Look, if _golf_ can be a spectator sport, and if there are tv shows on _fishing_, then hell, yeah, computer gaming can be a spectator sport. Hell, nothing's quite as boring as a baseball game, and that's the national pasttime here in the U.S. of W. *shudder*
I use it on a 21" monitor, too, and, being a UI designer, I can say that the Photoshop UI _BLOWS_. I've found that only people who really know the thing really well think it's good - and that's because they've already gone through the learning curve. There's a lot of stuff in that that's just really awful UI.
I wonder if/when Apple will release a powerful yet easy to use image editor to compete with Photoshop. I'd like to see what they can do, as I think Photoshop's UI "is the sux", as the kids say.
Re:Lessening Spam: The True Hollywood Story
on
Replacing SMTP?
·
· Score: 1
A better thing would be to have an e-mail client that renders the non-graphic content of HTML e-mail - that way your friends who only have access to hotmail or yahoo or whatnot can still send you e-mail, but you don't have to put up with, or download, the graphics in any HTML e-mails. I don't know of any e-mail apps that do this (short of just not rendering any HTML e-mail at all, that is), but if you use Norton Internet Security, you can configure it to secure your e-mail app to not connect to anything other than your mail server, and that'll do the trick.:)
Clear as transparent aluminum
on
Replacing SMTP?
·
· Score: 1
For the Slashdot crowd that IS a solution. I didn't post that on usatoday.com you know.:)
Lessening Spam: The True Hollywood Story
on
Replacing SMTP?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
> They either can't figure out the tools or don't think they should have to.
And this is the thing - they really _shouldn't_ have to. Bad UI really ticks me off.
> I agree, however, that people are generally naive/dumb when it comes to common sense issues like sending out email addresses at will or even worse...
The thing is - I intended that for this particular audience. _SLASHDOT_ users, of all people, should know by now how to avoid getting spam. I mean _really_.
> clicking on the "Remove" links from spam! VERY DUMB!:-)
Actually, I've proven to myself this is a myth.
Here's my story:
Last year, around, say, September or October, I was getting, on average, about 200-250 pieces of spam PER DAY. This, I realized, just Would Not Do(tm).
So, since it was obvious I was going to have to shut down all my existing e-mail addresses, generate new ones, and be ultra-selective about giving them out in the future, I realized it was time to test that "Don't click on the remove me links" piece of advice. I'd given it out myself many times, even in an article I once wrote. Time to put it to the test! So, for the period of one month, I followed all the instructions on each piece of spam, every day, to see what would happen to my flow of spam. I kept track of who was sending me spam (the company/product/service, not the 'return address'). I found out that you WILL get LESS spam if you actually follow the advice in the spam, in general. My spam reception went from the 200-250 per day to around 20 per day, in the span of about a month. Obviously, this was still way too much frigging spam, but let me say this: the spam I kept getting was almost entirely from the sources that didn't have a (working) removal method, not from the ones that did. Many of the ones that did have an (apparently) working method DO indeed take a few weeks to start working. But, surprise of surprises, it CAN indeed lessen your spam, when it's offered and is working. Bizarre, I know, but I swear it's true.
I'd still rather make spam technically impossible than rely on that, though.
I propose TMTP - the Trusted Mail Transfer Protocol.
Fair? Hardly. Legal? Depends on your terms of service, but almost certainly so, due to the weasely nature of most companies.
What to do? Time to go DSL, of course. Not as fast as most cable connections, true, but DSL providers are on the losing end of the Cable vs DSL "war", and tend to provide more services & rights for their higher cost / (usually) slower speed / harder to get service. Hopefully you can _get_ decent DSL service where you are.
A more important question: Is this worth posting on Slashdot to whine about?
Hardly.
(Cliff, what were you thinking? (yes, hit my karma - I don't care))
We _really_ need to be able to moderate the editors.
> Well, I guess that this is the only machine that Mac is cheaper than...
Yeah, that and dual-proc Xeons.:)
Re:not the answer - you got that right!
on
Replacing SMTP?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> In that case, who would define "correct" addresses, the ISP? And how would they be defined? I have at least 1-2 email accounts that I retrieve mail from with POP3, but send outgoing mail with the same domain through my ISPs mail server because there is currently no other way. I own (or, more correctly, lease) the domains myself, so no one can legally tell me tell me that I can't send email using those domains. The fact that I send outgoing mail through my ISPs mail server happens to be a necessary evil.
---
Aye, there's the rub. I do the same thing, what with having about 5 domains and various e-mail addresses for each.
