The vast majority of spam is sent with some form of false address.
True.
Developing a way to be able to trust the origin of email is the way to end the spam crisis.
False, unless by "end the spam crisis", you mean "force spammers to use throw-away addresses".
Forcing spammers to use real addresses will simply cause them to use disposable addresses.
How difficult is it to get an email address? Not very. I can get a virtually unlimited number for under $10. Considering this is less than the cost of a throw-away dialup account (already in use by spammers), it won't even put a dent in the amount of spam sent.
Others who have proposed this have come back with "well, we can just blacklist them!" - OK, and how is this different than what we have right now?
if the paperwork is completely bogus you are still subject to perjury charges.
Define "completely bogus".
The only thing that can subject you to perjury is not legitimately being authorized to act on behalf of the rights holder.
So if you say you're acting on behalf of Aerosmith, when in fact they haven't authorized you to do so, then you can be found guilt of perjury..
If, however, you say you're acting on behalf of yourself, you're immune from perjury.. all you have to do is "suspect" them of violating your copyright. (Hmm, I wrote a file called "README.TXT", and I saw a file with the same name on someone's FTP site. I'd like to harrass them, so I'll get the government to give me their name and phone number.)
I don't think this system is going to be very good for mining large quantities of data
No, but it will be an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to stalk someone.
It's a pain in the ass to navigate between frequently used folders.
It supports tab completion. I don't know about you, but I like that I can traverse long directory with just a few keystrokes a few more , etc.
Yes, but for long directories that I use frequently, even "a few keystrokes" is too much. Try KDE3's file dialog - ONE mouse click takes me to my any of my most-used directories.
Tab completion is OK, but it assumes that I already have both hands on the keyboard - which (after using something like Gimp is a very, very bad assumption) Try editing 100+ photos, from a read-only folder, and save the resulting images in a different folder, nested 8 or 9 levels deep. It's needlessly time consuming with GTK.
The Windows file selector looks pretty, but that's about it
Who said anything about Windows?
Try KDE's file dialog. Get used to it - add some quicklinks. Then try to use GTK+, and you'll see how clunky it is.
I pretty much only use it for Gimp. Here's the biggest beef:
It has no method to quickly navigate directories. Depending on what I'm editing (print-quality photos, web graphics, the family album, etc) I'd like to quickly switch between directories. Now, what happens:
I load Gimp, open the file dialog, navigate to my images directory (slow, even with command-completion), then load the image. After editing, I want to save the resulting image to another folder, so I then go back to the file dialoge, and do the same damn thing again.
Then I have a second (and a third, and fourth - frequently between 50 to 100) image to edit, so I have to do the same thing all over again. For each one.
It's tedious, and completely uneccesary.
Try the KDE dialog for comparison. You navigate ONCE to the folder you want to use, and then bookmark it. Same for saving. The next time you open your app, you click once to be taken to the folder you need.
When dealing with tons of files, this saves TON of time.
It's fast
"fast" is relative. It's "fast" if you're talking display time. But spend any amount of time with it, and you'll hate it as much as I do.
does what it should
No, it most certainly doesn't. A file dialog should make life easier for the user. It should make switching to frequently used directories simple. GTK doesn't.
I kicks M$ ass
What's your point? I'm probably better at ice skating than the best hockey player in Kenya. Does that mean there's no room for improvement in my skills?
My curse on you is that you be forced to WinCE on a keyboardless de
My curse on you is that you acutally gain some perspective.
that affect just about any web language where developers trust inputted code.
The developers of the language, or the developers of the app?
I personally think that is one of the biggest challenges with the web. You have people who have had no formal training in programming, design, etc being able to build these complex applications.
Again, are you talking about the developers of the app, or the PHP developers?
Not all web-based languages are insecure by default.. any good language will treat all data (whether from the user, or even the SQL DB) as untrusted, unless the developer explicitly requests the data in it's raw format.
NT is capable of locking down capabilities between users, but do most places run their machine that way? No. They've created a bunch of users that have grown used to having the ability to destroy an entire drive
It's not just users, it's developers, too.
