or confusing someone for others with the same name. Yes, very good advice.
For anyone wondering, I AM NOT a teen-aged Canadian actor... and if I get one more e-mail or IM from an 11 year-old kid who wants to tell me how great I am, I may just loose my mind.
A) That public stamp server is going to need to pay for bandwidht, manpower, ability to accept credit cards and other forms of payment. It can't run perpetually free... they will have to start charging some money for their services.
B) No one in their right mind is going to volunteer to tie themselves to such a service, so it's really practically impossible to get your system off the ground.
Okay, so a cryptgrapic sig gets attached to each message... that means a company is behind the scenes taking creditcard numbers, and getting several KB of traffic FOR EACH PIECE OF E-MAIL. That would get expensive real fast... So then your are charging a fee for people to send e-mail.
Of course, since people must choose to use this system, noone is going to accept the tremendous fees just to send a short note.
And you have yet to say how a large mailing list is going to deal with this system.
E-Mail is distributed. There is no way you can establish and maintain such a system. You could require billing information be attached to each e-mail, and collect before finally delivering the mail, but the overhead would begin to make e-mail as expensive as postal mail, and nearly as slow. That's not to mention that people just wouldn't do it, so that e-mail provider would die off quickly.
Of course, if you actually want to stop spam, quickly, easilly, and without privacy problems, nor even a single law required, simply follow my how-to that I'm mentioning all the time. I still fail to see why everyone who reads it would much rather waste endless hours wresting with half-assed 'solutions', which can so easilly be defeated, as soon as spammers see it as a problem.
Let's not jump the gun and call it the worst advice of all time.
Not the worst advice ever, but bad advice still. I wouldn't say you'd *never* make up the cost.
As a college student, For PERSONAL use, I will never print enough pages to make a large printer pay off, much less have the room to store one.
You might be surprised. At $0.01 per-page (compared to your $0.03 per-page printer) It would take 50,000 pages at 5% coverage to make up the cost of a $1,000 printer. Even best color laser printers are under $3,000.
It's safe to assume that you will print much more than 5% on each page, so you end up with a figure more like 10,000 pages to recover the cost of the printer. That's not even accounting for the benefits of a printer that may have color, printing much faster, and cutting down on your trips to kinkos. At the load an individual or family might put on a printer, it could well last for several decades without even basic maintenance.
Let's not forget the thread is about inexpensive printing solutions
Well, HP sells a very small laserjet (inkjet size) for about $200 last time I saw one. That one printed about 6PPM IIRC. Besides, low cost is relative. I happen to think the inital cost of the printer is negligable. Besides, if you want a high-quality print, and aren't obsessed with perfect text, the $100-$150 Epson Stylus C80 has better per-page prices than your used laser, and has photo-quality color as well.
laser quality hasn't progressed much at all over the years
Well, as far as text goes, I would agree. However, picture quality on my 600x600dpi Espon ActionLaser 1400 (circa 1994) isn't all that great, but it is much better than any inkjet printers could do until recently. Besides, after years of only black, I'm damn ready for some occasional color in my print-outs.
That's some of the worst advice I've heard in quite some time.
If you want to get a cheap, low-res black-only laser printer that eats $0.03/page, you can get a new one very cheap (~$150), and a lot faster than 5 PPM.
If you're willing to spend some big cash, you could get a laser printer with a cost of less than $0.01/page. For a small percentage more, you can get one that has color toner cheaper per-page than the black for your "most economical printing solution".
As with anything else, manufacturers have their products for consumers (which they thoroughly rip-off) and their [initally] more expensive business products which are less expensive in the long run. You just have to look closely at the details to discover which product belongs in which category.
I even typed up a document about printers for people like yourself. http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal /11959
There's a little something called the doppler effect. When an object is moving torwards you, it's light waves are compressed, therefore shifting the color.
Because it this, it's quite easy (with proper equipment) to detect the direction, and speed of an object.
I just don't know, people... Is it that I haven't posted this enough? Is it that people aren't convinced that it will work? Why is everyone so adament to sticking to methods that are self-defeating? (will be defeated by SPAMers when they get popular)
Is it so difficult to just follow these instructions, and instantly stop ALL spam for good?
I just don't know, people... Is it that I haven't posted this enough? Is it that people aren't convinced that it will work? Why is everyone so adament to sticking to methods that are self-defeating? (will be defeated by SPAMers when they get popular)
Is it so difficult to just follow these instructions, and instantly stop ALL spam for good?
There is no limit to the level to which you could customize spam using a simple database.
A perfect example: http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/bin/ms.cgi
None of the methods I've heard of can't be overcome by some more technology. I wish to kill the whole cat and mouse crap and stop it RIGHT NOW. Why are so many people so damn resistant to stopping spam and viruses?
Any public system must be fault-tolerant. No matter what you may think, many will wish to abuse it. You should not have anything which is subject to abuse.
