which pretty much takes us back to the problem with spam. I want to read/., so I choose to go and visit/.. I don't want spam. But it's shoved in my face, and I have to either deal with it or risk loosing valid emails from my clients/users.
I do something similar with my CPanel mail filters. Anytime I'm buying something or creating an account online, I use an email based off of their domain. So if I'm buying something off of Amazon, I use dontspamme_amazon-com[at]domain.com.
Then, in the domain.com control panel I set up a filter where if I receive email that contains dontspamme_ in the To header, it gets forwarded to the single email address dontspamme[at]domain.com. That's the email address I check, so I can still receive things like confirmation notices, etc. But I can also tell who's sold my address, signed me up for spam, etc.
(It doesn't help that I actually have real human friends who do send me email message with subject lines that are blank, or consist of the single word "Hi!" or "Meeting.")
Here's my advice on the matter:
I use Outlook Express here, and whenever I come across an email I can't tell if it's spam or not, I view the source. First, make sure you are not using the preview pane (that shows the contents of the email in a third panel without having to open the email in another window), otherwise you've triggered all of the spam's bugs (which tells the [more sophisticated] spammers that you've read the email, therefore the address was valid).
So when you see an unknown email, right click, go to properties, details (the header information on this page might tell you all you need to know, but otherwise...), and click "Message Source". This will allow you to view the email's source without triggering bugs, and you can tell pretty quickly if the email is valid or not.
I estimate each piece of spam to take roughly 1 second of my time. The second is either spent scanning and deleting the spam that got through, or the time spent setting up the filters for the spam that was caught. I multiply that by my average hourly rate, and find out that, based on my current spam average, I will loose around $2,500.00 annually due to spam.
That is not acceptible, I would obviously rather the time be billable hours. Or, as is usually the case, I would rather go to bed earlier instead of having to make up for time wasted.
but if nothing else, this method would help the ISP/hosting service locate the spammers, and hopefully shut them down faster than they would have otherwise. You say all it needs is a few days -- but if this method is implemented the ISP/hosting service could locate it and take it down in hours. Which, going back to a parent post, would again attack the economics of spam.
There are more artists than performance artists
on
Synthesized Singers
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Over the past few decades, advances in computer hardware and software have eliminated many jobs... some technical, some menial, but none artistic
I am seeing a situation where ATT would require licensing for every credit-card accepter on the Internet. That's not so fun.
Why stop at the internet? The patent (in my cursory once-over) described transactions performed using an unspecified telecommunications network, where the vendee does not have to present their actual credit card to the vendor.
In addition to internet-based transactions, this describes ATMs, card-processing stations in check-out lines, telephone transactions, etc. and might even extend to merchant credit card processing machines.
Although one would hope from such a list some prior art would be admissable.
If it looked at all like NASA will just fry Hubble in the atmosphere ala Mir, and if I were the Smithsonian, I would foot the bill to bring the Hubble back to earth. It would be a certain crowd-getter.
That would be true in a perfect world -- but in this litigous society of ours, and in a rare case of this actually helping, the fact that AT&T has much bigger lawyers than the spammers would mean that neither of these points are really that important.
I agree with some of the other responses, a more efficient method would be to educate the idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H people who respond to the spam. But I don't like the idea of educating by spamming people who are already spammed -- I think the solution is to get Michael Moore to do a documentary on the topic. It would take something wide-scale like that to really make a dent in people.
even funnier is when you go to the fourth result, "Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP" and you get this quote from Microsoft:
Microsoft provides alternatives for most open source products.
Hey I think M$ just admitted defeat! The stated 'alternative' is usually the underdog. You don't hear Bill Ford saying, "Ford is an alternative to Citroen" do you? Or Adobe saying, "Photoshop is an alternative to Gimp"? No!
Oh I like the tank idea! Now what he should do is get one of those little pinhole spy video cameras, and instead of using a string, just use the video signal wire. Hook that up to a TV and (as long as you had enough video cable) you could get as far as you needed without worrying about loosing the signal. You just walk under the tank the whole way (if it's in the ceiling) and drive-by-TV. Fun!
