my math was off. but my point remains the same. be it 50 million or 50 thousand out of a billion, it is still worth it for spammers to track bounces. i'm not even saying all do. I'm just sayingt that known good addresses are worth far more to profitable spammers and so good addresses are worth digging for using a variety of techniques.
>>but I think it's likely that spammers can generate addresses via harvesting and semi-intellegent dictionary attacks with more than 1 in 20 valid addresses.
harvesting? are you now contradicting yourself? if it's not important for spammmers to have "known-good" addresses(which is my point), why bother with harvesting?
harvesting is a generic term for obtaining known good addresses.
you can harvest from websites, newsgroups, bounces, fake opt-outs , whatever...
the point of harvesting is to have a db of known-good addresses that you can blast for as long as possible.
>>If it were hard to get the ratio under 1 in 100 valid addresses I might agree that tracking bounces is a good idea.
well my 1 in 20 was "conservative" to say the least. i wouldn't doubt a ratio way in excess of 1 in 100 plausible.
think about a dictionary attack. how many attempts, given the domain name, would it take to find trichardson@stuff.com ?
we're talking about people who continue even when they get less then a 5% response to their spam. if i was a spammer i'd definitely want to minimize the time & effort for that 5% response...and one signficant way is to make sure your spam is going to a live person.
Re:One of the best things Google/GMail could do
on
Gmail Spam Filter Testing
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
>> You think they bother?
heh heh...abdolutely.
100 known good addresses are worth 10,000 "who the fuck knows" addressess.
>>It's cheaper to just send mail to everyone
no it's not.
let's pretend you are a spammer, and you want to send out spam.
If you target 1 billion questionable addresses, each time a client has a new campaign, then that's 1 billion pieces you have to deliver. every time.
what if you have 1000 clients? that's 1000 billion deliveries.
do you see where this is going? if you don't KNOW WHAT A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS IS, YOU HAVE TO GUESS.
but what if the first time you send out just a "test" to those billion addresses, and then subtract the one's that bounce.
You are left with 50,000 known good addresses.
that's gold. You now have 1/20th of the load,and you are now serving your clients quicker, a helluva lot less load. you are only using an open relay for 1/20th of the time.
overall a smaller footprint by 1/20th.
you tell me. does it make sense to blindly blast out email?
And I bet most non-geeks don't know that Adobe has implemented various phone-home techniques.
I'm not saying that Adobe does not have the right to do so, to protect against piracy, I'm just noting that they don't really come out and tell the ignorant.
>>There's no mistaking a legitimate program that user chooses to install.
true. but there might be mistaken notion by some that legitimate software won't track you.
As an MCSE from NT4 days, having switched to linux a few years ago, I found that one of my greatest needs was a setup that approximated Exchange. Postfix, Cyrus-imapd, Cyrus-sasl, Horde, Squirrelmail and various addons, has proven to be an awesome setup.
I have a business partner who is a php wiz, and has filled in the shared calendars and shared contacts features(also available in horde).
Server has been fairly bullet-proof. The only couple of problems were caused by me or the other admin.
Postfix as the base for all of it, has worked flawlessly. Sure there's a learning curve, but after the hardwork up front, it's so simple to manage.
>>makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking
studies have shown that mouse clicking lowers a person's IQ, which leads to trojans, viruses, spyware, keyloggers, adware, nagware, worms, and carpal tunnel syndrome.
CLI vs. GUI is like Reading vs watching TV.
One can get results from either method, but the quality differs.
(of course some material/situations lend themselves to pictures...on your tv or the icons on your computer)
>>graphic arts is about melding discordant shapes and images in a seamless fashion
I have to nitpick/disagree there.
I'd say that the opposite is valid as well -- "graphic arts is about separating out similar shapes and images in an abrupt fashion."
Graphic arts is whatever the artist wants it to be. But I still understand what you are trying to convey...that essentially there are notable differences in art for art's sake, and art to be used in a human interface.