There needs to be:
1) A way of verifying if you're allowed to use said mail server. Easy. Simple login/password over encrypted connection - technology already in place. 2) A way of verifying what e-mail addresses & domains are allowed on outgoing e-mails from said mail sever. That would be new, but should be easy to develop. 3) A way of destination server contacting the originating server and verifying the e-mail it received is from an authorized and stated e-mail account. That would be new, too, and would be a bit more complicated, but still fairly simple. 4) While you're at it, you might as well encrypt the whole frigging process. The saying, "E-mail is not like a letter; it's like a postcard." should be obsolete. It should be like a letter written in a language only the sender and receiver can understand. By default. Every time. The technology is around, but needs to be standardized and integrated and something the user never has to set up or think about. I loved a recent commercial that said that something was really private, "as secret as your e-mail password." Yikes. People _really_ don't understand e-mail technology.
Also, a way to have a mail server respond to a confirmation request only by servers it's sent mail to recently would be a good thing - that would cut down on trying to scan a server with a dictionary attack to get valid e-mail addresses to spam to.
The problem is not that these are difficult technical challenges - they're not, and the technologies exist in fairly decent form already. The problem is getting this done in a standard and accepted way and out into the field for everyone to use. _That's_ gonna be a real bitch.
Slashdot Mirror
BabyAT Spice!
Hey, I wanna know where they are now. Where's the E! True Hollywood Story on the Device Girls? Are they in pr0n, yet? :)
USB Spice
FireWire Spice
Gigabit Spice
mini-ITX Spice
Mmmmm.
They certainly looked better than the Spice Girls. I bet they sounded better, too, though who cares about that. :)
And no one can talk to a clone of a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the clone of the horse is a clone of the famous Mister Ed!
"She's the clone!"
"No, _she's_ the clone!"
ccBiscuit (carbon copy)
Either that or a glitch in the Matrix...they've changed something...oh yeah, the new Apple license!
> I like Ralph because some part of me wants to be Ralph, dumb but happy rather than smart but sad.
He's also a little scary, though, what with the Leprechaun who tells him to "burn things." *yikes*
My other fav Ralph line is when the dam bursts, and Ralph is left in his bed in the middle of the street, "I think I wet my bed."
"I bent my Wookie."
Please to be leaving the obvious jokes to me, thanks. :)
Look, if _golf_ can be a spectator sport, and if there are tv shows on _fishing_, then hell, yeah, computer gaming can be a spectator sport. Hell, nothing's quite as boring as a baseball game, and that's the national pasttime here in the U.S. of W. *shudder*
:)
I'd still rather play BZFlag, though.
(Laser with Ricochet? Ouch.)
Tip #1: Ditch the background images. Solid colour backgrounds = better readability & faster loadtimes. Plus background images are SOOO 1997. :)
Tip #2: Hire a information architecture/usability/UI specialist or team. Worth the money, especially if you have tons of content.
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm a UI specialist.
I would offer (lots) more advice, but it's lunchtime and I'm friggin' hungry. Sorry.
> Anyhow, we need a department of IP-security
:)
Yeah, but who would want to work for the DIPS?
And just think of the domain: dips.gov - rather an oxymoron.
And just think, that's the special 'introductory' price!
:)
Linux may be free if my time is worth nothing, but my time sure ain't worth *that* much!
> No learning curve is not the same as a good UI.
True, but the opposite is also true: lots of power doesn't mean something should be hard or irritating to use.
> The reason people complain about Photoshop is usually because they got their hands on a pirated copy and started using it for the wrong things.
Huh? You're nuts. But that's okay - there's still a place for you in society: politics!
I use it on a 21" monitor, too, and, being a UI designer, I can say that the Photoshop UI _BLOWS_. I've found that only people who really know the thing really well think it's good - and that's because they've already gone through the learning curve. There's a lot of stuff in that that's just really awful UI.
Ya know, I was gonna do a full parody based on that joker, but I just didn't have time before work. *sigh*
I wonder if/when Apple will release a powerful yet easy to use image editor to compete with Photoshop. I'd like to see what they can do, as I think Photoshop's UI "is the sux", as the kids say.
Saddam Hussein "Disappointed" by U.S. liberation of Iraq....news at 11!
PC Power & Cooling. 'nuff said.
A better thing would be to have an e-mail client that renders the non-graphic content of HTML e-mail - that way your friends who only have access to hotmail or yahoo or whatnot can still send you e-mail, but you don't have to put up with, or download, the graphics in any HTML e-mails. I don't know of any e-mail apps that do this (short of just not rendering any HTML e-mail at all, that is), but if you use Norton Internet Security, you can configure it to secure your e-mail app to not connect to anything other than your mail server, and that'll do the trick. :)
For the Slashdot crowd that IS a solution. I didn't post that on usatoday.com you know. :)
> They either can't figure out the tools or don't think they should have to.