I met a guy once that (claimed to at least) used ferrets for running cable. He would tie the cable to the ferret and stick him in the ceiling. Then he would open the other end and shake the food/toy/treat/whatever to get the ferret to come over. He said it worked very well.
I have a better idea, after you make that list, why not compile a list of all the companies/organizations that have used the DMCA for the right reasons, that is, protection against criminals.
Put these lists side by side, and even a complete moron would realize that the DMCA is abused more than used. Compare the two lists, and complain to your local representative.
I don't have any experience with applescript, so I can't really comment, but I agree with what you're saying. VBScript is pretty OS-wide though, as the Windows Script Host reads it (as well as javascript and another one or two I think). Python is starting to be used like that too. And that pretty much takes me back to my original comment, that Open Source will be an important step in the process. Scripting languages really just echo this step, since they can be read by anyone with the code (obfuscation aside).
Cross-application information transfer is still sticky though, you're right. I think a lot of this could also be solved by making more applications Open Source. But it's good to see that there are some steps already taken. I am QUITE ready for the next generation of computing!
A very similar thing happened to me. I run a reseller hosting account for myself and my clients on a machine with a few hundred other reseller accounts (and therefore probably thousands of domains). Somebody using the server either sent or was reported to have sent spam to somebody with an AOL address. It was reported, and AOL started refusing any email directed to any AOL account.
This created havoc for myself and my clients (and everybody else on my server, and one other server run by my hosting provider) for months before it was finally repaired. They sure took their sweet time about it, my hosting provider was in dialogue with them for probably four or five months about the problem.
not because "Joe Secretary" will learn to program in order to understand his email system better
Agreed. I just think that in the future, even "Joe Secretary" will be so much more integrated with his computer that his demands for customization will exceed what a software company might be able to supply. I don't think we can create a real example with our current software reality (and definately not with email) -- but things like VBScript programming for Excel is at least in the right direction.
Take Excel/VBScript and move forward 30 years. Try and imagine this great convergence -- people get more tech savvy as more and more generations are born with personal computers integral in their lives, and computer languages get more and more elegant and refined, and easier to understand. Also advance the current state of our dependence on computers.
At some point the three lines will cross. Programming languages become easy enough that the tech savvy of an average person is enough to utilize it, and the advanced state of computer dependence will create the necessity to do so.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with the concept.
But it's ludicrous and borders on ignorant to claim that they should roll up their sleeves and do it all themselves.
I agree with this, and I think it doesn't oppose the original article. I don't think (or at least don't hope) the author really expects people to code all of their needs by themselves. I think it's simply a matter of necessity to customize.
As I've mentioned in another post, I think VBScript integration in Excel is an early example of this. Microsoft realizes they can't provide every function for every user for every circumstance, so they integrated the capability for people to program their own functions.
In the future computers will be an ever more integral part of our lives, and the need for higher and higher customization will exist for more and more people. Software companies won't be able to keep up, and more and more people will depend on coding their own customization.
I think we're already seeing the first stages of that. Word and Excel, for example, come with highly integrated VBScript. There is lots of room for improvement, but the fact remains that millions of people have a scripting language at their fingertips, they only need the necessity to learn it.
I think that necessity will come when so many people begin using computers for so many personalized tasks that software companies simply can't keep reasonably create every option for everybody. And again, I think VBScript in Excel is already an early-stage example of this.
Why the obsession with comparing cars to computers? There seem to be a lot of responses on this article along the sames lines.
A car only has two or three main purposes. With cars, the most advanced/successful user is either the safer or faster driver (depending on road or track). The simpler and/or more efficient method of translating the desires of the driver, the higher the success rate of the driver. The desires of one drivers are not that different from the desires of another driver, because the task required of a car is meant to be performed by itself.
The maximum flexibility of a car is reflected by the user's desired function: off-road, street driving, hauling, etc. But even this 'flexibility' is a limitation because (in 99% of cases) you have to get a completely new vehicle to gain added the added flexibility.