I can't count the number of apps I've seen that demand local administrator in order to run. Stuff like MusicMatch Jukebox.. I'm sorry, but why do you need admin privs to run a fscking MP3 player?!?!
Even MS has been bitten by this - the print spooler in Win2K had a bug when printing to network printers.. if the user didn't have admin priveledges, they could print, but the print spooler wouldn't have permission to delete the spool files.. so they'd accumulate until the drive overflowed (which was a real bitch if you'd upgraded from NT4, so your C: drive was limited in size.)
Although it's technically possible to restrict user privs under NT/2K, the mentatlity of developers frequently leaves the users with no option but to run with administrator rights.
Listen to the director's commentary for Blade2.. there's a scene in the sewers, where Ron Perlman sticks his gloved hand into the sun, and his glove starts to smoke..
The smoke was CG.. Guillermo del Toro makes a big deal about how he loves to use CG for stuff like that - stuff that could easily be done with other methods (and usually is)..
I'd like to think the laws for Vehicular Manslaughter & Fire Engines would supercede these traffic violations
Depends.. by "supercede" do you mean "the fine is less money", or do you mean "the ticket will be cancelled after you go through a very long and involved appeals process and provide proof that you had to break the lesser law"?
I don't know what the traffic regs are in the jurisdiction you live in but over here you have to let fire engines, police and ambulances pass no matter what and if that means pulling over, even into the bus lanes, you have to do it..
Yes, it's the same here - I was trying to make a point..
Basically, in the situations I gave, the law requires you to break the law. Sounds a little Orwellian to me.
Nobody has a right to drive a car over the speed limit, or to shoot a red light: provided suitable privacy protections are put in place, what exactly is wrong with this proposal?
And nobody is saying that someone has a right to break traffic codes. However, sometimes people need to break them, in order to prevent something worse.
Even with "privacy" protection, the issue is that there is no context for something like this..
For the red light sensor: Suppose you're stopped at a red light, and there's a bicycle behind you.. someone hits the cyclist from behind, forcing him under your car. There is no traffic in the intersection..
So, do you A) Immediately move your car forward so that the cyclist doesn't die?
or B) Wait until the light turns green, safe in the knowledge that the cylcist's next-of-kin understand that it was OK for him to die, because saving his life would have meant breaking the law?
For the bus lane (and speed limit): You are driving in heavy traffic, and you hear a siren. There is enough room for you in the bus lane, but not for the fire engine Do you:
A) Pull into the bus lane, allowing the fire engine to pass so they can put out the fire and save the lives of the 20 people trapped in the burning building?
or
B) Keep driving, not speeding up (which would get you a ticket), and not allowing the fire engine to pass, safe in the knowledge that you won't get a ticket, but saying "well, those poor people died, but at least nobody broke the speed limit or bus lane rules"?
This is great - what if you need to break one of these laws to prevent an accident?
Say (for example) someone doesn't see you, and cuts you off in traffic - you have two options.. you can swerve into the bus lane, or let them hit you (stopping traffic, raising your insurance rates, possibly causing injury)
I can see it now - if someone pisses you off in traffic, you just force them into a bus lane.. a month later, they get a fine!
And they never said that a giant spider would be able to lift a car
No, but they implied it, by saying that "if a human had the strength of a spider, they would be able to lift many times their own bodyweight."
But in reality, if a human had the strength of a spider, they wouldn't have enough strength to breathe.
Again, the people gave the impression that spiders are strong relative to their bodyweight because they have some magical spider-property, not because they are small.
But they did show some interesting science about genetically enhancing people to be stronger
Yes, but the difference is that the strength of the resulting human would be limited by physics..as the size of the body (and so the size of the muscle) increases, it's mass also increases disproportionately, so the muscle has to do more work to provide the same lifting power (it has to overcome it's own mass)..
the spammer whose doing the job he was hired to do
You make him sound like he's innocent. "He was just doing his job."
we should be looking at the companies who are hiring these spam-a-jammas
I don't think that's necessary - in many cases, the people who hire spammers are just as much of a victim as the recipients.. remember, all spammers claim they have "100% targetted, triple-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-opt-in" lists..