:-)
And this is the thing - they really _shouldn't_ have to. Bad UI really ticks me off.
> I agree, however, that people are generally naive/dumb when it comes to common sense issues like sending out email addresses at will or even worse...
The thing is - I intended that for this particular audience. _SLASHDOT_ users, of all people, should know by now how to avoid getting spam. I mean _really_.
> clicking on the "Remove" links from spam! VERY DUMB!
Actually, I've proven to myself this is a myth.
Here's my story:
Last year, around, say, September or October, I was getting, on average, about 200-250 pieces of spam PER DAY. This, I realized, just Would Not Do(tm).
So, since it was obvious I was going to have to shut down all my existing e-mail addresses, generate new ones, and be ultra-selective about giving them out in the future, I realized it was time to test that "Don't click on the remove me links" piece of advice. I'd given it out myself many times, even in an article I once wrote. Time to put it to the test! So, for the period of one month, I followed all the instructions on each piece of spam, every day, to see what would happen to my flow of spam. I kept track of who was sending me spam (the company/product/service, not the 'return address'). I found out that you WILL get LESS spam if you actually follow the advice in the spam, in general. My spam reception went from the 200-250 per day to around 20 per day, in the span of about a month. Obviously, this was still way too much frigging spam, but let me say this: the spam I kept getting was almost entirely from the sources that didn't have a (working) removal method, not from the ones that did. Many of the ones that did have an (apparently) working method DO indeed take a few weeks to start working. But, surprise of surprises, it CAN indeed lessen your spam, when it's offered and is working. Bizarre, I know, but I swear it's true.
I'd still rather make spam technically impossible than rely on that, though.
I propose TMTP - the Trusted Mail Transfer Protocol.
Fair? Hardly. Legal? Depends on your terms of service, but almost certainly so, due to the weasely nature of most companies.
What to do? Time to go DSL, of course. Not as fast as most cable connections, true, but DSL providers are on the losing end of the Cable vs DSL "war", and tend to provide more services & rights for their higher cost / (usually) slower speed / harder to get service. Hopefully you can _get_ decent DSL service where you are.
A more important question: Is this worth posting on Slashdot to whine about?
Hardly.
(Cliff, what were you thinking? (yes, hit my karma - I don't care))
We _really_ need to be able to moderate the editors.
no BZFlag entry? :)
(yes, yes, I know, but it's a joke - laugh!)
> Well, I guess that this is the only machine that Mac is cheaper than...
:)
Yeah, that and dual-proc Xeons.
> In that case, who would define "correct" addresses, the ISP? And how would they be defined? I have at least 1-2 email accounts that I retrieve mail from with POP3, but send outgoing mail with the same domain through my ISPs mail server because there is currently no other way. I own (or, more correctly, lease) the domains myself, so no one can legally tell me tell me that I can't send email using those domains. The fact that I send outgoing mail through my ISPs mail server happens to be a necessary evil.
---
Aye, there's the rub. I do the same thing, what with having about 5 domains and various e-mail addresses for each.
There needs to be:
1) A way of verifying if you're allowed to use said mail server. Easy. Simple login/password over encrypted connection - technology already in place.
2) A way of verifying what e-mail addresses & domains are allowed on outgoing e-mails from said mail sever. That would be new, but should be easy to develop.
3) A way of destination server contacting the originating server and verifying the e-mail it received is from an authorized and stated e-mail account. That would be new, too, and would be a bit more complicated, but still fairly simple.
4) While you're at it, you might as well encrypt the whole frigging process. The saying, "E-mail is not like a letter; it's like a postcard." should be obsolete. It should be like a letter written in a language only the sender and receiver can understand. By default. Every time. The technology is around, but needs to be standardized and integrated and something the user never has to set up or think about. I loved a recent commercial that said that something was really private, "as secret as your e-mail password." Yikes. People _really_ don't understand e-mail technology.
Also, a way to have a mail server respond to a confirmation request only by servers it's sent mail to recently would be a good thing - that would cut down on trying to scan a server with a dictionary attack to get valid e-mail addresses to spam to.
The problem is not that these are difficult technical challenges - they're not, and the technologies exist in fairly decent form already. The problem is getting this done in a standard and accepted way and out into the field for everyone to use. _That's_ gonna be a real bitch.