Thus spake the Deity:
If you are to use trust levels, then you have to trust others not to report good nodes as bad (a recursive trust situation). You will certainly block some poor sap that downloaded the same screwed-up file you have.
Thus spake the Deity:
No system of forwarding searches will ever scale. Each node should download a list of all available files, and related information from directly connected nodes (similar to routing tables) and then download and check the hash directly from the server, to verify. This will cost some privacy (having all shared files listed), but instantly solves all searching, scaling, and gnutella 'routing' problems.
Thus spake the Deity:
Gnutella will become a great savior of those requiring great bandwidth on low budgets, once users are able to search by hash. A gnutella:// link followed by the hash would be an easy way to make use of Gnutella for automatic downloading from multiple sources, and mirroring of large (or small). Big pipes download from many smaller pipes, resulting in faster downloads than previously possible. Everyone will be made a mirror for the file, once they have downloaded it themselves. The end of FTP.
Thus spake the Deity:
Because the powers that be will report false hash values, each 'chunk' of a file should have a hash. Minimizing effects of malicious beings, and quickly finding download errors.
Thus spake the Deity:
An upload queuing system is needed. A cause of great frustration is newcommers jumping the queue, in front of those who have waited a great deal of time for a file. This will alleviate the hammering of servers, to get a file.
Thus spake the Deity:
The web's sole redeming quality, is the ability to group sets of files together, and link to others. Gnutella should have such a system. Something like a 'family' should be established, which can be accessed through a common name. A family is a document, understood by gnutella, which says which files belong there, and include commands, such as the order the files shall be listed, dependencies between different files, and possibly formatting or highlighting of the name/link to each file.
Despite what has been said on this thread... There is, in fact, a wonderful way to stop all spam.
And before anyone even thinks of posting, I do realize that no-one seems to care. Everyone is happy with half-assed methods that will work until they get popular (similar to Gnutella that way). For some reason, a method that works, doesn't require special software, or some non-profit organization to run it, just hasn't caught on.
The couple years or so when I was really into Linux, it was a necessity. From about RedHat 5.2 through 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2. The kernel was well behind the rest of the world, so I was constantly upgrading to get a better filesystem, USB support, fix bugs introduced in the previous rushed release. So many more reasons I've mentally blocked and don't even want to try remembering.
I stick with vendor kernels
I always thought it strange that those with thousands of dollar invested, can't themselves compile a kernel where all the modules will work. I have been using a Mandrake 8.2 box recently and see it's still at least as much of a problem now as ever before. To even get sound (on an older soundcard) and not an 'overheating' error message, I had to compile a new kernel.
the Linux kernel was modular long time before FreeBSD
Well first of all, FreeBSD lkms work, linux modules fail miserably. Secondly, who gives a damn? I much prrefer OSes like Net/OpenBSD that which are plug-n-play. They detect everything and load drivers accordingly. All from a 3MB kernel, with no modules needed, no recompiling to add any features or to improve performance.
I find the syntax to be much better than that of IPF. I have setup about Linux 50 systems at work and they're very stable, thank you very much.
Laughable. IPF/PF are undisputed as much better than their Linux counterparts. The BSDs are also undisputably more stable than Linux.
And I'm not a troll, I'm a pissed-off ex-linux user. I can't understand the logic in so many people using Linux. I've asked and gotten no decent answer as to why this is so.
But they're all self-defeating. As soon as they are popular, and are blocking a large number of Spam e-mails, the Spamers will work around them. I know a local spamer, it would not be a problem for him to setup a database to randomize each e-mail.
Besides, there's a full-proof way to block all spam, easilly and permanently.
There's a solution for just about ALL Linux problems. It's simple, SWITCH TO *BSD.
Tired of unstable untested kernels that crap out on you? Tired of NEEDING to reconfigure and recompiling a kernel every week? Sick of modules that for some reason never completely work right? Tired of incredibly and needlessly complex SysV startup scripts? Tired of having a needlessly complex and non-stateful firewall? Tired of working your damn ass off just to get a single stable system?
Use BSD and all these problems will magically disappear.
We'll probably have a better email protocol before spammers would even worry about circumventing whitelists.
Yeah, and software using two digits to represent the year would probably be gone long before year 2000.
WEP would probably be secure enough until the next revision.
If my point isn't clear enough yet, you should never go for something that's good enough for right now. If you do, you'll end up upgrading constantly.
I outlined a system whereby, even in theory, there is no way to circumvent. Why not just go to that step, and know you will not recieve any unwanted mail, ever again? Know you are not going to have to change your e-mail system again.
Besides, white-listing doesn't do a thing to protect you from e-mail viruses. There could soon be an e-mail bug that does nothing but collect addresses!
In addition, you should remember that it only takes a single unwanted e-mail getting through to make you a known-live target.