A computer is adaptable. It's meant to perform multiple tasks, which means that the most advanced/successful computer user is one who can make the machine help him/her with as many tasks as possible, as quickly as possible. Because a computer must help many different users with many different desires, they must maintain flexibility. And unlike a vehicle, that you by itself outside of your other tasks, the computer is meant to enhance multiple existing tasks, throughout the day. They are integrated into our daily world.
Because of this integration computers must not only be flexible on a task-by-task level, but to achieve maximum efficiency each task must also be flexible on a user-by-user level. And because computer manufacturors and software companies can't reasonably manage this level of flexibility, the task must be passed on more and more to the users themselves. As the integration becomes more complicated, more of this flexibility is required by the user.
If cars even approached this kind of flexibility, people would choose from only one of a handful of cars (like choosing from only a handful of OSes), and be able to adapt that vehicle to any need. They would be able to alter any of these specifications at will: color, maximum speed, seat number, fuel efficiency, cargo capacity, clearance, etc. etc. etc. And this would undoubtedly take considerable knowledge of the mechanics of the car.
The closest cars come to this these days are the car modifications (like those from The Fast and The Furious, etc.). It's not very close, because these modifications are still one-shot deals, not real flexibility. But these drivers do tend to be much more fluent with the mechanical aspects of the cars.
The analogy is sound, if you compare apples with apples, and not Apple with Toyota.
An interesting concept. And this is exactly why Open Source software should be promoted.
The spread of human language has been an accumulative process. After the middle ages, when more and more people became literate, there was a corresponding increase in writers. The more writers, the more literature was available, which generated more ideas for more literature. It built on itself. Literature was Open Source. Anybody could take existing material and take ideas from that to build more material.
When we come to a similar stage with comptuers it will be the same thing. Programming will no longer be for the scholars, and more and more people will begin to take part. And the more software in the collective existence, the more resources there are to build more software. But it needs to be Open Source to facilitate the accumulative process.
Slashdot Mirror
which pretty much takes us back to the problem with spam. I want to read /., so I choose to go and visit /.. I don't want spam. But it's shoved in my face, and I have to either deal with it or risk loosing valid emails from my clients/users.
I do something similar with my CPanel mail filters. Anytime I'm buying something or creating an account online, I use an email based off of their domain. So if I'm buying something off of Amazon, I use dontspamme_amazon-com[at]domain.com.
Then, in the domain.com control panel I set up a filter where if I receive email that contains dontspamme_ in the To header, it gets forwarded to the single email address dontspamme[at]domain.com. That's the email address I check, so I can still receive things like confirmation notices, etc. But I can also tell who's sold my address, signed me up for spam, etc.
I only wish I had started doing this sooner.
(It doesn't help that I actually have real human friends who do send me email message with subject lines that are blank, or consist of the single word "Hi!" or "Meeting.")
Here's my advice on the matter:
I use Outlook Express here, and whenever I come across an email I can't tell if it's spam or not, I view the source. First, make sure you are not using the preview pane (that shows the contents of the email in a third panel without having to open the email in another window), otherwise you've triggered all of the spam's bugs (which tells the [more sophisticated] spammers that you've read the email, therefore the address was valid).
So when you see an unknown email, right click, go to properties, details (the header information on this page might tell you all you need to know, but otherwise...), and click "Message Source". This will allow you to view the email's source without triggering bugs, and you can tell pretty quickly if the email is valid or not.
Get a life : it's email, it won't kill you.
No, but it's costing me thousands of dollars.
I estimate each piece of spam to take roughly 1 second of my time. The second is either spent scanning and deleting the spam that got through, or the time spent setting up the filters for the spam that was caught. I multiply that by my average hourly rate, and find out that, based on my current spam average, I will loose around $2,500.00 annually due to spam.
That is not acceptible, I would obviously rather the time be billable hours. Or, as is usually the case, I would rather go to bed earlier instead of having to make up for time wasted.
but if nothing else, this method would help the ISP/hosting service locate the spammers, and hopefully shut them down faster than they would have otherwise. You say all it needs is a few days -- but if this method is implemented the ISP/hosting service could locate it and take it down in hours. Which, going back to a parent post, would again attack the economics of spam.
Over the past few decades, advances in computer hardware and software have eliminated many jobs... some technical, some menial, but none artistic
Ever hear of a cel animator?
