buy. I won't be buying 20,000 worth of server equipment until the site earns it.
They don't even sell advertising for crying out loud. Allowing people to view for free but charge them a small monthly amount to submit information is an option. Selling the encyclopedia on DVD is another option. Or charging a small yearly fee to view is an option. Heck, you could even sell budget copies of Linux distroes. Get Linux and Support Wikipedia.
Apparently the new fairy in town is the Slashdot Fairy where you cry your woes and it gives you gobs of free money to make your problems go away.
No thanks. You at need to learn how to help yourself first. Even beggers play a tune. And no I don't use Wikipedia so don't reply claiming I somehow owe them something.
Ben
I'd start looking at those e-mails because many of them are probably advertising the same company.
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Look at the source and start filtering the domains that the e-mails link to. For an image and/or for the link people are supposed to click on.
For example:
I've gotten two e-bay spams that have
http://www.ertdfg.biz/index.php?id=3D173&affid=
I block ertdfg.biz and I block 100% of spam from them no matter what forged domain sends the e-mail. And no legitimate e-mail will ever be filtered out.
Spammers can't obfuscate the domains for the links or the images (aside from character codes but that's the only one and it's 100% unique) so blocking them is highly effective.
Blocking words doesn't work nearly as well because words get used a lot for many purposes so a program can't really be sure. ertdfg.biz has exactly one purpose.
I don't know if baysian filters take image domains and linked domains into consideration but they should. It blocks the company and not the spammer. Filters should give the user a complete list of the domains found in e-mails and allow the EU to decide which ones are spam (and how much of the link is spam: i.e. www.geocities.com/bigboobies you wouldn't want to filter geocities.com but you would want to filter that subfolder) and then the filter should add them to the expression watch and delete on sight.
Ben
When January 1st rolls around in a few days, anyone who pulls something like that can be tracked down and heavily fined and/or jailed.
And considering it would be against the government, the chances of you getting tracked down are much higher.
You can campaign "for" an opposing candidate to make them look bad but you must not forge any headers or you will be in a deep pile of trouble.
If a candidate were to do something like that against the opposition, they'd likely be kicked out the race. Breaking a brand spanking new federal law to try to win an election wouldn't look very good on one's record.
That may have worked in 2000 (if people didn't mind the trickery which would come to light quickly). In 2004 we have laws against such things.
Ben
Government officials will be following the rules. You're not going to be getting e-mails with "v0t3 f0r 930r93 6u5h"
If you don't want policitical spam, as soon as one arrives, look for the tell and block it. They're not going to be faking domains and it's going to be professionally written. A preemptive expression block of "vote for" would probably knock out close to 100% of political spam.
The problem with spam isn't spam itself. It's that it's designed to be difficult to filter out.
As long as spammers of any sort follow the rules, I don't have a problem with them. I can filter them out without any trouble if I choose.
Howard Dean is praised for exploiting the internet to build his campaign. Now you're whining that they would dare use e-mail. It's a public medium. Anyone can use it. Calling it "spam" doesn't make it any less e-mail. Politicials will be sending out a few million (if that) not billions. How many voters gave out e-mail addresses? Those are the only people who will be getting e-mails. I wouldn't call it spamming when you volunteer your e-mail address. That's "opt-in."
If they abuse it, don't vote for them. If they use it intelligently, encourage others to do the same. That's what the internet is for.
The only issue is the black out period. And no one has done anything yet. I'd be more impressed if a politician didn't take advantage of a legal situation than if they were forced not to.
Ben
for it to matter.
Whether the sun is up or down my job isn't affected by it. Most people's jobs don't depend on the time of day. But if you ask a farmer, it matters quite a bit.
For you it's just a pissing contest. For people who run massivly computationally intensive programs, this kind of thing matters a great deal. Time is money. You have to consider the cost of the hardware and the cost of the time for it to complete the project. A 500Mhz system could render LotR. But it wouldn't be released in our lifetime and that time would cost more than the movie could possibly bring in.
You're not a troll. You're just shortsighted. One, maybe 2 inches depending on the length of your nose.
"It doesn't matter to me so how can it matter to anybody?"
I think you need a new pair of shoes.
Ben
mythic allows 1GB of transfer a month and 200MB of space for a fee. I do over 1GB a day. And if I made the site 100% free I'd be paying thousands a month in bandwidth costs. They're also taking advantage of cheaper high speed connections elsewhere in the world.
My version, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited space and you get paid. You're comparing apples and oranges. My service is for hosting large files that need massive amounts of bandwidth and the owners would like to be compensated for their efforts.
Mythic and freeshell are for hosting small stuff that don't demand much where owners just want some place to shove their files. The other one is subsidised by members. Which is also a method. The bandwidth fairy doesn't exist. The money has to come from somewhere. I chose the subscription route. That works for me.
And I wasn't aware that my finance records were publically accessible that you could tell me I'm not making money.
Tell that to www.windrivers.com and every other subscription based site. WinDrivers.com used to charge $50 a year. I charge $30 a year. Now they charge $29.95. They charge $5 a day to get access to their drivers, I charge $1 for 7 days and you get access to everything else on the site.
I find it hilarious when people tell me things aren't working when I'm doing them and seeing that they work with my own eyes.
It's as silly as telling birds they can't fly.
Like it or not, PayPal is the standard for on-line transactions. Nothing can compete with their rates.
Ben
They didn't do their job. They made a promise. They had a means to fullfill it. They made asses of themselves. I didn't say a thing for two weeks. I filled out their forms and sent in the part like they told me to. I gave them plenty of time to hold up their end of the deal. They decided pissing off an otherwise perfectly content customer was a better idea than following through with their policies.
They're morons. No matter how much you want to hold to the idea that NewEgg is great, they fucked up big time. Two weeks with not so much as a notice is inexcusable. Only Qwest has managed to be that obnoxious.
They can either eat the black mark or do their job. That's the problem with idiot companies on-line. They can just delete e-mails and pretend upset customers don't exist. That's a pretty shitty way to run a company.
I used to work tech support. No matter how angry a customer was when I picked up the line they never were angry when I was done. People have a right to be angry and express their anger. Companies and their employees have a duty to address the customer and make the problem go away or make the customer understand why the problem is out of the companies control. NewEgg has failed on all accounts.
And over something that was no cost to themselves. Truly a new level of dumb.
Ben