I agree, but at the very least the ISP should cut connectivity. Allowing compromised boxes on the network allows criminals to use the network to facilitate acts of theft and fraud.
This is like calling the phone company to report that someone's phone box has been compromised and is being used to make anonymous obscene phone calls. Yes, it might be the user's property that is broken, but that property is still being used to abuse the phone system.
I even noticed my ISP, Verizon, who tend to be quite lazy and stupid when it comes to spam (and other things), have added an SPF record.
I wouldn't call Verizon "lazy and stupid" when it comes to spammers on their network. I would call them "criminally negligent".
They had a spammer's website on their network for over a month. The spammer was selling a product that was blatantly illegal (digital cable descrambler). The only possible way that their product could have been legal was if it did not function as advertised, and then they would have been committing advertising fraud, so either way they were breaking the law and Verizon was allowing it to happen on their network. After a MONTH of daily complaints about the site, it only disappeared AFTER I setup a webpage documenting Verizon's open support of criminal activity and started advertising it in my.signature file.
No legal threats were ever issued to me. I guess that Verizon knew that I had truth on my side.
I come to ask myself: When a factory is polluting a river and through the river the sea, then where would you start cleaning the water? At the sea? No! At the factory! Why do we have to use spam filters in out mail programs while the ISPs are sitting 'up river' watching the whole crap flow?
Hey, I'm a long-time advocate of merciless execution of known email spammers. I'd even volunteer to pull the trigger.
Every time spam comes up you'll find a bunch of posts advocating polcies like "banning.cn..kr..tw" etc, on the grounds that 1) they don't know anyone there and 2) they get a lot of spam from these TLDs.
Actually, the reason for a blanket block on all mail from.cn and South America is a result of not finding a single responsible ISP in the continent.
Just try and find an ISP in China that kicks spammers off as soon as they pop on.
Moreover, most major blocklist sites (like SPEWS) won't just list an entire country. SPEWS specifically only lists based upon network ownership -- if there is an ISP in China that is not a customer of one of the major spam-havens and they have a reputation for booting spammers, they won't find themselves listed in SPEWS.
It seems as though you realise that you've lost the argument on blocking entire spam-friendly ISPs, so you've changed the subject to blocking entire countries.
If their personal mail, go ahead. If it affects a company or an ISP, it's another thing.
What if the company or ISP has polled users and determined that no legitimate mail is coming from that country?
If someone pays a contract killer to kill your wife, then who is to blame? If someone pays a burglar to steal your car audio, then who is the criminal? If a cigarette company pays an ad agency to make ads for cigarettes, then who is to blame? If someone pays a spammer to send online v!agra mails, then who is the criminal? If an addict pays the dealer for drugs, then...
In all of the above cases, both the criminal and the person who paid for the criminal act to be committed are to blame.
I don't quite see your point.
Spammers and their clients are stealing from our attention span.
Are you not paying attention? Yes, they're stealing "from our attention". They also steal millions of man-hours and billions of dollars per yer. There is a genuine tangible cost to spamming, and it's not a trivial loss.
And by the way, why not kill those who invented the shabby SMTP protocol in the first place?
They never intended for it to be used to facilitate theft of resources in order to send cost-shifted advertising.
If I had Alan Ralsky tied in front of me with a bat in my hand, would I cave his skull in? Of course not.
You are far more merciful than I.
Then again, I might not cave his skull in either. That's too fast and easy. But suffice it to say that even if Mr. Ralsky survived my treatment, he would never again eat solid food.
My previous posts are in support of measures to stop SPAM but I argued that the methods should be reasonable to stop innocent parties from being hurt. I believe that no amount of harm done to innocent parties is acceptable.