I am seeing a situation where ATT would require licensing for every credit-card accepter on the Internet. That's not so fun.
Why stop at the internet? The patent (in my cursory once-over) described transactions performed using an unspecified telecommunications network, where the vendee does not have to present their actual credit card to the vendor.
In addition to internet-based transactions, this describes ATMs, card-processing stations in check-out lines, telephone transactions, etc. and might even extend to merchant credit card processing machines.
Although one would hope from such a list some prior art would be admissable.
Make sure the 3 geeks in question are residents of California, and you've got a few more bullets to flick at the spammers.
If it looked at all like NASA will just fry Hubble in the atmosphere ala Mir, and if I were the Smithsonian, I would foot the bill to bring the Hubble back to earth. It would be a certain crowd-getter.
You are lucky! I block about 470 spams a day, with about 100 getting through.
(unfortunately I can't risk using the really greedy filter methods because of all the business emails I might miss)
That would be true in a perfect world -- but in this litigous society of ours, and in a rare case of this actually helping, the fact that AT&T has much bigger lawyers than the spammers would mean that neither of these points are really that important.
I agree with some of the other responses, a more efficient method would be to educate the idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H people who respond to the spam. But I don't like the idea of educating by spamming people who are already spammed -- I think the solution is to get Michael Moore to do a documentary on the topic. It would take something wide-scale like that to really make a dent in people.
even funnier is when you go to the fourth result, "Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP" and you get this quote from Microsoft:
Microsoft provides alternatives for most open source products.
Hey I think M$ just admitted defeat! The stated 'alternative' is usually the underdog. You don't hear Bill Ford saying, "Ford is an alternative to Citroen" do you? Or Adobe saying, "Photoshop is an alternative to Gimp"? No!
Oh I like the tank idea! Now what he should do is get one of those little pinhole spy video cameras, and instead of using a string, just use the video signal wire. Hook that up to a TV and (as long as you had enough video cable) you could get as far as you needed without worrying about loosing the signal. You just walk under the tank the whole way (if it's in the ceiling) and drive-by-TV. Fun!
I met a guy once that (claimed to at least) used ferrets for running cable. He would tie the cable to the ferret and stick him in the ceiling. Then he would open the other end and shake the food/toy/treat/whatever to get the ferret to come over. He said it worked very well.
It isn't current, but here is a chart (PDF)
that shows how the radio bands were divided up in 1996.
I have a better idea, after you make that list, why not compile a list of all the companies/organizations that have used the DMCA for the right reasons, that is, protection against criminals.
Put these lists side by side, and even a complete moron would realize that the DMCA is abused more than used. Compare the two lists, and complain to your local representative.
What is happening is simply attempted extortion
Extortion? I didn't know the DMCA covered extortion, too!
I don't have any experience with applescript, so I can't really comment, but I agree with what you're saying. VBScript is pretty OS-wide though, as the Windows Script Host reads it (as well as javascript and another one or two I think). Python is starting to be used like that too. And that pretty much takes me back to my original comment, that Open Source will be an important step in the process. Scripting languages really just echo this step, since they can be read by anyone with the code (obfuscation aside).
Cross-application information transfer is still sticky though, you're right. I think a lot of this could also be solved by making more applications Open Source. But it's good to see that there are some steps already taken. I am QUITE ready for the next generation of computing!
A very similar thing happened to me. I run a reseller hosting account for myself and my clients on a machine with a few hundred other reseller accounts (and therefore probably thousands of domains). Somebody using the server either sent or was reported to have sent spam to somebody with an AOL address. It was reported, and AOL started refusing any email directed to any AOL account.
This created havoc for myself and my clients (and everybody else on my server, and one other server run by my hosting provider) for months before it was finally repaired. They sure took their sweet time about it, my hosting provider was in dialogue with them for probably four or five months about the problem.
not because "Joe Secretary" will learn to program in order to understand his email system better
Agreed. I just think that in the future, even "Joe Secretary" will be so much more integrated with his computer that his demands for customization will exceed what a software company might be able to supply. I don't think we can create a real example with our current software reality (and definately not with email) -- but things like VBScript programming for Excel is at least in the right direction.