>>XP is of course a mess, but not because of the colors
No I'd have to disagree with you partially... XP primary colors scheme is pretty aweful.;-)
The rest of your comment about text and fido are absolutely true though.
but it describes the situation as current. in 4 years, we'll have versatile notebooks with the power of todays fastest desktop graphics powerhouses in the size of a yao ming 12" powerbook;-)
everything is getting smaller and faster. i just don't see too many more years of desktop/towers for consumer. we'll just have to wait and see;-)
once laptops outsell desktops...scale of economies, coolness factor, and side benefits of being mobile will mean that gaming on laptops will be the de facto market.
in U.S., laptops will out sell towers/desktops in less then 4 years.
and for a number of reasons, gaming being just one of them.
home users, who never plan to move their systems..EVER...would prefer a laptop, cause they take up so little room and the idea that they _could_ take their system somewhere else, with little trouble...is appealing.
this goes for games too. a person might not play a single game...but everyone buying a laptop will want a laptop that _could_ play one if they so desired.
so while radeon 9700s w/256mb ram won't be the norm in notebooks...some minimal support for 3d/directx/opengl will be.
big bulky boxes are so yesterday. small boxes with separate monitor and keyboards....so yesterday.
Slashdot Mirror
if the earth's diameter is ~8000miles, i don't think this ribbon cable is going to be ~8 times that.
can you imagine?
the distance to the moon is around 30 times the earth's diameter...the ribbon @62k miles would be almost a third.
like someone else already posted. i think it's just 62 miles.
not 62,0000 miles.
>>aqward silence followed for about a week.
now that's funny!
where are the mods when you need em.
rotflmao
>>the hardest thing *yet* was figuring out vi so I
>>could edit menus for fluxbox
by all means keep practicing with vi, but you do know that fluxconf is your friend?
it comes with fluxmenu. it's separate from fluxbox, so you need to download and compile it.
http://devaux.fabien.free.fr/flux/
>>In the end, I might save some time if I archive the config files and just reinstall everything.
you'll save a lot of time doing that.
don't forget to visit
http://www.linuxpackages.net/
for your precompiled slack addons.
good luck...i'm off to download.
check out crux linux for ppc.
it has the same mentality as slack.
the new version should be out soon.
i kid i kid.
what exactly are you trying to preserve?
home directories?
config files?
fdisk
my math was off. but my point remains the same. be it 50 million or 50 thousand out of a billion, it is still worth it for spammers to track bounces. i'm not even saying all do. I'm just sayingt that known good addresses are worth far more to profitable spammers and so good addresses are worth digging for using a variety of techniques.
>>but I think it's likely that spammers can generate addresses via harvesting and semi-intellegent dictionary attacks with more than 1 in 20 valid addresses.
harvesting? are you now contradicting yourself? if it's not important for spammmers to have "known-good" addresses(which is my point), why bother with harvesting?
harvesting is a generic term for obtaining known good addresses.
you can harvest from websites, newsgroups, bounces, fake opt-outs , whatever...
the point of harvesting is to have a db of known-good addresses that you can blast for as long as possible.
>>If it were hard to get the ratio under 1 in 100 valid addresses I might agree that tracking bounces is a good idea.
well my 1 in 20 was "conservative" to say the least. i wouldn't doubt a ratio way in excess of 1 in 100 plausible.
think about a dictionary attack. how many attempts, given the domain name, would it take to find trichardson@stuff.com ?
arichardson brichardson crichardson drichardson arichards brichards crichards drichards annrichards abrichards ann_richards...to infinity
i think 1 in 100 is way too optimistic.
we're talking about people who continue even when they get less then a 5% response to their spam. if i was a spammer i'd definitely want to minimize the time & effort for that 5% response...and one signficant way is to make sure your spam is going to a live person.
>> You think they bother?
heh heh...abdolutely.
100 known good addresses are worth 10,000 "who the fuck knows" addressess.
>>It's cheaper to just send mail to everyone
no it's not.
let's pretend you are a spammer, and you want to send out spam.
If you target 1 billion questionable addresses, each time a client has a new campaign, then that's 1 billion pieces you have to deliver. every time.
what if you have 1000 clients? that's 1000 billion deliveries.
do you see where this is going? if you don't KNOW WHAT A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS IS, YOU HAVE TO GUESS.
but what if the first time you send out just a "test" to those billion addresses, and then subtract the one's that bounce.
You are left with 50,000 known good addresses.
that's gold. You now have 1/20th of the load,and you are now serving your clients quicker, a helluva lot less load. you are only using an open relay for 1/20th of the time.
overall a smaller footprint by 1/20th.
you tell me. does it make sense to blindly blast out email?
it's not about pure transfer rate as newbs and even an alarming number of techies, often think...
and i'm sure you are an idiot.
any cracker type will use ANY tool available to attack his target, open source, proprietary, underground you name it.
therefore the cracker CAN'T be "open source people" as you try to insert your little fud.
btw, i'm not "open source people" either, i use slack and os x. i use what i like.
