Read this. Be sure to read all the way to the end for fairly positive proof that the guilty party was, indeed, a woman. In fact, it was a woman-owned, woman-run, all-female spam gang.
To: Mr. Bello Gambari, Esq. From: Josephine March Subject: RE: Urgent and Confidential Business Proposal Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 12:14:53 GMT
Dear Sir:
I am in receipt of an urgent communication from your client, Mrs. Miriam Abacha, widow of the late General Abacha. I regret to inform you that I find it impossible to comply with Mrs. Abacha's request that I transmit to you my bank account and credit card numbers.
I was incredibly moved by the plight of Mrs. Abacha, who has been molested, policed, and frozen!! To hear that her son is even now in detention and that the government is still under surveillance to probe her--well, Mr. Gambari, it broke my heart. So much so, that I have begun suffering from symptoms of sleeplessness, lack of interest in food, and low self-esteem.
In short, I have fallen into a decline and am now suffering from acute symptoms of anxiety and depression brought about by my sensibility to the dreadful circumstances of your client. Family members have decided that I am not competent to look after my own affairs, so it will not be possible for me to assist you in smuggling the money out in those romantic-sounding metal boxes.
I am, however, enclosing a bill for $3,426 (US). This covers my expenses for psychiatric treatment, group therapy, and anti- depressant medications. Your prompt remittance will be appreciated.
Please convey to Mrs. Abacha my very best wishes for a prompt and speedy alleviation of all her difficulties.
Life's been pretty good recently. I've been losing pounds of fat, erasing those annoying stretch marks, and growing a massive pair--all while asleep or showering, thanks to these great herbal HGH patches that Jenny Gorman wrote me about. I get to sleep a lot more now, too, thanks to the one-hunnert-percent American doctor who prescribed me this nifty hillbilly heroin via e-mail. Shipped it FedEx overnight and in complete confidence, too. Gracias, Luciano Lane!!
I do enjoy waking up sometimes, though, now that my husband has turned into a frisky devil thanks to the one-hunnert-percent genuine generic sildenafil citrate he bought online via the Internet. He says the pump gizmo has done him a world of good, too. And he's even friskier since he's improved the gas mileage of our car by 27%. Makes him real happy.
It's so nice not to worry about working, although I was just accorded a one-hunnert-percent genuine MBA by the non-accredited university of my choice! We're just sitting back and letting those dollars roll in from all the great investment tips and free U.S. grants you never have to pay back. If I ever need a little extra cash--say to order a few cheap toner cartridges or take a quick Florida vacation, I just call all those companies that are anxious to pay me for my opinions. I have a *lot* of opinions.
All of this has now been put in jeopardy due to the anti-spamming advocacy of this organization. You should all stop it before you ruin our ideal lifestyle.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go apply for a second mortgage on our house. I want to get it done before this lovely Vicodin makes me fall asle
It's not easy, and it seems as though the mass-transit administration goes out of its way to make life more difficult. But it's workable. If fares increase too much more, it will be only marginally cheaper than operating a car for the same trips. At this point the car is exercised on weekends with trips to the grocery store, mall, or what-have-you.
I'd like to see the best of all worlds: Assisted navigation of some sort, cars that spew less filth, and reasonably adequate mass-transit.
Just what we need. Another goddamned cheap AOL for the spammers to latch onto. With AOL's "Screw you, you're not one of ours" anti-spammer policy, this should work wonders for our inbaskets, not to mention our mail servers.
I can't think of anything else to say that's not profane.
There was a time when "dualie" meant USRobotics HST Dual Standard modem. Cost a cool $795; that is, with the sysops' 50% discount. The damned thing came in a mean, shiny black plastic case and it even looked fast. And just so everybody knew, there was that modest little "HST" you got to add to the tearline of your BBS messages.
Mine was actually re-cycled from machine to machine until about 1998. I installed it on a computer I put together for my aged mum; she used it until it finally overheated and died. It's sitting on a shelf in this very room, right along with my non-working Seagate ST-225 because I can't bear to throw them away.