Take Excel/VBScript and move forward 30 years. Try and imagine this great convergence -- people get more tech savvy as more and more generations are born with personal computers integral in their lives, and computer languages get more and more elegant and refined, and easier to understand. Also advance the current state of our dependence on computers.
At some point the three lines will cross. Programming languages become easy enough that the tech savvy of an average person is enough to utilize it, and the advanced state of computer dependence will create the necessity to do so.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with the concept.
But it's ludicrous and borders on ignorant to claim that they should roll up their sleeves and do it all themselves.
I agree with this, and I think it doesn't oppose the original article. I don't think (or at least don't hope) the author really expects people to code all of their needs by themselves. I think it's simply a matter of necessity to customize.
As I've mentioned in another post, I think VBScript integration in Excel is an early example of this. Microsoft realizes they can't provide every function for every user for every circumstance, so they integrated the capability for people to program their own functions.
In the future computers will be an ever more integral part of our lives, and the need for higher and higher customization will exist for more and more people. Software companies won't be able to keep up, and more and more people will depend on coding their own customization.
I think we're already seeing the first stages of that. Word and Excel, for example, come with highly integrated VBScript. There is lots of room for improvement, but the fact remains that millions of people have a scripting language at their fingertips, they only need the necessity to learn it.
I think that necessity will come when so many people begin using computers for so many personalized tasks that software companies simply can't keep reasonably create every option for everybody. And again, I think VBScript in Excel is already an early-stage example of this.
Why the obsession with comparing cars to computers? There seem to be a lot of responses on this article along the sames lines.
A car only has two or three main purposes. With cars, the most advanced/successful user is either the safer or faster driver (depending on road or track). The simpler and/or more efficient method of translating the desires of the driver, the higher the success rate of the driver. The desires of one drivers are not that different from the desires of another driver, because the task required of a car is meant to be performed by itself.
The maximum flexibility of a car is reflected by the user's desired function: off-road, street driving, hauling, etc. But even this 'flexibility' is a limitation because (in 99% of cases) you have to get a completely new vehicle to gain added the added flexibility.
A computer is adaptable. It's meant to perform multiple tasks, which means that the most advanced/successful computer user is one who can make the machine help him/her with as many tasks as possible, as quickly as possible. Because a computer must help many different users with many different desires, they must maintain flexibility. And unlike a vehicle, that you by itself outside of your other tasks, the computer is meant to enhance multiple existing tasks, throughout the day. They are integrated into our daily world.
Because of this integration computers must not only be flexible on a task-by-task level, but to achieve maximum efficiency each task must also be flexible on a user-by-user level. And because computer manufacturors and software companies can't reasonably manage this level of flexibility, the task must be passed on more and more to the users themselves. As the integration becomes more complicated, more of this flexibility is required by the user.
If cars even approached this kind of flexibility, people would choose from only one of a handful of cars (like choosing from only a handful of OSes), and be able to adapt that vehicle to any need. They would be able to alter any of these specifications at will: color, maximum speed, seat number, fuel efficiency, cargo capacity, clearance, etc. etc. etc. And this would undoubtedly take considerable knowledge of the mechanics of the car.
The closest cars come to this these days are the car modifications (like those from The Fast and The Furious, etc.). It's not very close, because these modifications are still one-shot deals, not real flexibility. But these drivers do tend to be much more fluent with the mechanical aspects of the cars.
The analogy is sound, if you compare apples with apples, and not Apple with Toyota.
An interesting concept. And this is exactly why Open Source software should be promoted.
The spread of human language has been an accumulative process. After the middle ages, when more and more people became literate, there was a corresponding increase in writers. The more writers, the more literature was available, which generated more ideas for more literature. It built on itself. Literature was Open Source. Anybody could take existing material and take ideas from that to build more material.
When we come to a similar stage with comptuers it will be the same thing. Programming will no longer be for the scholars, and more and more people will begin to take part. And the more software in the collective existence, the more resources there are to build more software. But it needs to be Open Source to facilitate the accumulative process.