I was metamoding your post and just had to comment!
The coverage wasn't good. He sugested I try some other provider (I respect that alot).
Wow! I have no idea about TMobile, but that guy is golden! Rather than sell you crappy service that you would have been unhappy about, he did the right thing by you. You may not have bought service from them that time, but I bet you'll think about them the next time. Sadly, this being the world of insufficient light, he probably got reamed by a short-sighted manager.
Ooo! Ouch! Ouch! This just keeps getter better and better! What other huge multi-nationals will be next? Soon we'll have to invent starships so SCO can find some huge alien empires to sue! *snorf*!
"So why don't we just sue the entire universe Mr. Morden?" "One thing at a time, McBride, one thing at a time."
"*whistle-squeek* When the avalanche has begun, it is too late for the pinheads to sue..."
I'm not a big fan of PayPal, and I'm not an expert on mailing-list systems. There might be something off the shelf available that will do the job. In theory it sounds okay. How do they find out about you to use PayPal? You need a system that can't spoofed somehow. As I said, news.admin.net-abuse.email might be the place to ask. Suggestion: start with "I want to do this the right way." Expect some flack and possible redirection to another newsgroup for particular mailing list software.
I have a certain amount of sympathy, but they were going after the wrong target. And that target isn't SPEWS and certainly isn't NANAE (which isn't SPEWS darnit!). I'd say that it's their ISP.
And it certainly wasn't flood. $cientology and dipslime were floods. This was barely damp.
What if you were getting so many calls that it was interfering with normal usage? I regularly have to empty my hotmail box or I'll lose real email. What about crashed servers from spam overload? I don't think telemarketers and spammers can be easily compared.
Forgot my other point: Admins can chose to use SPEWS or other "block-lists" anyway they want. They can block. They can filter it out. They can tag'n'bag it as spam and let the user decide what to do with it. One problem with filtering or t'n'b is that a false positive won't generate a bounce to let the sender know that their email didn't go through.
I guarantee that for every block-list bounce there are far more that are silently eaten.
My own preference is to let the users be able to set their options, and a number of ISPs do this. SPEWS is bouncing email that a user wants? Let him switch it off on his email box.
And no admin should blindly use any system without monitoring it. A number monitor SPEWS very carefully.
This problem is really with the way SPEWS
operates. Other blackhole lists are much
more reasonable and only block by an IP
per IP basis.
It was tried. It failed. Spam-supporting ISPs would swap the spammers to another IP block, and swap a legit client in and ask for it to be unblocked. This game of whack-a-mole went on for years. SPEWS does start blocking a single IP or small range. Only when the ISP doesn't do anything about it do they expand it.
SPEWS is certainly not a perfect solution, but it seem to be one of the only ones that will eventually make an ISP sit up and take notice. Ask them why it took so long.
And don't forget starting a cross-Canada multiuser system with games, email and newsgroups.. pre-Internet.. in 1983. What were we thinking? We could have waited 10 years, started an ISP, and then gone broke!
Another way spammers can make money is to sell "marketing" to other people. A fair number of small businesses (not net-savvy) have fallen for the "opt-in list" scam where the spammer claims they have a list of many many thousands of people who have opt'ed-in to receive advertising. Of course the spammer has just scraped the addresses off the Internet (even off Slashdot or SA.:^)
After the spammer takes the money and runs, the complaints, filtering and blocks-lists hit and hit hard. It's very sad when these business-people show up in NANAE wondering what the hell to do now. They certainly didn't mean to spam. (Unfortunitely spammers also show up claiming the same thing, so most admins are wary.)
Fair warning to anyone thinking about buying an opt-in list, they're less common than unicorns. (Why would someone give permission for his email address to be sold to any/everyone?) When spammers say "opt-in" or even "double-opt-in" (bleh!) they don't mean an actual opt-in with checks to make sure that person really did opt-in. A confirmation email with unique key is one way.
If someone does want information on how to manage proper opt-in, ask in news.admin.net-abuse.email, there are various FAQs around. If it reduces spam, we love it! [tinw]
Slashdot Mirror
The coverage wasn't good. He sugested I try some other provider (I respect that alot).