I recently got an email from a customer who says that he signed up for an email list (run by a friend), but that the email kept getting bounced by our mail server... his friend sent me a fax, which he got from his "listserver admins" who called themselves "Constant Contact" - this fax basically said "we're not spammers - honest, please add the following IPs to your whitelist, so that our 100% permission-based emails can get through"..
I looked up the IP addresses, and all of them are perma-blocked by pretty much every DNSBL on the net.. the evidence presented showed that these "Constant Contact" guys are (you guessed it) spammers themselves, and not terribly good at covering their tracks.
Now, (back to my point).. this guy runs a legitimate business, but he's being conned by spammers.. he doesn't have the technical know-how to run his own server, and he doesn't know how to tell the difference between a legitimate listserv, and a spammer.. (which, is to check blacklists.) The spammers have his money, and his mailing list (which they send spam to, or sell to other spammers), and he's stuck being unable to send mail to a bunch of his clients..
I think he's learned a hard enough lesson - I think punishing him further would be counterproductive.
You have obviously never been on the receiving end of a blacklist.
Well, I'm a sysadmin at a small ISP. Some of the IP addresses we assign to customers have been blacklisted in the past (although none are now.)
We've never had all of our Class-C's blocked, but that's because we are a responsible ISP.
What you're missing is that SPEWS (et al) don't immediately block every IP address as ISP has - they blacklist the individual IP addresses, and if the ISP doesn't respond to complaints, THEN the entire netblock gets listed.
If your school was listed, then it's because it was relaying or originating spam, and the ISP did nothing about it.
I look at the mailing lists and all I see are a bunch of jerks acting as if the provider is always at fault
If the provider allows spammers on their networks, then they are at fault.
A lookup at http://openrbl.org/ shows 0 positives on my IP, yet for some reason I'm getting bounces claiming both SPEWS and Osirusoft are rejecting me.
I'd like to believe what you say, but my experience says that it didn't happen - would you mind posting your IP address (or the netblock you belong to) so I can verify this for myself?
The only reference I could locate to others in my/24 block was the local Catholic School having an open proxy (NOT an open relay)
Perhaps you're not aware, but most open proxies can be (and are) used to relay email. So your attempt to differentiate them is moot.
And don't give me any of this BS about 'well the ISP had their chance to shut down the troublemakers before they were blacklisted.' Where the hell was *MY* chance to do something before *I* got blacklisted?
Well, your ISP should have notified you. If they didn't, then they are being lax in their duties. (Probably the same laxness that got them listed in the first place.)
The scenario that comes to mind is this... On the block where I live, someone who I have never met gets a DUI while driving (someone spams).
No, it's nothing like that. A better (but still slightly flawed) analogy would be someone who lives in your house borrows your car and gets a DUI, ignores the restrictions, and continues driving drunk. So the judge confiscates your car because you continue to allow him to use it.
Keep in mind - the remote mail servers do not belong to you. Nobody is required to receive your email. If you have a problem because your ISP got your IP address blocked, then the issue is between you and your ISP.
Radioactive spiders do not actually change you into a buff moviestar who swings around fighting hobgoblins.
OK, First off: I have no problem with "physics" like this - it's suspesion of disbelief.. I know that it wouldn't happen, but it doesn't ruin the movie for me..
But what really annoys me is when TV hosts of (for example) the Discovery channel, start claiming "there is real science behind it!"
When Spiderman was released, Discovery had an interview with different entymologists and biologists, asking them about the "science" in the film.. and their conclusion was "there is real science behind it."
For example, when asked about "spider-strength", the biologist said "spiders can lift many times their own bodyweight - so it's correct!".. while completely ignoring that the reason that spiders can lift many times their own weight is that they're small, not because there is some magical "spider" quality that gives them super-strength.
If a spider was a big as, and weighed as much as a human being, it wouldn't be able to damnwell move, let alone lift anything, because its muscles wouldn't have enough strength to overcome their own weight.