I have a 1993-1994 vintage DuoDock Mac PowerBook model 230 that still works beautifully. It's got a grayscale display, 16 megabytes of RAM (a powerhouse!) and a 40 megabyte hard drive. I experienced moments of panic and desolation when its docking station failed, but someone from a local university sold me a mini-dock for it that's even better than its original equipment. The 14.4 modem still works fine, but even from NCSA's archive we can't get a browser that will cruise today's Internet adequately. I've often pondered setting it up on the network, and if I'm ever drunk and with time on my hands, I might try to do that. It runs Nisus' word-processor quite adequately, and I still use it for non-technical writing.
This little machine weighs 4 1/2 pounds and has been all over the world with me, traveling happily in whatever backpack or briefcase I felt inclined to put it. I've written a lot of words on it, and it's been powered-on in bars, at campfires, on boats and picnic tables. It's made several canoe trips without mishap.
I like to think that what will happen to it eventually is that one morning many years hence, someone will say, "Aha. Granny's finally checked out," and somebody else will say, "Yeah. Guess what. The DuoDock checked out, too."
"I hereby declare on my word of honor, that I have neither given nor received help with this work." Antiquated, I know. Maybe a stern lecture on the university's cheating policy, complete with knowing and humiliating smirks at the suspects, would do a better job.
I've wondered for years, though, what good it does once you're past fractions, to assign graded homework that just consists of a series of written examples or problems to be solved. Life doesn't work that way, and the people who're up to their necks in real life situations are solving problems by whatever means they can.
I took a fairly rigorous exam quite some time ago for a then-important industry certification, and it was "open book." The reasoning was that when I got back to the real world, I'd have access to the book to solve my problems. That turned the certification testing into an interesting learning process rather than a frantic rush to memorize topics. I delude myself that the certification perhaps meant more than some others.
Try putting them on teams and giving each team a problem.
I'll concede that it might help new concertgoers or people trying to learn about a given piece of music for the first time. I can really see a place for it in music-appreciation classes or even some music theory classes.
For myself I'd have to rank the idea right down there near the bottom with those projected subtitles they give you at the opera. I don't even think I'd enjoy it at a football game.
One good way to attract concertgoers and stave off bankruptcy for any more symphony orchestras might be to spend an equivalent amount of money on putting a little music education back in the primary and secondary schools.
I find myself turning more and more to my Lamy Safari. I have the fountain pen, ballpoint, and pencil, and though they were inexpensive, they've worked flawlessly for about four years now. Try Bertram's Ink Well in Baltimore for Lamy supplies. If you're fortunate enough to become addicted to fountain pens, they have a selection of antiques that are wonderfully restored. Just don't carry the old ones on an airplane.
I use something called an EZ-Pass, a device that lets me drive on toll roads in the Middle Atlantic, debiting a pre-paid account. It's cheap, convenient, and I don't have to experience panic each time I approach an exact-change lane. I had the interesting experience a year ago of using it to drive all the way from Maryland to the Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Canada; never had to shell out a dime, and each toll was about half the posted price. Most places have dedicated lanes, too.
Yeah. I know they could use it to track me. They could somehow link it back to my bank account. They could probably even watch and bust me for speeding.
My brother in law thinks I'm crazy to allow one of these devices of the Devil into my automobile. He no longer uses his home computer because he's convinced that his ISP (Verizon) has nothing better to do than to track his every move online. He pays cash for all but the largest purchases, won't use an affinity card for his groceries, and doesn't visit ATM's (jeeze, remember standing in line at the bank to get a check cashed?). He has no spare or leisure time because the very housekeeping of life takes him twice or three times as long as it does the rest of us. He makes my particular life miserable on every visit because I merrily use credit cards, ATM's, discount cards, an EZ-Pass, and my computer.
Yeah, I could probably have lots more privacy than I do. But you know what? Life's short. There are big things to worry about and there are little things. Worry about too many of the little things and you become as miserable as my brother in law. For some reason, I place sneaky library books squarely in the "don't sweat this" category. At least for now.
One more mechanized, motorized watercraft for people to abuse while drunk. Why is it that the drunks never collide with the other drunks? Instead they go straight for the people operating canoes and sailboats.
My somewhat grouchy and jaundiced opinion as someone who lives on the Chesapeake is that if you want to surf you should go where there are waves. Waves are found at the ocean. Preferably the Pacific Ocean.