Okay. Let's take a hypothetical ISP, we'll call it "Vertigo" or "Qworst" or "SpewYou Net", doesn't really matter. They allow their customers to engage in unethical, criminal activities. Not only do they let their customers spam, but they also allow their customers to use proxy hijacking to illegally hide the true location of their webservers by using hijacked machines as web proxies. They let their customers engage in DDoS attacks against anti-spam websites without action. They are openly abusive toward people who report the abusive activities of their customers, to the point of threatening lawsuits.
Now lets say that an organization -- an anonymous organization -- publishes a list of known crime-ridden ISPs run by corrupt management. They support the claims of the list with documentation of the criminal activities of the ISP's customers. This list is then used by responsible ISPs to block all traffic from the crime-ridden ISPs, since the ISPs who voluntarily use these lists have decided that they do not want to trade packets with known criminals.
Now let's say that you are a "legitimate" customer of SpewYou Net (now WorldCon). You're not actually doing anything unethical, you just happen to be giving money to a company that openly enables criminal activities in exchange for network space. Unfortunately, you discover that -- because your ISP has allowed their IP space to become a cesspit -- no one wants to trade packets with you.
Who is at fault here? The people who compiled the list of IP addresses owned by crime-friendly ISPs, the ISPs that voluntarily choose to reject your packets, or your ISP for allowing the netspace that they rent to you to become so undesirable to the outside world?
I agree that it's unethical to allow antispam activities that cause harm to third parties. I'm just a little better at assigning appropriate blame.
You're right. Some of them are just too damn stupid to understand that what they are doing is stealing. They're mentally incompetent. I guess that they should be instutionalized rather than jailed.
I completely agree. My post was referring to spammers who are following the letter of the law.
Given that the very nature of spamming involves theft of resources and trespass, you should never EVER trust that any given spammer is a "law-abiding citizen". Yes, they might be "obeying the law", but that's only because the DMA bribed congress into passing a law that essentially makes a form of electronic theft legal. It has nothing to do with them wanting to be law-abiding citizens.
Thats the thing about collatoral damage. Those doing the damage have the arrogant assumption that it is acceptable because the greater good is served and do not think that they have to take responsibility for it.
So ISPs that allow criminal activities on their network shouldn't have to accept the consequences of their actions, that being that no legitimate networks want their traffic?
As current events go, I can quite easily and unreasonably extend this analogy to the actions of coalition forces in Iraq, with such things as prisoner abuse. But I suppose we shouldn't go there.
No, you shouldn't. No one is forcing anything upon the rogue ISPs. Blacklists are a way for a network to protect itself from the criminal actions perpetuated by ISPs that don't care about their criminal customers by voluntarily refusing traffic. There is absolutely no paralell to voluntarily rejecting packets from a known 'net sewer and torturing Iraqi prisoners. Only a moron would suggest that an effective analogy could be constructed from that.
Wasn't there an article many months (years?) ago about how to circumvent this kind of thing by holding "shift" as you insert the disc? Yes, that's a Windows-only solution, but I don't see this kind of problem affecting Macs or Linux machines.
Wait, is mentioning that little workaround considered a DMCA violation?
You are aware that the software is useful for allowing people who legitimately own the game to make backup copies, as otherwise it is impossible due to copy protection measures put on the CDs, right? Yes, it could be used by someone who wants to dupe the game for a friend, but this software is hardly going to encourage widespread piracy.
Honestly, I'm sick of CD protection on PC games. It does nothing to curb piracy, but it does impact legitimate owners who now can no longer make legal backups of their software (and thus their game is ruined if the original CD gets scratched) AND it often imposes artifical system requirements as users need to make sure that their CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive is capable of handling the nonstandard code that makes the copy protection work -- and since SafeDisc, SecureROM, etc are constantly updating their software, it is impossible to get a steady list of supported hardware.
So you're arguing that the right to political speech is so important that you have a right to use my private resources, without my consent, to send me a political message at my expense?
Is it okay if I trespass onto your property and paste "Bush 2004" posters all over the outside of your house? If not, why are you infringing on my right to political speech!?