This is what pisses me off - not the faux-science, but supposedly intelligent individuals treating it as real science.
What I read of this is that the BBC is going to put these up on the net, and hope people will pay for them anyways... somehow, I'm not perfectly certain it's going to work the way we want it to...
Yeah, because the RIAA and MPAA both say it isn't true, and they'd never lie, right?
It's amusing to note that of the people who have tried have found that it does indeed increase sales.
But if all the content is to be given away for free, surely these will die away?
Why? Besides the "it just will" argument I keep hearing from the likes of the RIAA/MPAA, anyone who's actually tried it claims the exact opposite effect (that is, that sales increased, not decreased.)
Track down the spammer, and press charges against them for identity theft.
This is the biggest proof that spam is a social problem. You basically have someone going around saying that they are you. If you want them to stop, you have to deal with them in RL.
Web site owners often use the mail server associated with their domain(s) to send and receive email.
I disagree - unless they don't know what they're doing. If you have a co-located server, this might work (because you have exclusive control of the host), but it's still better to use your ISP's mail server.
When I send email to a business partner, I would prefer they see it come from my web site's domain, not my ISP's.
What does that have to do with which mail server you use? Do you believe that if it comes from your ISP's mail server, that it has to come from their domain too? If so, you have a severe misunderstanding of SMTP, and I urge you to read the applicable RFCs to better your admin skills.
So tell me how a company knows when you own the domain that you are relaying?
Did you read his post?
Here - let me quote the relevant portion:
their relay controls revolve around the source IP address or some form of authentication, not the From: address
Who owns said domain is irrelevant. Who's authorized to send mail from said domain is irrelevant. What's relevant is the IP ADDRESS the mail is originating from.
The previous poster is correct. Like him, I admin a hosting company. We don't (and I've never encountered) a hosting company that attempted to check the outbound domain of an email as a method of controlling relaying.
Re:Does anyone see IP issues inthe future?
on
Corel Goes Private
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· Score: 1
It's generally known that they plan to start leveraging lawsuits of a similar nature against OSS projects
*that* it the time when you agree to a license. actually, when you open the box and break the seal, if they have their way
No, actually. The only time you agree to a license is when you sign it.
I've installed dozens of pieces of software, and not once have I ever agreed to the EULA. I just go ahead and install it anyway.
The software is bought and paid for. It's mine to do with as I see fit (within the bounds of copyright law, of course.) If I don't agree with the EULA, ehe only thing that says I can't use the software is the EULA, which I never agreed to.
You probably have it backwards. Many will go offshore, but some won't.
I think you have it backwards. Spammers are sociopaths. They have turned to spamming as an alternative to other types of fraud.
Would you move to another country - turning your back on your family and friends, just so that you could continue harrassing innocent people? I doubt most spammers would either.
Spam is NOT a social problem any more than junk snail mail is a social problem.
Spam most definitely is a social problem - most spammers are (by any definition) sociopaths.
It takes advantage of available technology to serve a business purpose and as long as the technology is available to take advantage of
And the technology will always exist - or are you advocating the dismantling of email? That's why it's a social problem. Because there are sociopaths that take advantage of it.
make the technology harder to abuse (with filters, etc.).
Huh? How do filters make the technology "harder to abuse"? It's just as easy to abuse, and (more importantly) you're still paying for it (yes, you do pay for all the spam you filter, whether you like to admit it or not.)
Then get a better Bayesian filter.
A "better filter" will only help you to avoid the problem, it doesn't make the problem go away.
5 spams have gone through my Bayesian filter so far this month out of 2415 spams
Oh. My. God. You consider that you pay for 2420 pieces of email that you don't want a good thing?!?!?!
Slashdot Mirror
The vast majority of spam is sent with some form of false address.
True.
Developing a way to be able to trust the origin of email is the way to end the spam crisis.
False, unless by "end the spam crisis", you mean "force spammers to use throw-away addresses".
Forcing spammers to use real addresses will simply cause them to use disposable addresses.
