come on, spam isn't THAT bad. Yes, its annoying, yes it takes time away from real things, but is it really so bad that you'd actually want to flog someone publicly?
I've had more than one piece of unsolicited junk hit my inbox with the justification that it is "CAN-SPAM" complaint. Given that the law was essentially written by the DMA so that they could get the whores in congress to legalize theft by conversion as an advertising model, it looks like it's working. Working to encourage spammers and spam-friendly ISPs, that is.
When it's more work to block spam than stop it, you have to ask what is going wrong. Maybe if we somehow figured out wonderful technologies to *stop* spammers instead of blocking them, we'd be getting towards the ultimate goal.
And yet people scoff at my suggestion of employing the death penalty (with painful torture) against spammers.
Not as effective, IMO. For me, an ideal filter would be one that automatically forwards a complaint to both the ISP that owns the sending IP address and the host for any websites advertised in the junk email, and continues to send complaints until the websites are dead. Until that happens, I'm stuck with doing that manually.
Yes, I was anticipating you argument, and as invalid as that might have been, I'm just saying that one person's definition of UCE may be different than someone else's and some compromise might be necessary in order to get a more usable e-mail system.
UCE is pretty much defined as "unsolicited commercial email." As such, any email that is both unsolicited and commercial is in nature is UCE by definition.
Not all spam is UCE, though. Spam is UBE: unsolicited bulk email. That, also, has a very clear definition: unsolicited email sent in bulk.
That definition is pretty much standard amongst the anti-spam crowd. Only spammers quibble over the definition, trying to redefine spam as "that which we do not do" -- of course, that's not surprising given that all spammers, without exception, are liars.
In a perfect world yes, I would like that too, but as long as we leave no legal outlet for SPAM, illegal spam will likely clog our lines.
So, what, we should legalize some forms of advertising-by-theft because of this?
If some random person e-mails you and asks an inane question, is that SPAM? is that theft?
No.
So only when somebody's intention is to make a profit does it become theft?
No. Unsolicited bulk email asking me to donate to a charity or to give my life to Christ is still spam.
What do you define as SPAM?
Unsolicited bulk email.
Is that the legal definition?
The law does not define "spam". It only defines restraints for the sending of unsolicited bulk email. In other words, the whores in Congress passed a law that allows people to commit theft of service and trespass to chattel provided that they obey certain "guidelines".
That argument doesn't hold up very well.
What argument? You just asked a bunch of questions. How can you discern my argument before I give you the answers, unless you just assume to know them in advance in which case you're likely wrong.
I agree that my plan isn't perfect and likely could never be implemented,
Then why bring it up?
but my main point is that any reciever based costs can be mitigated,
Why should a recipient bear ANY cost of unsolicited advertising, however small?
that advertising is far from illegal,
Correct. Advertising, per se, is not illegal.
and there is probably an acceptable way to implement e-mail marketing.
Also correct. The ONLY acceptable method is to send email solicitations to those who have specifically opted in (through a unique token-based confirmation system) to receive them.
Spam is legit. I wouldn't mind getting an e-mail from the pizza place down the street, or that a near-by mall store is having a sale. I wouldn't mind a grocery store sending me coupons, or anything like that.
That's just great. If every local business sent me unsolicited advertising, I'd never find any legitimate mail in my inbox.
All spam is theft. All spam is illegitmate. There are no exceptions. I will report all spam to any ISPs involved, and I will keep bitching until email accounts are deactivated and webpages are terminated.
I've started an online business or two in my time, and carefully-target unsolicited email (aka spam) was an essential part of our business plan, and it brought real benefit to most recipients.
So you admit to stealing the resources of unwilling third parties in order to advertise at the cost of others? You've just killed any credibility that you might have had.
People like you deserve horrible, painful death. No exceptions.
Spam is sent randomly to people who don't want it. This email will probably be sent specifically to certain people who have a history of dealing with whichever candidate or party. That's just a guess based on the characterizations in the story.
Okay. I was under the impression that these emails would be sent to people who had not specifically requested to receive email.
You're not going to win the fight against spam by taking minor technical points and exaggerating them into a pseudo-scandal.
I actually see email as an effective means of campeigning.
I see it as no better than email spam advertising penis pills, and I will treat it all the same. The sending ISP gets a complaint, as do the hosts of any websites advertised in the junk email.
Except that they'll make it a copyright cases where (thanks to the DMCA), even in criminal court, the burden of proof is upon whoever isn't a multibillion dollar corporation.