It's exactly like sending fliers to you through the USPS.
Wrong. It's like sending unsolicited junk faxes. You know, those things that use privately owned resources of the recipient without their consent?
If someone sends me a junk fax, I can sue them. Why can't I sue them for sending me junk email? It's still theft.
That is precisely why spam should be illegal and spammers should be jailed or (preferrably) executed.
Blogs are definitely impacting society...
on
Meet Joe Blog
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In the past week I've seen a number of calls go out for people to contact Congress and ask to have the World War II memorial monument changed to add in the removed "so help us God". This has been spreading thanks in large part to web blogs hosting this information, which people then email out to friends and family.
So yes, clearly blogs are helping a bunch of retards spread an urban legend around to the point where letters are written to Congress, all because bloggers can't be bothered to check a few facts.
Linux supposedly supports many SATA RAID chipsets, though I have yet to get it to successfully mount an existing ntfs partition on a RAID 0 disk set with a Silicon Image 3114 chipset.
Fortunately my chipset does not require a seperate driver when running in RAID mode. My boyfriend's computer uses a Promise SATA chipset that requires a RAID BIOS switch and a completely different driver (Windows AND Linux) if you want to use it in signle-disk mode. I can't imagine the mess I'd have if I used that.
Your prosal intrigues me, as I am always seeking to expand my business to new countries whenever possible. You must understand, however, that I cannot simply blindly enter into deals with people who I have never met. As such, I will require a sign of TRUST from you, in the form of photograph identification. Please understand that I will not be able to accept normal government ID cards or an international passport for this endeavour, as such things are easily forged. Instead,I shall give to you a password phrase, and you must have a photograph of yourself holding up a large and clear sign that displays this password phrase. Scan this photograph in and email it to me as an attachment. When I have received it, I will be 100% ready to trust you with your business proposal.
I do apologize, but until I receive this form of identification from you, I will not be able to provide you with any further information about myself.
The difference between Outlook and knode is that if I were given a choice between using knode and being stripped naked, strung to the back of a pickup truck with a rope wrapped around my genitals and driven through a field of broken glass, I'd choose to use knode.
The only thing that I get with Windows XP that is of any use to me is greater compatability with games.
I find Linux to be much more useful in that I have a lot of free tools at my disposal just from the stuff included in the default install (Debian testing user here). KDE has a built-in free newsreader, there are a lot more useful command-line utilities (Windows has no builtin WHOIS lookup utility) and overall I prefer the aesthetics of the interface (both the GUI, which is far more customizable than in Windows, and the command line).
Most of it is a matter of personal preference, but the free and fast availability of easier-to-use utilities (apt-get install vs looking for a website that has a Windows utility that matches what I want) gives Linux a greater edge.
One that exploits a fairly recently-discovered hole. One that first attempts to connect to insecure machines, but if it fails to connect to a machine, it then attempts to use the known Netgear backdoor as a passthrough method.
The fallout from that would be absolutely delicious.
Get the Meteor a publishing deal. Have Wendy improve the Meteor's manuscript using the typewriter, and send it off. Get past Purple (with either Weird Ed or Green's help) and go into the Meteor's lair. Give the Meteor the contract, and he realises he doesn't have to be evil any more. This gets a really cool ending where the Meteor's on the sofa in some TV interview show.
3a) Call the meteor police JUST before giving the contract to the Meteor.
"I don't care if you've reformed. You're still coming with me!"
If Lucas thought that there was money to be had in making good sequels to popular adventure titles, they wouldn't have canned Sam & Max: Freelance Police.
The only thing that this might get Lucas to do is file a lawsuit against the creators.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to kill spammers, kill thier source of income.
Are you sure that a bullet to the head won't be more effective? I would certainly find such a solution far more satisfying.
I agree, but at the very least the ISP should cut connectivity. Allowing compromised boxes on the network allows criminals to use the network to facilitate acts of theft and fraud.