1) I provide a small number of resold websites for clients--in other words, I don't want to host sites for the general public. Using the registrar provided by the people I lease the space from has been a problem from the outset. I can register my end-user as the owner-of record for a domain name, but the people upstream from me are the only ones who can alter the record. Thank God they're honest, but accidents (mostly delays) have occurred.
2) If I had it to do over again, I'd provide this as a service for my users but would find some third-party, reputable entity to handle the registrations. The password could be shared between the user and myself.
3) It is possible to wrest these away from unscrupulous hosting providers as well as "web services" people who just evaporate. It involves finding the registrar and establishing that the site is yours. They'll want any proof you can provide including company letterhead, copy of your driver's license, and a great deal of other paperwork. But it can be done. I've had two successful interactions of this nature, one with Verisign (cough!), one with somebody else. Both were on behalf of clients. Both took many days to complete, hours on the telephone, and both e-mail and snail mail.
That "ISP" in the subject line is a little misleading. It doesn't always have to be your ISP, though I suppose it could be.
. . . in July, 2001, with several hundred other people. It was what you could call a "massive layoff."
I'm happier now than I ever was working for that organization. I can't help wondering how many senior managers there are Out There who blame the deaths of their companies on the recession when in reality their own arrogance and inflexibility were actually to blame.
Just after reading the CNet article, this looks as though it could cause real headaches for small business owners.
Let's see. Small scale businesses would be collecting sales taxes for virtually every jurisdiction in the country, dealing with the choking amounts of spam, fending off people who want to steal the domain or commit other mayhem, paying the self-emplyment tax, and contending with all the other paperwork. Where's the incentive to keep going (much less the time to devote to the actual goods or services)?
We could probably save a bundle by doing away entirely with the Small Business Administration. At this rate, they won't have much to administer.
Not to be overly-dramatic, but when it happens to you it's a nightmare and one of the blackest pits you can imagine.
Think of spending all your time, energy, heart and soul developing a business (or organization), providing for it, gaining credibility and referrals, making a name and niche for yourself, however small. Imagine you're attempting to support and educate a family via that business.
Now imagine it all wiped away with no thought at all by anonymous monsters of greed.
That's precisely what happened to me. I'm actually not illiterate. I exercised care in building my site, selecting a host for it, making sure it ran Linux:), and installing such watchdogs and filters as I could. I cultivated good relations with the folks who supported the server. I did all I could, short of purchasing a server for myself, which I could never have afforded.
Then I made the mistake of becoming ill. Over Christmas I spent six days in the hospital, and when I came home, a corresponding several days downstairs. They struck during that time. I returned to hundreds and hundreds of bounced messages, angry complaints, bitch-outs, whatever.
A call to the tech support people actually put a stop to the whole thing rather quickly. The spammers were using Sprint, and apparently Sprint lacks tolerance for these issues. I wrote to each and every person who'd bitched, swallowed my pride and explained who I was and what had happened. Some wrote back.
On the practical side, I have now a trusted friend who will look after things for me if I ever become ill again, and I will do the same for him. In fact the two of us may lease a server from a reputable company. That's a huge cost, but it may well be worth it.
On the emotional or impractical side, even eight months later I have an enormous amount of anger. Anger is often un-helpful, but I entertain visions of finding ways to inujure these people (not physically or by violence, but in their ability to do this). I visualize them financially ruined, humiliated in public, hounded out of their neighborhoods. I visualize attacks on their servers. That's all quite counterproductive. In order to deal with the anger part, I spend my spare time writing a novel in which a spammer is murdered. It's not half bad.
Oh, I believe a great many people have that feeling. The current administration supports big business over all else, and the preservation of their assets and ability to make money is paramount. A large, docile population of people who just contentedly feed that personal information without becoming distressed is ideal.
Take a look at the new additions to the anti-spam legislation; the "direct mailers" are now responsible for "self policing." In other words, the wolves have been given yet another key to the fold.
We've had a "common enemy" created for us in Sadam Hussein while our actual enemy (Osama bin Laden) continues to elude us. I have no doubt this was done to induce patriotic feelings; no one, really, wants to make life harder for the soldiers or to appear to be comforting our enemies--even make believe ones. I suspect we'll queue up gladly to authorize airline security to pull credit reports--for example.