When Spam stops getting through, spammers will work around white-lists. It's a system that is self-defeating. If more people adopt it, it will become useless (kind of like Gnutella that way).
Slashdot Mirror
Bah! Kevin Bacon #2 here.
or confusing someone for others with the same name.
Yes, very good advice.
For anyone wondering, I AM NOT a teen-aged Canadian actor... and if I get one more e-mail or IM from an 11 year-old kid who wants to tell me how great I am, I may just loose my mind.
And you people think spam is bad...
You don't seem to understand that:
A) That public stamp server is going to need to pay for bandwidht, manpower, ability to accept credit cards and other forms of payment. It can't run perpetually free... they will have to start charging some money for their services.
B) No one in their right mind is going to volunteer to tie themselves to such a service, so it's really practically impossible to get your system off the ground.
Okay, so a cryptgrapic sig gets attached to each message... that means a company is behind the scenes taking creditcard numbers, and getting several KB of traffic FOR EACH PIECE OF E-MAIL. That would get expensive real fast... So then your are charging a fee for people to send e-mail.
Of course, since people must choose to use this system, noone is going to accept the tremendous fees just to send a short note.
And you have yet to say how a large mailing list is going to deal with this system.
E-Mail is distributed. There is no way you can establish and maintain such a system. You could require billing information be attached to each e-mail, and collect before finally delivering the mail, but the overhead would begin to make e-mail as expensive as postal mail, and nearly as slow. That's not to mention that people just wouldn't do it, so that e-mail provider would die off quickly.
Of course, if you actually want to stop spam, quickly, easilly, and without privacy problems, nor even a single law required, simply follow my how-to that I'm mentioning all the time. I still fail to see why everyone who reads it would much rather waste endless hours wresting with half-assed 'solutions', which can so easilly be defeated, as soon as spammers see it as a problem.
Not the worst advice ever, but bad advice still. I wouldn't say you'd *never* make up the cost.
You might be surprised. At $0.01 per-page (compared to your $0.03 per-page printer) It would take 50,000 pages at 5% coverage to make up the cost of a $1,000 printer. Even best color laser printers are under $3,000.
It's safe to assume that you will print much more than 5% on each page, so you end up with a figure more like 10,000 pages to recover the cost of the printer. That's not even accounting for the benefits of a printer that may have color, printing much faster, and cutting down on your trips to kinkos. At the load an individual or family might put on a printer, it could well last for several decades without even basic maintenance.
Well, HP sells a very small laserjet (inkjet size) for about $200 last time I saw one. That one printed about 6PPM IIRC. Besides, low cost is relative. I happen to think the inital cost of the printer is negligable. Besides, if you want a high-quality print, and aren't obsessed with perfect text, the $100-$150 Epson Stylus C80 has better per-page prices than your used laser, and has photo-quality color as well.
Well, as far as text goes, I would agree. However, picture quality on my 600x600dpi Espon ActionLaser 1400 (circa 1994) isn't all that great, but it is much better than any inkjet printers could do until recently. Besides, after years of only black, I'm damn ready for some occasional color in my print-outs.
That's some of the worst advice I've heard in quite some time.
l /11959
If you want to get a cheap, low-res black-only laser printer that eats $0.03/page, you can get a new one very cheap (~$150), and a lot faster than 5 PPM.
If you're willing to spend some big cash, you could get a laser printer with a cost of less than $0.01/page. For a small percentage more, you can get one that has color toner cheaper per-page than the black for your "most economical printing solution".
As with anything else, manufacturers have their products for consumers (which they thoroughly rip-off) and their [initally] more expensive business products which are less expensive in the long run. You just have to look closely at the details to discover which product belongs in which category.
I even typed up a document about printers for people like yourself.
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journa
There's a little something called the doppler effect. When an object is moving torwards you, it's light waves are compressed, therefore shifting the color.
Because it this, it's quite easy (with proper equipment) to detect the direction, and speed of an object.
I just don't know, people... Is it that I haven't posted this enough? Is it that people aren't convinced that it will work? Why is everyone so adament to sticking to methods that are self-defeating? (will be defeated by SPAMers when they get popular)
Is it so difficult to just follow these instructions, and instantly stop ALL spam for good?
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
I just don't know, people... Is it that I haven't posted this enough? Is it that people aren't convinced that it will work? Why is everyone so adament to sticking to methods that are self-defeating? (will be defeated by SPAMers when they get popular)
Is it so difficult to just follow these instructions, and instantly stop ALL spam for good?
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
There is no limit to the level to which you could customize spam using a simple database.
n /ms.cgi
A perfect example: http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/bi
None of the methods I've heard of can't be overcome by some more technology. I wish to kill the whole cat and mouse crap and stop it RIGHT NOW. Why are so many people so damn resistant to stopping spam and viruses?