This is like calling the phone company to report that someone's phone box has been compromised and is being used to make anonymous obscene phone calls. Yes, it might be the user's property that is broken, but that property is still being used to abuse the phone system.
I even noticed my ISP, Verizon, who tend to be quite lazy and stupid when it comes to spam (and other things), have added an SPF record.
.signature file.
I wouldn't call Verizon "lazy and stupid" when it comes to spammers on their network. I would call them "criminally negligent".
They had a spammer's website on their network for over a month. The spammer was selling a product that was blatantly illegal (digital cable descrambler). The only possible way that their product could have been legal was if it did not function as advertised, and then they would have been committing advertising fraud, so either way they were breaking the law and Verizon was allowing it to happen on their network. After a MONTH of daily complaints about the site, it only disappeared AFTER I setup a webpage documenting Verizon's open support of criminal activity and started advertising it in my
No legal threats were ever issued to me. I guess that Verizon knew that I had truth on my side.
I come to ask myself: When a factory is polluting a river and through the river the sea, then where would you start cleaning the water? At the sea? No! At the factory! Why do we have to use spam filters in out mail programs while the ISPs are sitting 'up river' watching the whole crap flow?
Hey, I'm a long-time advocate of merciless execution of known email spammers. I'd even volunteer to pull the trigger.
If spammers were legitimate direct marketters then they would:
If spammers were "legitimate" direct marketers (assuming that the term itself is not an oxymoron), they wouldn't be spamming.
Every time spam comes up you'll find a bunch of posts advocating polcies like "banning .cn. .kr. .tw" etc, on the grounds that 1) they don't know anyone there and 2) they get a lot of spam from these TLDs.
.cn and South America is a result of not finding a single responsible ISP in the continent.
Actually, the reason for a blanket block on all mail from
Just try and find an ISP in China that kicks spammers off as soon as they pop on.
Moreover, most major blocklist sites (like SPEWS) won't just list an entire country. SPEWS specifically only lists based upon network ownership -- if there is an ISP in China that is not a customer of one of the major spam-havens and they have a reputation for booting spammers, they won't find themselves listed in SPEWS.
It seems as though you realise that you've lost the argument on blocking entire spam-friendly ISPs, so you've changed the subject to blocking entire countries.
If their personal mail, go ahead. If it affects a company or an ISP, it's another thing.
What if the company or ISP has polled users and determined that no legitimate mail is coming from that country?
If someone pays a contract killer to kill your wife, then who is to blame?
If someone pays a burglar to steal your car audio, then who is the criminal?
If a cigarette company pays an ad agency to make ads for cigarettes, then who is to blame?
If someone pays a spammer to send online v!agra mails, then who is the criminal?
If an addict pays the dealer for drugs, then...
In all of the above cases, both the criminal and the person who paid for the criminal act to be committed are to blame.
I don't quite see your point.
Spammers and their clients are stealing from our attention span.
Are you not paying attention? Yes, they're stealing "from our attention". They also steal millions of man-hours and billions of dollars per yer. There is a genuine tangible cost to spamming, and it's not a trivial loss.
And by the way, why not kill those who invented the shabby SMTP protocol in the first place?
They never intended for it to be used to facilitate theft of resources in order to send cost-shifted advertising.
If I had Alan Ralsky tied in front of me with a bat in my hand, would I cave his skull in? Of course not.
You are far more merciful than I.
Then again, I might not cave his skull in either. That's too fast and easy. But suffice it to say that even if Mr. Ralsky survived my treatment, he would never again eat solid food.
Why would Americans be blocking traffic based upon geographic location?
My previous posts are in support of measures to stop SPAM but I argued that the methods should be reasonable to stop innocent parties from being hurt. I believe that no amount of harm done to innocent parties is acceptable.