All this is going to go swimmingly until enough of us have lost our jobs that we can't keep the money-making machine going any longer.
As I read back over this, I'm surprised at myself. I'm your basic hardworking ordinary Boomer. Something in your short post must've struck a chord.
I've noticed the Wednesday peak in the accounts attached to my business. Those are primarily the inkjet cartridge, diploma, "forbidden CD," prescription pharmaceutical, hot stock tip, and those obnoxious idiots at Logosaurus. In other words, the spam has a higher "tone" if you will.
The spams to my Hotmail account spike on Friday evenings. Those are what I would call the "dregs of humanity" spams--the assorted barnyard animals, herbal enhancements, and general "Are you lonesome tonight" spams. They're also more likely to be inept, such as having a "TO" field that reads "C:\documents\addressfile.txt" or words to that effect.
Bagnallb at AOL is sort of my own personal spammer (although I share him with many other people on the greater Internet). He really, really wants to take over my domain, and he manifests this by increasingly frenetic efforts to find an obsolete version of FormMail. He's been trying without success for six weeks now, and his efforts always, always increase on Wednesdays.
So I'd say Wednesdays for the "business class" spam and Fridays for the really scummy stuff. Bagnallb is scummy, but he's a Wednesday sort of fellow.
I suspect that people who've never contemplated committing a crime might shortly need to be worried about charges of treason. According to Donald Rumsfelt, that's roughly what you're committing if you criticize the administration's wartime policies. Reuters (via Yahoo).
Slashdotters have been rightly concerned about the integrity of assorted new computer-assisted voting systems. That's important, but perhaps we should spare some concern about whether there'll be a Presidential election at all in 2004. It's not going to be easy to run a campaign if criticizing the administration's actions becomes somehow associated with "giving aid and comfort to the enemy."
Meth-makers and money-launderers are not angels, and we could do with fewer of them out there making trouble. But this is still a government of laws, and we had prior laws on the books to deal with them.
On the one hand, public information is needed to track down scammers, spammers, and thieves.
On the other hand, if you're a small-business owner/operator (without the layers of protection and anonymity provided in a large company) you really are right out there, address and all.
I've been hit both ways; first by some lunatic who took images of my work and represented them as his own (and who routinely does that to artisans). He's safe and comfy behind an impenetrable wall of bullshit in his registry entry. But until I figured out I needed a "junk" e-mail address in my registrations, I was entirely open to spammers. And I'm now getting "opt in" spams that say, "The person who opted-in for this crap is at n.n.n.n"
As a recent convert, I'm perfectly happy with the single-button Apple mouse that came with my G-4.
My first mouse was an optical mouse of some sort that I bought to go with the copy of Windows I had started running in the late 80's. It had a special reflective pad marked off with hash marks, and you had to run it on that. Windows certainly looked handsome on that amber monitor!
I preferred the Microsoft "bar of soap" style for years because my hands are small, and the larger gunboat styles are miserable for me to operate. There must be other people around with that problem.
Well, I don't know if this will be of any help to you, but the very old, traditional birthday song is "For S/He's a Jolly Good Fellow." That tune's been around quite literally since the Middle Ages.
I can't help seeing the ugly underside of the RIAA's actions from this viewpoint: Leave out the major and wealthy artists and consider that many musicians, singers, and songwriters who've executed contracts with the "music industry" find themselves living in penury and want. That seems to be a fine old American tradition, and it makes one wonder just whose pockets are being lined.
I don't use a token, but I pick a theme: ice cream flavors, car parts, old movies, whatever. The theme gets changed every three months or so, and the passwords all have to relate to it. They also have to comform to the administrative requirements of whatever system I'm using or my own standards.
For some reason it's easier for me to think: "It's April, and the theme is Ice Cream." As long as a flavor is buried somewhere in all the letters and numbers of a password, I'll remember it.
I haven't yet forgotten a theme, and I like to do this because the themes reside in my head rather than in the surrounding room as tokens would.
Slashdot Mirror
Wanna bet?
Read this. Be sure to read all the way to the end for fairly positive proof that the guilty party was, indeed, a woman. In fact, it was a woman-owned, woman-run, all-female spam gang.
Regards,
Anne
To: Mr. Bello Gambari, Esq.