How difficult is it to get an email address? Not very. I can get a virtually unlimited number for under $10. Considering this is less than the cost of a throw-away dialup account (already in use by spammers), it won't even put a dent in the amount of spam sent.
Others who have proposed this have come back with "well, we can just blacklist them!" - OK, and how is this different than what we have right now?
if the paperwork is completely bogus you are still subject to perjury charges.
Define "completely bogus".
The only thing that can subject you to perjury is not legitimately being authorized to act on behalf of the rights holder.
So if you say you're acting on behalf of Aerosmith, when in fact they haven't authorized you to do so, then you can be found guilt of perjury..
If, however, you say you're acting on behalf of yourself, you're immune from perjury.. all you have to do is "suspect" them of violating your copyright. (Hmm, I wrote a file called "README.TXT", and I saw a file with the same name on someone's FTP site. I'd like to harrass them, so I'll get the government to give me their name and phone number.)
I don't think this system is going to be very good for mining large quantities of data
No, but it will be an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to stalk someone.
What is wrong with the GTK file selector dialog?
It's a pain in the ass to navigate between frequently used folders.
It supports tab completion. I don't know about you, but I like that I can traverse long directory with just a few keystrokes a few more , etc.
Yes, but for long directories that I use frequently, even "a few keystrokes" is too much. Try KDE3's file dialog - ONE mouse click takes me to my any of my most-used directories.
Tab completion is OK, but it assumes that I already have both hands on the keyboard - which (after using something like Gimp is a very, very bad assumption) Try editing 100+ photos, from a read-only folder, and save the resulting images in a different folder, nested 8 or 9 levels deep. It's needlessly time consuming with GTK.
The Windows file selector looks pretty, but that's about it
Who said anything about Windows?
Try KDE's file dialog. Get used to it - add some quicklinks. Then try to use GTK+, and you'll see how clunky it is.
I have to ask what you think is wrong with it.
Fair enough. It's too basic.
I pretty much only use it for Gimp. Here's the biggest beef:
It has no method to quickly navigate directories. Depending on what I'm editing (print-quality photos, web graphics, the family album, etc) I'd like to quickly switch between directories. Now, what happens:
I load Gimp, open the file dialog, navigate to my images directory (slow, even with command-completion), then load the image. After editing, I want to save the resulting image to another folder, so I then go back to the file dialoge, and do the same damn thing again.
Then I have a second (and a third, and fourth - frequently between 50 to 100) image to edit, so I have to do the same thing all over again. For each one.
It's tedious, and completely uneccesary.
Try the KDE dialog for comparison. You navigate ONCE to the folder you want to use, and then bookmark it. Same for saving. The next time you open your app, you click once to be taken to the folder you need.
When dealing with tons of files, this saves TON of time.
It's fast
"fast" is relative. It's "fast" if you're talking display time. But spend any amount of time with it, and you'll hate it as much as I do.
does what it should
No, it most certainly doesn't. A file dialog should make life easier for the user. It should make switching to frequently used directories simple. GTK doesn't.
I kicks M$ ass
What's your point? I'm probably better at ice skating than the best hockey player in Kenya. Does that mean there's no room for improvement in my skills?
My curse on you is that you be forced to WinCE on a keyboardless de
My curse on you is that you acutally gain some perspective.
Wow.
Here I was thinking that it was utterly impossible to make the GTK file dialogue worse than it already was.
Zemljanka, I bow before you in humility!
that affect just about any web language where developers trust inputted code.
The developers of the language, or the developers of the app?
I personally think that is one of the biggest challenges with the web. You have people who have had no formal training in programming, design, etc being able to build these complex applications.
Again, are you talking about the developers of the app, or the PHP developers?
Not all web-based languages are insecure by default.. any good language will treat all data (whether from the user, or even the SQL DB) as untrusted, unless the developer explicitly requests the data in it's raw format.
NT is capable of locking down capabilities between users, but do most places run their machine that way? No. They've created a bunch of users that have grown used to having the ability to destroy an entire drive
It's not just users, it's developers, too.