Okay. Let's take a hypothetical ISP, we'll call it "Vertigo" or "Qworst" or "SpewYou Net", doesn't really matter. They allow their customers to engage in unethical, criminal activities. Not only do they let their customers spam, but they also allow their customers to use proxy hijacking to illegally hide the true location of their webservers by using hijacked machines as web proxies. They let their customers engage in DDoS attacks against anti-spam websites without action. They are openly abusive toward people who report the abusive activities of their customers, to the point of threatening lawsuits.
Now lets say that an organization -- an anonymous organization -- publishes a list of known crime-ridden ISPs run by corrupt management. They support the claims of the list with documentation of the criminal activities of the ISP's customers. This list is then used by responsible ISPs to block all traffic from the crime-ridden ISPs, since the ISPs who voluntarily use these lists have decided that they do not want to trade packets with known criminals.
Now let's say that you are a "legitimate" customer of SpewYou Net (now WorldCon). You're not actually doing anything unethical, you just happen to be giving money to a company that openly enables criminal activities in exchange for network space. Unfortunately, you discover that -- because your ISP has allowed their IP space to become a cesspit -- no one wants to trade packets with you.
Who is at fault here? The people who compiled the list of IP addresses owned by crime-friendly ISPs, the ISPs that voluntarily choose to reject your packets, or your ISP for allowing the netspace that they rent to you to become so undesirable to the outside world?
I agree that it's unethical to allow antispam activities that cause harm to third parties. I'm just a little better at assigning appropriate blame.
but they aren't all evil.
You're right. Some of them are just too damn stupid to understand that what they are doing is stealing. They're mentally incompetent. I guess that they should be instutionalized rather than jailed.
I completely agree. My post was referring to spammers who are following the letter of the law.
Given that the very nature of spamming involves theft of resources and trespass, you should never EVER trust that any given spammer is a "law-abiding citizen". Yes, they might be "obeying the law", but that's only because the DMA bribed congress into passing a law that essentially makes a form of electronic theft legal. It has nothing to do with them wanting to be law-abiding citizens.
Thats the thing about collatoral damage. Those doing the damage have the arrogant assumption that it is acceptable because the greater good is served and do not think that they have to take responsibility for it.
So ISPs that allow criminal activities on their network shouldn't have to accept the consequences of their actions, that being that no legitimate networks want their traffic?
As current events go, I can quite easily and unreasonably extend this analogy to the actions of coalition forces in Iraq, with such things as prisoner abuse. But I suppose we shouldn't go there.
No, you shouldn't. No one is forcing anything upon the rogue ISPs. Blacklists are a way for a network to protect itself from the criminal actions perpetuated by ISPs that don't care about their criminal customers by voluntarily refusing traffic. There is absolutely no paralell to voluntarily rejecting packets from a known 'net sewer and torturing Iraqi prisoners. Only a moron would suggest that an effective analogy could be constructed from that.
Wasn't there an article many months (years?) ago about how to circumvent this kind of thing by holding "shift" as you insert the disc? Yes, that's a Windows-only solution, but I don't see this kind of problem affecting Macs or Linux machines.
Wait, is mentioning that little workaround considered a DMCA violation?
You are aware that the software is useful for allowing people who legitimately own the game to make backup copies, as otherwise it is impossible due to copy protection measures put on the CDs, right? Yes, it could be used by someone who wants to dupe the game for a friend, but this software is hardly going to encourage widespread piracy.
Honestly, I'm sick of CD protection on PC games. It does nothing to curb piracy, but it does impact legitimate owners who now can no longer make legal backups of their software (and thus their game is ruined if the original CD gets scratched) AND it often imposes artifical system requirements as users need to make sure that their CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive is capable of handling the nonstandard code that makes the copy protection work -- and since SafeDisc, SecureROM, etc are constantly updating their software, it is impossible to get a steady list of supported hardware.
So you're arguing that the right to political speech is so important that you have a right to use my private resources, without my consent, to send me a political message at my expense?