From: Josephine March
Subject: RE: Urgent and Confidential Business Proposal
Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 12:14:53 GMT
Dear Sir:
I am in receipt of an urgent communication from your client, Mrs. Miriam Abacha, widow of the late General Abacha. I regret to inform you that I find it impossible to comply with Mrs. Abacha's request that I transmit to you my bank account and credit card numbers.
I was incredibly moved by the plight of Mrs. Abacha, who has been molested, policed, and frozen!! To hear that her son is even now in detention and that the government is still under surveillance to probe her--well, Mr. Gambari, it broke my heart. So much so, that I have begun suffering from symptoms of sleeplessness, lack of interest in food, and low self-esteem.
In short, I have fallen into a decline and am now suffering from acute symptoms of anxiety and depression brought about by my sensibility to the dreadful circumstances of your client. Family members have decided that I am not competent to look after my own affairs, so it will not be possible for me to assist you in smuggling the money out in those romantic-sounding metal boxes.
I am, however, enclosing a bill for $3,426 (US). This covers my expenses for psychiatric treatment, group therapy, and anti- depressant medications. Your prompt remittance will be appreciated.
Please convey to Mrs. Abacha my very best wishes for a prompt and speedy alleviation of all her difficulties.
Life's been pretty good recently. I've been losing pounds of fat, erasing those annoying stretch marks, and growing a massive pair--all while asleep or showering, thanks to these great herbal HGH patches that Jenny Gorman wrote me about. I get to sleep a lot more now, too, thanks to the one-hunnert-percent American doctor who prescribed me this nifty hillbilly heroin via e-mail. Shipped it FedEx overnight and in complete confidence, too. Gracias, Luciano Lane!!
I do enjoy waking up sometimes, though, now that my husband has turned into a frisky devil thanks to the one-hunnert-percent genuine generic sildenafil citrate he bought online via the Internet. He says the pump gizmo has done him a world of good, too. And he's even friskier since he's improved the gas mileage of our car by 27%. Makes him real happy.
It's so nice not to worry about working, although I was just accorded a one-hunnert-percent genuine MBA by the non-accredited university of my choice! We're just sitting back and letting those dollars roll in from all the great investment tips and free U.S. grants you never have to pay back. If I ever need a little extra cash--say to order a few cheap toner cartridges or take a quick Florida vacation, I just call all those companies that are anxious to pay me for my opinions. I have a *lot* of opinions.
All of this has now been put in jeopardy due to the anti-spamming advocacy of this organization. You should all stop it before you ruin our ideal lifestyle.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go apply for a second mortgage on our house. I want to get it done before this lovely Vicodin makes me fall asle
It's not easy, and it seems as though the mass-transit administration goes out of its way to make life more difficult. But it's workable. If fares increase too much more, it will be only marginally cheaper than operating a car for the same trips. At this point the car is exercised on weekends with trips to the grocery store, mall, or what-have-you.
I'd like to see the best of all worlds: Assisted navigation of some sort, cars that spew less filth, and reasonably adequate mass-transit.
Anne
Just what we need. Another goddamned cheap AOL for the spammers to latch onto. With AOL's "Screw you, you're not one of ours" anti-spammer policy, this should work wonders for our inbaskets, not to mention our mail servers.
I can't think of anything else to say that's not profane.
Anne
Love 'em all. Love my dualies the mostest.
There was a time when "dualie" meant USRobotics HST Dual Standard modem. Cost a cool $795; that is, with the sysops' 50% discount. The damned thing came in a mean, shiny black plastic case and it even looked fast. And just so everybody knew, there was that modest little "HST" you got to add to the tearline of your BBS messages.
Mine was actually re-cycled from machine to machine until about 1998. I installed it on a computer I put together for my aged mum; she used it until it finally overheated and died. It's sitting on a shelf in this very room, right along with my non-working Seagate ST-225 because I can't bear to throw them away.
I have a 1993-1994 vintage DuoDock Mac PowerBook model 230 that still works beautifully. It's got a grayscale display, 16 megabytes of RAM (a powerhouse!) and a 40 megabyte hard drive. I experienced moments of panic and desolation when its docking station failed, but someone from a local university sold me a mini-dock for it that's even better than its original equipment. The 14.4 modem still works fine, but even from NCSA's archive we can't get a browser that will cruise today's Internet adequately. I've often pondered setting it up on the network, and if I'm ever drunk and with time on my hands, I might try to do that. It runs Nisus' word-processor quite adequately, and I still use it for non-technical writing.