I can't count the number of apps I've seen that demand local administrator in order to run. Stuff like MusicMatch Jukebox.. I'm sorry, but why do you need admin privs to run a fscking MP3 player?!?!
Even MS has been bitten by this - the print spooler in Win2K had a bug when printing to network printers.. if the user didn't have admin priveledges, they could print, but the print spooler wouldn't have permission to delete the spool files.. so they'd accumulate until the drive overflowed (which was a real bitch if you'd upgraded from NT4, so your C: drive was limited in size.)
Although it's technically possible to restrict user privs under NT/2K, the mentatlity of developers frequently leaves the users with no option but to run with administrator rights.
True..
Listen to the director's commentary for Blade2.. there's a scene in the sewers, where Ron Perlman sticks his gloved hand into the sun, and his glove starts to smoke..
The smoke was CG.. Guillermo del Toro makes a big deal about how he loves to use CG for stuff like that - stuff that could easily be done with other methods (and usually is)..
I'd like to think the laws for Vehicular Manslaughter & Fire Engines would supercede these traffic violations
Depends.. by "supercede" do you mean "the fine is less money", or do you mean "the ticket will be cancelled after you go through a very long and involved appeals process and provide proof that you had to break the lesser law"?
In either case, the driver gets screwed.
I don't know what the traffic regs are in the jurisdiction you live in but over here you have to let fire engines, police and ambulances pass no matter what and if that means pulling over, even into the bus lanes, you have to do it..
Yes, it's the same here - I was trying to make a point..
Basically, in the situations I gave, the law requires you to break the law. Sounds a little Orwellian to me.
Nobody has a right to drive a car over the speed limit, or to shoot a red light: provided suitable privacy protections are put in place, what exactly is wrong with this proposal?
And nobody is saying that someone has a right to break traffic codes. However, sometimes people need to break them, in order to prevent something worse.
Even with "privacy" protection, the issue is that there is no context for something like this..
For the red light sensor: Suppose you're stopped at a red light, and there's a bicycle behind you.. someone hits the cyclist from behind, forcing him under your car. There is no traffic in the intersection..
So, do you A) Immediately move your car forward so that the cyclist doesn't die?
or B) Wait until the light turns green, safe in the knowledge that the cylcist's next-of-kin understand that it was OK for him to die, because saving his life would have meant breaking the law?
For the bus lane (and speed limit):
You are driving in heavy traffic, and you hear a siren. There is enough room for you in the bus lane, but not for the fire engine Do you:
A) Pull into the bus lane, allowing the fire engine to pass so they can put out the fire and save the lives of the 20 people trapped in the burning building?
or
B) Keep driving, not speeding up (which would get you a ticket), and not allowing the fire engine to pass, safe in the knowledge that you won't get a ticket, but saying "well, those poor people died, but at least nobody broke the speed limit or bus lane rules"?
This is great - what if you need to break one of these laws to prevent an accident?
Say (for example) someone doesn't see you, and cuts you off in traffic - you have two options.. you can swerve into the bus lane, or let them hit you (stopping traffic, raising your insurance rates, possibly causing injury)
I can see it now - if someone pisses you off in traffic, you just force them into a bus lane.. a month later, they get a fine!
Yeah, that's real fair.
And they never said that a giant spider would be able to lift a car
No, but they implied it, by saying that "if a human had the strength of a spider, they would be able to lift many times their own bodyweight."
But in reality, if a human had the strength of a spider, they wouldn't have enough strength to breathe.
Again, the people gave the impression that spiders are strong relative to their bodyweight because they have some magical spider-property, not because they are small.
But they did show some interesting science about genetically enhancing people to be stronger
Yes, but the difference is that the strength of the resulting human would be limited by physics..as the size of the body (and so the size of the muscle) increases, it's mass also increases disproportionately, so the muscle has to do more work to provide the same lifting power (it has to overcome it's own mass)..
the spammer whose doing the job he was hired to do
You make him sound like he's innocent. "He was just doing his job."
we should be looking at the companies who are hiring these spam-a-jammas
I don't think that's necessary - in many cases, the people who hire spammers are just as much of a victim as the recipients.. remember, all spammers claim they have "100% targetted, triple-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-opt-in" lists..