Wow! I have no idea about TMobile, but that guy is golden! Rather than sell you crappy service that you would have been unhappy about, he did the right thing by you. You may not have bought service from them that time, but I bet you'll think about them the next time. Sadly, this being the world of insufficient light, he probably got reamed by a short-sighted manager.
Ah well, back to metamoding...
So that's what those "ancient astronauts" were doing: Cruising the galaxy, warp-driving for pr0n!
And of course she's posed in the antenna horn with her arms raised. No wonder they caught the signal over that distance!
Add the optional forward ramming scoop for refueling, and you're good-to-go!
Yeah, pedestrians eventually stop them.
Which brings up one advantage of the ZX-81: It was the computer of its day least likely to hurt if you dropped it on your foot.
Now there's an idea for a Javascript page! A boot to the head page! (With sound track of course.)
Ooo! Ouch! Ouch! This just keeps getter better and better! What other huge multi-nationals will be next? Soon we'll have to invent starships so SCO can find some huge alien empires to sue! *snorf*!
"So why don't we just sue the entire universe Mr. Morden?" "One thing at a time, McBride, one thing at a time."
"*whistle-squeek* When the avalanche has begun, it is too late for the pinheads to sue..."
Why not just port Contiki to higher end processors? That little web server didn't do too bad this morning.
If they were Daleks, we could get rid of them by protecting them from The Terrible Secret of Space.
I thought it was a DEVO reference... :^P
Instead of Barbarians at the Gates, it might be Bozos from Gates?
Yep, could be right. Could someone pass the popcorn? This show is getting interesting!
I'm not a big fan of PayPal, and I'm not an expert on mailing-list systems. There might be something off the shelf available that will do the job. In theory it sounds okay. How do they find out about you to use PayPal? You need a system that can't spoofed somehow. As I said, news.admin.net-abuse.email might be the place to ask. Suggestion: start with "I want to do this the right way." Expect some flack and possible redirection to another newsgroup for particular mailing list software.
Just so long as it's not also an incontinent penis! That would be messy.
But.. but.. I am an AC! :^P
And it certainly wasn't flood. $cientology and dipslime were floods. This was barely damp.
What if you were getting so many calls that it was interfering with normal usage? I regularly have to empty my hotmail box or I'll lose real email. What about crashed servers from spam overload? I don't think telemarketers and spammers can be easily compared.
I guarantee that for every block-list bounce there are far more that are silently eaten.
My own preference is to let the users be able to set their options, and a number of ISPs do this. SPEWS is bouncing email that a user wants? Let him switch it off on his email box.
And no admin should blindly use any system without monitoring it. A number monitor SPEWS very carefully.
It was tried. It failed. Spam-supporting ISPs would swap the spammers to another IP block, and swap a legit client in and ask for it to be unblocked. This game of whack-a-mole went on for years. SPEWS does start blocking a single IP or small range. Only when the ISP doesn't do anything about it do they expand it.
SPEWS is certainly not a perfect solution, but it seem to be one of the only ones that will eventually make an ISP sit up and take notice. Ask them why it took so long.
And don't forget starting a cross-Canada multiuser system with games, email and newsgroups .. pre-Internet .. in 1983. What were we thinking? We could have waited 10 years, started an ISP, and then gone broke!
s/would/wouldn't
Hell no, he's not in Windsor and certainly would spam. (I'd double-check against the article in case of joe-job.)
After the spammer takes the money and runs, the complaints, filtering and blocks-lists hit and hit hard. It's very sad when these business-people show up in NANAE wondering what the hell to do now. They certainly didn't mean to spam. (Unfortunitely spammers also show up claiming the same thing, so most admins are wary.)
Fair warning to anyone thinking about buying an opt-in list, they're less common than unicorns. (Why would someone give permission for his email address to be sold to any/everyone?) When spammers say "opt-in" or even "double-opt-in" (bleh!) they don't mean an actual opt-in with checks to make sure that person really did opt-in. A confirmation email with unique key is one way.
If someone does want information on how to manage proper opt-in, ask in news.admin.net-abuse.email, there are various FAQs around. If it reduces spam, we love it! [tinw]
So what do the higher courts do, just give them a second kick at the can?