When GTA: Vice City for the PS2 was first released, I played it so much that I was certain that it would create burn-in on my RPTV. After hundreds of hours of gameplay, I noticed no visual anomolies (except for one spot that turned out to be a smudge on the screen that was easily wiped off). The best way to avoid burn-in is to calibrate the TV, as typically the default contrast and brightness settings are far too high.
If that's the case, then most Windows users should be safe because only an idiot would have their default user account in the Administrators group......oh, wait. These are Windows users.
The next trick is to raise his rents, as it were. Hit him with a fine when he sends illegal spam (as opposed to the legal stuff under the MAY SPAM law). Make service providers drop him for fear of being sued. And if he steps a toe out of line (like being behind MyDoom), send him to jail for a trillion years.
The real trick is to take a loaded Desert Eagle, put the barrel against his forehead and pull the trigger. That is the only way to stop spammers -- more "regulations" are just more laws for spammers to break. Added costs are just added costs for the people from whom this criminal steals resources. Only death will stop him, and it will serve as a warning to others.
I don't know about the overhead, but I'm sure it's bigger than zero. Fifteen million emails at (say) 1K apiece (probably an overestimate, but it's a rough order of magnitude) is fifteen gigabytes.
Except that it doesn't quite scale that way. The spammer sends out a few messages with huge BCC: lists. Also, they use a hijacked third party's server to do it. The net cost for that is rather small to the spammer, because the real work (sending out all of the information) is happening on a machine from whom the spammers are stealing resources.
Then unplug the machine when you want to start working on it.
When I worked at a university computer lab, I had the lab supervisor tell me that it was SAFER to work with the machine when it was plugged in, because that kept it grounded.
Not that I listend to him. And I always use a static strap when working on my home machine.
Every time I receive unsolicited commercial email that advertises a website in China,I make sure to forward along information on Falun Gong or Free Tibet propaganda along with my LART.
Slashdot Mirror
come on, spam isn't THAT bad. Yes, its annoying, yes it takes time away from real things, but is it really so bad that you'd actually want to flog someone publicly?
Spammers steal billions of dollars per year.
Flogging is too good for them.
I've had more than one piece of unsolicited junk hit my inbox with the justification that it is "CAN-SPAM" complaint. Given that the law was essentially written by the DMA so that they could get the whores in congress to legalize theft by conversion as an advertising model, it looks like it's working. Working to encourage spammers and spam-friendly ISPs, that is.
When it's more work to block spam than stop it, you have to ask what is going wrong. Maybe if we somehow figured out wonderful technologies to *stop* spammers instead of blocking them, we'd be getting towards the ultimate goal.
And yet people scoff at my suggestion of employing the death penalty (with painful torture) against spammers.
Not as effective, IMO. For me, an ideal filter would be one that automatically forwards a complaint to both the ISP that owns the sending IP address and the host for any websites advertised in the junk email, and continues to send complaints until the websites are dead. Until that happens, I'm stuck with doing that manually.
Yes, I was anticipating you argument, and as invalid as that might have been, I'm just saying that one person's definition of UCE may be different than someone else's and some compromise might be necessary in order to get a more usable e-mail system.
UCE is pretty much defined as "unsolicited commercial email." As such, any email that is both unsolicited and commercial is in nature is UCE by definition.
Not all spam is UCE, though. Spam is UBE: unsolicited bulk email. That, also, has a very clear definition: unsolicited email sent in bulk.
That definition is pretty much standard amongst the anti-spam crowd. Only spammers quibble over the definition, trying to redefine spam as "that which we do not do" -- of course, that's not surprising given that all spammers, without exception, are liars.
In a perfect world yes, I would like that too, but as long as we leave no legal outlet for SPAM, illegal spam will likely clog our lines.
So, what, we should legalize some forms of advertising-by-theft because of this?
If some random person e-mails you and asks an inane question, is that SPAM? is that theft?
No.
So only when somebody's intention is to make a profit does it become theft?
No. Unsolicited bulk email asking me to donate to a charity or to give my life to Christ is still spam.
What do you define as SPAM?
Unsolicited bulk email.
Is that the legal definition?
The law does not define "spam". It only defines restraints for the sending of unsolicited bulk email. In other words, the whores in Congress passed a law that allows people to commit theft of service and trespass to chattel provided that they obey certain "guidelines".
That argument doesn't hold up very well.
What argument? You just asked a bunch of questions. How can you discern my argument before I give you the answers, unless you just assume to know them in advance in which case you're likely wrong.