I recently got an email from a customer who says that he signed up for an email list (run by a friend), but that the email kept getting bounced by our mail server... his friend sent me a fax, which he got from his "listserver admins" who called themselves "Constant Contact" - this fax basically said "we're not spammers - honest, please add the following IPs to your whitelist, so that our 100% permission-based emails can get through"..
I looked up the IP addresses, and all of them are perma-blocked by pretty much every DNSBL on the net.. the evidence presented showed that these "Constant Contact" guys are (you guessed it) spammers themselves, and not terribly good at covering their tracks.
Now, (back to my point).. this guy runs a legitimate business, but he's being conned by spammers.. he doesn't have the technical know-how to run his own server, and he doesn't know how to tell the difference between a legitimate listserv, and a spammer.. (which, is to check blacklists.) The spammers have his money, and his mailing list (which they send spam to, or sell to other spammers), and he's stuck being unable to send mail to a bunch of his clients..
I think he's learned a hard enough lesson - I think punishing him further would be counterproductive.
You're ignoring some (very major) points.
/24 block was the local Catholic School having an open proxy (NOT an open relay)
You have obviously never been on the receiving end of a blacklist.
Well, I'm a sysadmin at a small ISP. Some of the IP addresses we assign to customers have been blacklisted in the past (although none are now.)
We've never had all of our Class-C's blocked, but that's because we are a responsible ISP.
What you're missing is that SPEWS (et al) don't immediately block every IP address as ISP has - they blacklist the individual IP addresses, and if the ISP doesn't respond to complaints, THEN the entire netblock gets listed.
If your school was listed, then it's because it was relaying or originating spam, and the ISP did nothing about it.
I look at the mailing lists and all I see are a bunch of jerks acting as if the provider is always at fault
If the provider allows spammers on their networks, then they are at fault.
A lookup at http://openrbl.org/ shows 0 positives on my IP, yet for some reason I'm getting bounces claiming both SPEWS and Osirusoft are rejecting me.
I'd like to believe what you say, but my experience says that it didn't happen - would you mind posting your IP address (or the netblock you belong to) so I can verify this for myself?
The only reference I could locate to others in my
Perhaps you're not aware, but most open proxies can be (and are) used to relay email. So your attempt to differentiate them is moot.
And don't give me any of this BS about 'well the ISP had their chance to shut down the troublemakers before they were blacklisted.' Where the hell was *MY* chance to do something before *I* got blacklisted?
Well, your ISP should have notified you. If they didn't, then they are being lax in their duties. (Probably the same laxness that got them listed in the first place.)
The scenario that comes to mind is this... On the block where I live, someone who I have never met gets a DUI while driving (someone spams).
No, it's nothing like that. A better (but still slightly flawed) analogy would be someone who lives in your house borrows your car and gets a DUI, ignores the restrictions, and continues driving drunk. So the judge confiscates your car because you continue to allow him to use it.
Keep in mind - the remote mail servers do not belong to you. Nobody is required to receive your email. If you have a problem because your ISP got your IP address blocked, then the issue is between you and your ISP.
Radioactive spiders do not actually change you into a buff moviestar who swings around fighting hobgoblins.
OK, First off: I have no problem with "physics" like this - it's suspesion of disbelief.. I know that it wouldn't happen, but it doesn't ruin the movie for me..
But what really annoys me is when TV hosts of (for example) the Discovery channel, start claiming "there is real science behind it!"
When Spiderman was released, Discovery had an interview with different entymologists and biologists, asking them about the "science" in the film.. and their conclusion was "there is real science behind it."
For example, when asked about "spider-strength", the biologist said "spiders can lift many times their own bodyweight - so it's correct!".. while completely ignoring that the reason that spiders can lift many times their own weight is that they're small, not because there is some magical "spider" quality that gives them super-strength.