This little machine weighs 4 1/2 pounds and has been all over the world with me, traveling happily in whatever backpack or briefcase I felt inclined to put it. I've written a lot of words on it, and it's been powered-on in bars, at campfires, on boats and picnic tables. It's made several canoe trips without mishap.
I like to think that what will happen to it eventually is that one morning many years hence, someone will say, "Aha. Granny's finally checked out," and somebody else will say, "Yeah. Guess what. The DuoDock checked out, too."
Anne
"I hereby declare on my word of honor, that I have neither given nor received help with this work." Antiquated, I know. Maybe a stern lecture on the university's cheating policy, complete with knowing and humiliating smirks at the suspects, would do a better job.
I've wondered for years, though, what good it does once you're past fractions, to assign graded homework that just consists of a series of written examples or problems to be solved. Life doesn't work that way, and the people who're up to their necks in real life situations are solving problems by whatever means they can.
I took a fairly rigorous exam quite some time ago for a then-important industry certification, and it was "open book." The reasoning was that when I got back to the real world, I'd have access to the book to solve my problems. That turned the certification testing into an interesting learning process rather than a frantic rush to memorize topics. I delude myself that the certification perhaps meant more than some others.
Try putting them on teams and giving each team a problem.
Anne
I'll concede that it might help new concertgoers or people trying to learn about a given piece of music for the first time. I can really see a place for it in music-appreciation classes or even some music theory classes.
For myself I'd have to rank the idea right down there near the bottom with those projected subtitles they give you at the opera. I don't even think I'd enjoy it at a football game.
One good way to attract concertgoers and stave off bankruptcy for any more symphony orchestras might be to spend an equivalent amount of money on putting a little music education back in the primary and secondary schools.
I find myself turning more and more to my Lamy Safari. I have the fountain pen, ballpoint, and pencil, and though they were inexpensive, they've worked flawlessly for about four years now. Try Bertram's Ink Well in Baltimore for Lamy supplies. If you're fortunate enough to become addicted to fountain pens, they have a selection of antiques that are wonderfully restored. Just don't carry the old ones on an airplane.
I use something called an EZ-Pass, a device that lets me drive on toll roads in the Middle Atlantic, debiting a pre-paid account. It's cheap, convenient, and I don't have to experience panic each time I approach an exact-change lane. I had the interesting experience a year ago of using it to drive all the way from Maryland to the Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Canada; never had to shell out a dime, and each toll was about half the posted price. Most places have dedicated lanes, too.
Yeah. I know they could use it to track me. They could somehow link it back to my bank account. They could probably even watch and bust me for speeding.
My brother in law thinks I'm crazy to allow one of these devices of the Devil into my automobile. He no longer uses his home computer because he's convinced that his ISP (Verizon) has nothing better to do than to track his every move online. He pays cash for all but the largest purchases, won't use an affinity card for his groceries, and doesn't visit ATM's (jeeze, remember standing in line at the bank to get a check cashed?). He has no spare or leisure time because the very housekeeping of life takes him twice or three times as long as it does the rest of us. He makes my particular life miserable on every visit because I merrily use credit cards, ATM's, discount cards, an EZ-Pass, and my computer.
Yeah, I could probably have lots more privacy than I do. But you know what? Life's short. There are big things to worry about and there are little things. Worry about too many of the little things and you become as miserable as my brother in law. For some reason, I place sneaky library books squarely in the "don't sweat this" category. At least for now.
Anne
One more mechanized, motorized watercraft for people to abuse while drunk. Why is it that the drunks never collide with the other drunks? Instead they go straight for the people operating canoes and sailboats.
My somewhat grouchy and jaundiced opinion as someone who lives on the Chesapeake is that if you want to surf you should go where there are waves. Waves are found at the ocean. Preferably the Pacific Ocean.