I agree that my plan isn't perfect and likely could never be implemented,
Then why bring it up?
but my main point is that any reciever based costs can be mitigated,
Why should a recipient bear ANY cost of unsolicited advertising, however small?
that advertising is far from illegal,
Correct. Advertising, per se, is not illegal.
and there is probably an acceptable way to implement e-mail marketing.
Also correct. The ONLY acceptable method is to send email solicitations to those who have specifically opted in (through a unique token-based confirmation system) to receive them.
Spam is legit. I wouldn't mind getting an e-mail from the pizza place down the street, or that a near-by mall store is having a sale. I wouldn't mind a grocery store sending me coupons, or anything like that.
That's just great. If every local business sent me unsolicited advertising, I'd never find any legitimate mail in my inbox.
All spam is theft. All spam is illegitmate. There are no exceptions. I will report all spam to any ISPs involved, and I will keep bitching until email accounts are deactivated and webpages are terminated.
I've started an online business or two in my time, and carefully-target unsolicited email (aka spam) was an essential part of our business plan, and it brought real benefit to most recipients.
So you admit to stealing the resources of unwilling third parties in order to advertise at the cost of others? You've just killed any credibility that you might have had.
People like you deserve horrible, painful death. No exceptions.
Spam is sent randomly to people who don't want it. This email will probably be sent specifically to certain people who have a history of dealing with whichever candidate or party. That's just a guess based on the characterizations in the story.
Okay. I was under the impression that these emails would be sent to people who had not specifically requested to receive email.
You're not going to win the fight against spam by taking minor technical points and exaggerating them into a pseudo-scandal.
What minor technical point, exactly?
Spam is very bad, and it is a threat to the future of the Internet.
These political emails are perhaps somewhat questionable, and not a threat to anyone or anything.
Could you explain the technical difference between email spam and "these political emails"?
I actually see email as an effective means of campeigning.
I see it as no better than email spam advertising penis pills, and I will treat it all the same. The sending ISP gets a complaint, as do the hosts of any websites advertised in the junk email.
Except that they'll make it a copyright cases where (thanks to the DMCA), even in criminal court, the burden of proof is upon whoever isn't a multibillion dollar corporation.
If microsoft decides to sue, they'll sue. There's no way to prove that you didn't read the source code.
When GTA: Vice City for the PS2 was first released, I played it so much that I was certain that it would create burn-in on my RPTV. After hundreds of hours of gameplay, I noticed no visual anomolies (except for one spot that turned out to be a smudge on the screen that was easily wiped off). The best way to avoid burn-in is to calibrate the TV, as typically the default contrast and brightness settings are far too high.
If that were the case, a good argument could be made that the entire contract was entered in bad faith by party A and thus unenforcable.
I once had a compile attempt fail on a kernel until I discovered that I'd accidentally left SMP on. Disabling that fixed my problem.
If that's the case, then most Windows users should be safe because only an idiot would have their default user account in the Administrators group... ...oh, wait. These are Windows users.
...nice not to be disappointed.
Anyway, the new book is being held up by his new CEO, who apparently does not like the book's chapter with instructions for ritual slaughter.
The next trick is to raise his rents, as it were. Hit him with a fine when he sends illegal spam (as opposed to the legal stuff under the MAY SPAM law). Make service providers drop him for fear of being sued. And if he steps a toe out of line (like being behind MyDoom), send him to jail for a trillion years.
The real trick is to take a loaded Desert Eagle, put the barrel against his forehead and pull the trigger. That is the only way to stop spammers -- more "regulations" are just more laws for spammers to break. Added costs are just added costs for the people from whom this criminal steals resources. Only death will stop him, and it will serve as a warning to others.
I don't know about the overhead, but I'm sure it's bigger than zero. Fifteen million emails at (say) 1K apiece (probably an overestimate, but it's a rough order of magnitude) is fifteen gigabytes.
Except that it doesn't quite scale that way. The spammer sends out a few messages with huge BCC: lists. Also, they use a hijacked third party's server to do it. The net cost for that is rather small to the spammer, because the real work (sending out all of the information) is happening on a machine from whom the spammers are stealing resources.
$2mil/month? Riiiight. Someone should let the IRS know, as I highly suspect that they've not heard anything about this $2mil/month revenue.
Rule #1: Spammers lie.
It clearly needs 'insightful'.
Then unplug the machine when you want to start working on it.
When I worked at a university computer lab, I had the lab supervisor tell me that it was SAFER to work with the machine when it was plugged in, because that kept it grounded.
Not that I listend to him. And I always use a static strap when working on my home machine.
Every time I receive unsolicited commercial email that advertises a website in China,I make sure to forward along information on Falun Gong or Free Tibet propaganda along with my LART.