If a spider was a big as, and weighed as much as a human being, it wouldn't be able to damnwell move, let alone lift anything, because its muscles wouldn't have enough strength to overcome their own weight.
This is what pisses me off - not the faux-science, but supposedly intelligent individuals treating it as real science.
What I read of this is that the BBC is going to put these up on the net, and hope people will pay for them anyways... somehow, I'm not perfectly certain it's going to work the way we want it to...
Yeah, because the RIAA and MPAA both say it isn't true, and they'd never lie, right?
It's amusing to note that of the people who have tried have found that it does indeed increase sales.
I guess you don't realize that the RIAA not only gives their stuff away to people who don't pay for it, but actually pays people to give it away for them.
But if all the content is to be given away for free, surely these will die away?
Why? Besides the "it just will" argument I keep hearing from the likes of the RIAA/MPAA, anyone who's actually tried it claims the exact opposite effect (that is, that sales increased, not decreased.)
How can one protect from this?
Track down the spammer, and press charges against them for identity theft.
This is the biggest proof that spam is a social problem. You basically have someone going around saying that they are you. If you want them to stop, you have to deal with them in RL.
Web site owners often use the mail server associated with their domain(s) to send and receive email.
I disagree - unless they don't know what they're doing. If you have a co-located server, this might work (because you have exclusive control of the host), but it's still better to use your ISP's mail server.
When I send email to a business partner, I would prefer they see it come from my web site's domain, not my ISP's.
What does that have to do with which mail server you use? Do you believe that if it comes from your ISP's mail server, that it has to come from their domain too? If so, you have a severe misunderstanding of SMTP, and I urge you to read the applicable RFCs to better your admin skills.
So tell me how a company knows when you own the domain that you are relaying?
Did you read his post?
Here - let me quote the relevant portion:
their relay controls revolve around the source IP address or some form of authentication, not the From: address
Who owns said domain is irrelevant. Who's authorized to send mail from said domain is irrelevant. What's relevant is the IP ADDRESS the mail is originating from.
The previous poster is correct. Like him, I admin a hosting company. We don't (and I've never encountered) a hosting company that attempted to check the outbound domain of an email as a method of controlling relaying.
It's generally known that they plan to start leveraging lawsuits of a similar nature against OSS projects
It's "generally known" by whom?
Can you cite references please?
Hundreds of people like to be bashed in the balls with blunt instruments.
Hundreds of people like and use SCO Unix..
Hmm.. I wonder if it's the same people?
*that* it the time when you agree to a license. actually, when you open the box and break the seal, if they have their way
No, actually. The only time you agree to a license is when you sign it.
I've installed dozens of pieces of software, and not once have I ever agreed to the EULA. I just go ahead and install it anyway.
The software is bought and paid for. It's mine to do with as I see fit (within the bounds of copyright law, of course.) If I don't agree with the EULA, ehe only thing that says I can't use the software is the EULA, which I never agreed to.
You probably have it backwards. Many will go offshore, but some won't.
I think you have it backwards. Spammers are sociopaths. They have turned to spamming as an alternative to other types of fraud.
Would you move to another country - turning your back on your family and friends, just so that you could continue harrassing innocent people? I doubt most spammers would either.
Spam is NOT a social problem any more than junk snail mail is a social problem.
Spam most definitely is a social problem - most spammers are (by any definition) sociopaths.
It takes advantage of available technology to serve a business purpose and as long as the technology is available to take advantage of
And the technology will always exist - or are you advocating the dismantling of email? That's why it's a social problem. Because there are sociopaths that take advantage of it.
make the technology harder to abuse (with filters, etc.).
Huh? How do filters make the technology "harder to abuse"? It's just as easy to abuse, and (more importantly) you're still paying for it (yes, you do pay for all the spam you filter, whether you like to admit it or not.)
Then get a better Bayesian filter.
A "better filter" will only help you to avoid the problem, it doesn't make the problem go away.
5 spams have gone through my Bayesian filter so far this month out of 2415 spams
Oh. My. God. You consider that you pay for 2420 pieces of email that you don't want a good thing?!?!?!