1) I provide a small number of resold websites for clients--in other words, I don't want to host sites for the general public. Using the registrar provided by the people I lease the space from has been a problem from the outset. I can register my end-user as the owner-of record for a domain name, but the people upstream from me are the only ones who can alter the record. Thank God they're honest, but accidents (mostly delays) have occurred.
2) If I had it to do over again, I'd provide this as a service for my users but would find some third-party, reputable entity to handle the registrations. The password could be shared between the user and myself.
3) It is possible to wrest these away from unscrupulous hosting providers as well as "web services" people who just evaporate. It involves finding the registrar and establishing that the site is yours. They'll want any proof you can provide including company letterhead, copy of your driver's license, and a great deal of other paperwork. But it can be done. I've had two successful interactions of this nature, one with Verisign (cough!), one with somebody else. Both were on behalf of clients. Both took many days to complete, hours on the telephone, and both e-mail and snail mail.
That "ISP" in the subject line is a little misleading. It doesn't always have to be your ISP, though I suppose it could be.
Anne
. . . in July, 2001, with several hundred other people. It was what you could call a "massive layoff."
I'm happier now than I ever was working for that organization. I can't help wondering how many senior managers there are Out There who blame the deaths of their companies on the recession when in reality their own arrogance and inflexibility were actually to blame.
Just after reading the CNet article, this looks as though it could cause real headaches for small business owners.
Let's see. Small scale businesses would be collecting sales taxes for virtually every jurisdiction in the country, dealing with the choking amounts of spam, fending off people who want to steal the domain or commit other mayhem, paying the self-emplyment tax, and contending with all the other paperwork. Where's the incentive to keep going (much less the time to devote to the actual goods or services)?
We could probably save a bundle by doing away entirely with the Small Business Administration. At this rate, they won't have much to administer.
I have a question--actually a serious question. I visited, and the screen looks a little bit like "Miner 2049er" starring Bounty Bob.
Maybe I'm just suffering from old-timer's disease?
Not to be overly-dramatic, but when it happens to you it's a nightmare and one of the blackest pits you can imagine.
:), and installing such watchdogs and filters as I could. I cultivated good relations with the folks who supported the server. I did all I could, short of purchasing a server for myself, which I could never have afforded.
Think of spending all your time, energy, heart and soul developing a business (or organization), providing for it, gaining credibility and referrals, making a name and niche for yourself, however small. Imagine you're attempting to support and educate a family via that business.
Now imagine it all wiped away with no thought at all by anonymous monsters of greed.
That's precisely what happened to me. I'm actually not illiterate. I exercised care in building my site, selecting a host for it, making sure it ran Linux
Then I made the mistake of becoming ill. Over Christmas I spent six days in the hospital, and when I came home, a corresponding several days downstairs. They struck during that time. I returned to hundreds and hundreds of bounced messages, angry complaints, bitch-outs, whatever.
A call to the tech support people actually put a stop to the whole thing rather quickly. The spammers were using Sprint, and apparently Sprint lacks tolerance for these issues. I wrote to each and every person who'd bitched, swallowed my pride and explained who I was and what had happened. Some wrote back.
On the practical side, I have now a trusted friend who will look after things for me if I ever become ill again, and I will do the same for him. In fact the two of us may lease a server from a reputable company. That's a huge cost, but it may well be worth it.
On the emotional or impractical side, even eight months later I have an enormous amount of anger. Anger is often un-helpful, but I entertain visions of finding ways to inujure these people (not physically or by violence, but in their ability to do this). I visualize them financially ruined, humiliated in public, hounded out of their neighborhoods. I visualize attacks on their servers. That's all quite counterproductive. In order to deal with the anger part, I spend my spare time writing a novel in which a spammer is murdered. It's not half bad.
Regards,
Anne
On places like GeoCities and other free spots. Sprinkle each page liberally with "Mailto's." They'll find you eventually.
Oh, I believe a great many people have that feeling. The current administration supports big business over all else, and the preservation of their assets and ability to make money is paramount. A large, docile population of people who just contentedly feed that personal information without becoming distressed is ideal.
Take a look at the new additions to the anti-spam legislation; the "direct mailers" are now responsible for "self policing." In other words, the wolves have been given yet another key to the fold.