>>Actually, I get a whole lot of emails with the random words and nothing else.
and when they don't get a bounce from you, what do you think that tells them?
"valid email address found boys...saddle up!"
and then your address goes on those CDs that are sold to everyone and their dog.
enjoy.
I think there's a little CYA fudge factor in there. I can hear it now:
[Scotty's voice] "The Rovers have given us all they've got Captain! They were never designed to last past April!"
-if a job is going to take half a day, tell the Captain 3.
-if you think something you engineered will last 18 months, tell the Captain 3.
Adobe Photoshop is a legitimate program.
And I bet most non-geeks don't know that Adobe has implemented various phone-home techniques.
I'm not saying that Adobe does not have the right to do so, to protect against piracy, I'm just noting that they don't really come out and tell the ignorant.
>>There's no mistaking a legitimate program that user chooses to install.
true. but there might be mistaken notion by some that legitimate software won't track you.
some does.
Maya runs on linux, and it's not free.
Oracle runs on linux, and it's not free.
So they have a media player, that's licensing windows media player code, so it can play windows media.
and it's not free.
what doesn't compute?
As an MCSE from NT4 days, having switched to linux a few years ago, I found that one of my greatest needs was a setup that approximated Exchange. Postfix, Cyrus-imapd, Cyrus-sasl, Horde, Squirrelmail and various addons, has proven to be an awesome setup.
I have a business partner who is a php wiz, and has filled in the shared calendars and shared contacts features(also available in horde).
Server has been fairly bullet-proof. The only couple of problems were caused by me or the other admin.
Postfix as the base for all of it, has worked flawlessly. Sure there's a learning curve, but after the hardwork up front, it's so simple to manage.
I'm not sure.
(geek tries to impress prospective female)
geek: "Look at my cool iPod mini, it's wonderful." (hands the device to female)
female: "wow. it's pretty cute. kind of like you. let me play a song. (pushes button). hmmm. nothing is happening...what does 'buffering' mean?"
(girl walks off not impressed)
you probably won't have much disagreement about the action in question being illegal.
but I imagine many will question the penalty.
so under 3 strikes, an 18 year old goes to prison for a very long time, if caught 3 times?
>>makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking
studies have shown that mouse clicking lowers a person's IQ, which leads to trojans, viruses, spyware, keyloggers, adware, nagware, worms, and carpal tunnel syndrome.
CLI vs. GUI is like Reading vs watching TV.
One can get results from either method, but the quality differs.
(of course some material/situations lend themselves to pictures...on your tv or the icons on your computer)
>>graphic arts is about melding discordant shapes and images in a seamless fashion
;-)
I have to nitpick/disagree there.
I'd say that the opposite is valid as well -- "graphic arts is about separating out similar shapes and images in an abrupt fashion."
Graphic arts is whatever the artist wants it to be. But I still understand what you are trying to convey...that essentially there are notable differences in art for art's sake, and art to be used in a human interface.
>>XP is of course a mess, but not because of the colors
No I'd have to disagree with you partially... XP primary colors scheme is pretty aweful.
The rest of your comment about text and fido are absolutely true though.
that's all true.
;-)
;-)
but it describes the situation as current. in 4 years, we'll have versatile notebooks with the power of todays fastest desktop graphics powerhouses in the size of a yao ming 12" powerbook
everything is getting smaller and faster. i just don't see too many more years of desktop/towers for consumer. we'll just have to wait and see
vs a gaming market on traditional desktops (in case my last sentence wasn't clear)
once laptops outsell desktops...scale of economies, coolness factor, and side benefits of being mobile will mean that gaming on laptops will be the de facto market.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!
try again.
in U.S., laptops will out sell towers/desktops in less then 4 years.
and for a number of reasons, gaming being just one of them.
home users, who never plan to move their systems..EVER...would prefer a laptop, cause they take up so little room and the idea that they _could_ take their system somewhere else, with little trouble...is appealing.
this goes for games too. a person might not play a single game...but everyone buying a laptop will want a laptop that _could_ play one if they so desired.
so while radeon 9700s w/256mb ram won't be the norm in notebooks...some minimal support for 3d/directx/opengl will be.
big bulky boxes are so yesterday. small boxes with separate monitor and keyboards....so yesterday.
no i haven't purchased from them, but they supposedly have an awesome reputation.
17" widescreen with Radeon 9700 (256Mb video ram)
http://www.powernotebooks.com/images/8790/