Aaaahhhhhmmmmmmmmmuuuuuuuuuu...
Thus spake the Deity:
Any public system must be fault-tolerant. No matter what you may think, many will wish to abuse it. You should not have anything which is subject to abuse.
Thus spake the Deity:
If you are to use trust levels, then you have to trust others not to report good nodes as bad (a recursive trust situation). You will certainly block some poor sap that downloaded the same screwed-up file you have.
Thus spake the Deity:
No system of forwarding searches will ever scale. Each node should download a list of all available files, and related information from directly connected nodes (similar to routing tables) and then download and check the hash directly from the server, to verify. This will cost some privacy (having all shared files listed), but instantly solves all searching, scaling, and gnutella 'routing' problems.
Thus spake the Deity:
Gnutella will become a great savior of those requiring great bandwidth on low budgets, once users are able to search by hash. A gnutella:// link followed by the hash would be an easy way to make use of Gnutella for automatic downloading from multiple sources, and mirroring of large (or small). Big pipes download from many smaller pipes, resulting in faster downloads than previously possible. Everyone will be made a mirror for the file, once they have downloaded it themselves. The end of FTP.
Thus spake the Deity:
Because the powers that be will report false hash values, each 'chunk' of a file should have a hash. Minimizing effects of malicious beings, and quickly finding download errors.
Thus spake the Deity:
An upload queuing system is needed. A cause of great frustration is newcommers jumping the queue, in front of those who have waited a great deal of time for a file. This will alleviate the hammering of servers, to get a file.
Thus spake the Deity:
The web's sole redeming quality, is the ability to group sets of files together, and link to others. Gnutella should have such a system. Something like a 'family' should be established, which can be accessed through a common name. A family is a document, understood by gnutella, which says which files belong there, and include commands, such as the order the files shall be listed, dependencies between different files, and possibly formatting or highlighting of the name/link to each file.
Give the guy a break, we all say something incorrectly every once in a while. I think we all understood just what he meant to say.
Despite what has been said on this thread... There is, in fact, a wonderful way to stop all spam.
And before anyone even thinks of posting, I do realize that no-one seems to care. Everyone is happy with half-assed methods that will work until they get popular (similar to Gnutella that way). For some reason, a method that works, doesn't require special software, or some non-profit organization to run it, just hasn't caught on.
Anyhow, here is my howto:
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
And I'm not a troll, I'm a pissed-off ex-linux user. I can't understand the logic in so many people using Linux. I've asked and gotten no decent answer as to why this is so.
You can simply and easilly block all unwanted e-mails while letting ALL legit e-mails get through.
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
But they're all self-defeating. As soon as they are popular, and are blocking a large number of Spam e-mails, the Spamers will work around them. I know a local spamer, it would not be a problem for him to setup a database to randomize each e-mail.
Besides, there's a full-proof way to block all spam, easilly and permanently.
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
Why all the effort for crappy systems, when you can have a perfect system very easilly?
I even wrote a tutorial for it.
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
You know, you can easilly block all spam...
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
So many people putting so much work into a system that is self-defeating. Much like Gnutella, popularity reduces effectiveness.
9 467
Just check out my tutorial for the answer:
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/
I would much rather use technology to block spamers than cause more internet-laws to be created.
Want to block spam... I've got a tutorial guaranteed to do just that.
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journal/9467
Why spend good money to stop spam?
l /9467
Check out my tutorial.
http://slashdot.org/~ryancooley/journa
Use http://www.spamhole.com for short-term e-mail address redirection (up to 72 hours).
Besides that, Yahoo Mail is used for the same purpose, and I guarantee that tons less gets to their user's inboxes.
There's a solution for just about ALL Linux problems. It's simple, SWITCH TO *BSD.
Tired of unstable untested kernels that crap out on you? Tired of NEEDING to reconfigure and recompiling a kernel every week? Sick of modules that for some reason never completely work right? Tired of incredibly and needlessly complex SysV startup scripts? Tired of having a needlessly complex and non-stateful firewall? Tired of working your damn ass off just to get a single stable system?
Use BSD and all these problems will magically disappear.
WEP would probably be secure enough until the next revision.
If my point isn't clear enough yet, you should never go for something that's good enough for right now. If you do, you'll end up upgrading constantly.
I outlined a system whereby, even in theory, there is no way to circumvent. Why not just go to that step, and know you will not recieve any unwanted mail, ever again? Know you are not going to have to change your e-mail system again.
Besides, white-listing doesn't do a thing to protect you from e-mail viruses. There could soon be an e-mail bug that does nothing but collect addresses!
In addition, you should remember that it only takes a single unwanted e-mail getting through to make you a known-live target.
When Spam stops getting through, spammers will work around white-lists. It's a system that is self-defeating. If more people adopt it, it will become useless (kind of like Gnutella that way).