We've had a "common enemy" created for us in Sadam Hussein while our actual enemy (Osama bin Laden) continues to elude us. I have no doubt this was done to induce patriotic feelings; no one, really, wants to make life harder for the soldiers or to appear to be comforting our enemies--even make believe ones. I suspect we'll queue up gladly to authorize airline security to pull credit reports--for example.
All this is going to go swimmingly until enough of us have lost our jobs that we can't keep the money-making machine going any longer.
As I read back over this, I'm surprised at myself. I'm your basic hardworking ordinary Boomer. Something in your short post must've struck a chord.
Anne
I've noticed the Wednesday peak in the accounts attached to my business. Those are primarily the inkjet cartridge, diploma, "forbidden CD," prescription pharmaceutical, hot stock tip, and those obnoxious idiots at Logosaurus. In other words, the spam has a higher "tone" if you will.
The spams to my Hotmail account spike on Friday evenings. Those are what I would call the "dregs of humanity" spams--the assorted barnyard animals, herbal enhancements, and general "Are you lonesome tonight" spams. They're also more likely to be inept, such as having a "TO" field that reads "C:\documents\addressfile.txt" or words to that effect.
Bagnallb at AOL is sort of my own personal spammer (although I share him with many other people on the greater Internet). He really, really wants to take over my domain, and he manifests this by increasingly frenetic efforts to find an obsolete version of FormMail. He's been trying without success for six weeks now, and his efforts always, always increase on Wednesdays.
So I'd say Wednesdays for the "business class" spam and Fridays for the really scummy stuff. Bagnallb is scummy, but he's a Wednesday sort of fellow.
I suspect that people who've never contemplated committing a crime might shortly need to be worried about charges of treason. According to Donald Rumsfelt, that's roughly what you're committing if you criticize the administration's wartime policies. Reuters (via Yahoo).
Slashdotters have been rightly concerned about the integrity of assorted new computer-assisted voting systems. That's important, but perhaps we should spare some concern about whether there'll be a Presidential election at all in 2004. It's not going to be easy to run a campaign if criticizing the administration's actions becomes somehow associated with "giving aid and comfort to the enemy."
Meth-makers and money-launderers are not angels, and we could do with fewer of them out there making trouble. But this is still a government of laws, and we had prior laws on the books to deal with them.
Anne
On the one hand, public information is needed to track down scammers, spammers, and thieves.
On the other hand, if you're a small-business owner/operator (without the layers of protection and anonymity provided in a large company) you really are right out there, address and all.
I've been hit both ways; first by some lunatic who took images of my work and represented them as his own (and who routinely does that to artisans). He's safe and comfy behind an impenetrable wall of bullshit in his registry entry. But until I figured out I needed a "junk" e-mail address in my registrations, I was entirely open to spammers. And I'm now getting "opt in" spams that say, "The person who opted-in for this crap is at n.n.n.n"
Anne
As a recent convert, I'm perfectly happy with the single-button Apple mouse that came with my G-4.
My first mouse was an optical mouse of some sort that I bought to go with the copy of Windows I had started running in the late 80's. It had a special reflective pad marked off with hash marks, and you had to run it on that. Windows certainly looked handsome on that amber monitor!
I preferred the Microsoft "bar of soap" style for years because my hands are small, and the larger gunboat styles are miserable for me to operate. There must be other people around with that problem.
Anne
Well, I don't know if this will be of any help to you, but the very old, traditional birthday song is "For S/He's a Jolly Good Fellow." That tune's been around quite literally since the Middle Ages.
I can't help seeing the ugly underside of the RIAA's actions from this viewpoint: Leave out the major and wealthy artists and consider that many musicians, singers, and songwriters who've executed contracts with the "music industry" find themselves living in penury and want. That seems to be a fine old American tradition, and it makes one wonder just whose pockets are being lined.
Anne
I don't use a token, but I pick a theme: ice cream flavors, car parts, old movies, whatever. The theme gets changed every three months or so, and the passwords all have to relate to it. They also have to comform to the administrative requirements of whatever system I'm using or my own standards.
For some reason it's easier for me to think: "It's April, and the theme is Ice Cream." As long as a flavor is buried somewhere in all the letters and numbers of a password, I'll remember it.
I haven't yet forgotten a theme, and I like to do this because the themes reside in my head rather than in the surrounding room as tokens would.
Anne