Is it okay if I trespass onto your property and paste "Bush 2004" posters all over the outside of your house? If not, why are you infringing on my right to political speech!?
It's exactly like sending fliers to you through the USPS.
Wrong. It's like sending unsolicited junk faxes. You know, those things that use privately owned resources of the recipient without their consent?
If someone sends me a junk fax, I can sue them. Why can't I sue them for sending me junk email? It's still theft.
That is precisely why spam should be illegal and spammers should be jailed or (preferrably) executed.
In the past week I've seen a number of calls go out for people to contact Congress and ask to have the World War II memorial monument changed to add in the removed "so help us God". This has been spreading thanks in large part to web blogs hosting this information, which people then email out to friends and family.
So yes, clearly blogs are helping a bunch of retards spread an urban legend around to the point where letters are written to Congress, all because bloggers can't be bothered to check a few facts.
Linux supposedly supports many SATA RAID chipsets, though I have yet to get it to successfully mount an existing ntfs partition on a RAID 0 disk set with a Silicon Image 3114 chipset.
Fortunately my chipset does not require a seperate driver when running in RAID mode. My boyfriend's computer uses a Promise SATA chipset that requires a RAID BIOS switch and a completely different driver (Windows AND Linux) if you want to use it in signle-disk mode. I can't imagine the mess I'd have if I used that.
Dear Dr. Bokuzuwandi,
Your prosal intrigues me, as I am always seeking to expand my business to new countries whenever possible. You must understand, however, that I cannot simply blindly enter into deals with people who I have never met. As such, I will require a sign of TRUST from you, in the form of photograph identification. Please understand that I will not be able to accept normal government ID cards or an international passport for this endeavour, as such things are easily forged. Instead,I shall give to you a password phrase, and you must have a photograph of yourself holding up a large and clear sign that displays this password phrase. Scan this photograph in and email it to me as an attachment. When I have received it, I will be 100% ready to trust you with your business proposal.
I do apologize, but until I receive this form of identification from you, I will not be able to provide you with any further information about myself.
The password phrase is "I LOVE ARSE FORKING"
Yours Very Truly,
Pastor Phil McCracken
(Hey, it worked before!)
Now if only I could find a way to similarly humiliate the spammers who advertise pirated software or penis pills...
The difference between Outlook and knode is that if I were given a choice between using knode and being stripped naked, strung to the back of a pickup truck with a rope wrapped around my genitals and driven through a field of broken glass, I'd choose to use knode.
The only thing that I get with Windows XP that is of any use to me is greater compatability with games.
I find Linux to be much more useful in that I have a lot of free tools at my disposal just from the stuff included in the default install (Debian testing user here). KDE has a built-in free newsreader, there are a lot more useful command-line utilities (Windows has no builtin WHOIS lookup utility) and overall I prefer the aesthetics of the interface (both the GUI, which is far more customizable than in Windows, and the command line).
Most of it is a matter of personal preference, but the free and fast availability of easier-to-use utilities (apt-get install vs looking for a website that has a Windows utility that matches what I want) gives Linux a greater edge.
One that exploits a fairly recently-discovered hole. One that first attempts to connect to insecure machines, but if it fails to connect to a machine, it then attempts to use the known Netgear backdoor as a passthrough method.
The fallout from that would be absolutely delicious.
Get the Meteor a publishing deal. Have Wendy improve the Meteor's manuscript using the typewriter, and send it off. Get past Purple (with either Weird Ed or Green's help) and go into the Meteor's lair. Give the Meteor the contract, and he realises he doesn't have to be evil any more. This gets a really cool ending where the Meteor's on the sofa in some TV interview show.
3a) Call the meteor police JUST before giving the contract to the Meteor.
"I don't care if you've reformed. You're still coming with me!"
If Lucas thought that there was money to be had in making good sequels to popular adventure titles, they wouldn't have canned Sam & Max: Freelance Police.
The only thing that this might get Lucas to do is file a lawsuit against the creators.