The best idea I ever saw for spam subject lines was simply using random news headlines. Knowing full well it was spam and that the message body had nothing to do with the headline, I still had to fight the urge to open the message to read what it said. The headline caught my attention (I think a lot of them were political FUD attacks during the election) and I wanted to click on it to see more.
Ooooh, I should have checked out that link to Media Player Classic Home Cinema before posting. The release notes say it has a multi-monitor configuration, which probably isn't 100% of what I'm looking for because it probably doesn't have a control window to display on monitor 1, but I can live without that for now.
Any other options? Any way of getting an independent control window for MPC?
Hey, do any of you Windows users know of a video player app that can be configured to always display the video full-screen on a second monitor, while displaying playback controls on the primary monitor?
All the apps I've tried make you drag the video window over to the second monitor first, then go to full-screen mode, and often the on-screen playback controls are overlayed on top of the video so they show up on monitor #2 as well. Ideally I want something that will always open a video window and a control window both on monitor 1, then switch the video window to full-screen on monitor 2 when I click a button, and back to a window on monitor 1 when done. The idea is, nothing is ever displayed on monitor 2 at all except for the full-screen video when I want it, but I still have playback controls on monitor 1 the whole time.
Does such an app exist? I'm willing to look at commercial apps if they'll do precisely what I want, but of course open source is always nice. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to modify MPC to this end; that's my favorite app as well.
No, iTunes rips CDs, and it's been doing a pretty good job of it since long before the iTunes Store existed (the iTunes Store was added in version 4.0).
Come on... Spock and emotions with women? Yeah that will fit well into the overall scheme of things.
Spock has always had emotions, he just attempts to hide them, like all Vulcans do. However, being half human, he is perhaps less adept at this than other Vulcans normally are. Over time, he has learned how to strike a balance.
It totally makes sense that in his younger days, he wouldn't be as good at hiding his emotions than he is in TOS. He hasn't entirely figured out that balance yet.
Please tell me this is the start of April Fool's Day. The new movie looks like it's totally disrespecting the source material (seriously, the trailer made it look like a mindless sex-and-violence movie)... I'd rather not see more like that.
You know, if they made a really great Star Trek movie that was totally true to everything we hold dear... the best thing they could do is make the trailers for it look like a mindless sex-and-violence movie, to ensure box office success. I'm not saying that's the case here, just saying... when was the last time you heard someone comment about how accurate a trailer was?
In short, spam works because it is profitable. Spammers don't sent out spam just because it annoys people, they send it out because they make money off the products that they push through spam.
While this is partly true, it's definitely not the only way spammers make money. Spammers also make money by 1) selling their services to businesses who want to sell products, collecting their fee in advance regardless of any products sold; 2) running penny stock pump&dump schemes; 3) Nigerian 419 scams; 4) Phishing; 5) selling mailing lists to other spammers; 6) other creative ideas I haven't thought of.
It's not time yet. Businesses still rely on SMTP, although many individuals have abandoned it for social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and as the next generation takes over the business world, I think we can expect to see companies stop using e-mail for communication. Give it another decade, though.
However, I still say that spam filters will never solve the problem. Spammers will just keep finding new ways around them, and all the while we will continue having to pay the costs of transporting and filtering the junk email (in terms of bandwidth and cpu costs, in particular).
The only way to stop spam is to remove the reason why it exists in the first place:
Profit
If spammers can't make money off of sending out spam, they won't send it out to begin with.
You're correct, of course, but removing the profit is not a simple proposition.
Technical solutions for making spam more expensive to send haven't worked, and they never will. Congress managed to define spam well enough that all current spam is clearly illegal while legitimate e-mail is OK (if you jump through the required hoops), but there's no enforcement at all, and of course US law doesn't apply overseas.
It's not just a matter of convincing people not to buy products that are advertised in spam; the vast majority don't anyway. Spammers don't just make their money from stupid people buying advertised products; spammers make their money by following Rule #1. They don't have to actually convince people to buy their product, as long as they can convince someone to pay them to advertise it via a "legitimate double-opt-in targeted mailing list" (actually just a bunch of addresses scraped off the web). There's a sucker born every minute, so by the time the client figures out the spam didn't generate any new sales and their existing customer base hates them now, the spammer has a new client lined up.
So what do you suggest? Personally I see the only effective course of action being to lobby Congress to earmark funding for law enforcement, but because our filtering techniques have gotten so effective, the scale of the problem isn't widely understood, and I don't expect Congress to be particularly sympathetic to the cause. However, if that happened, we should see an immediate drop in spam volumes again as the FBI picks the low-hanging fruit, then we can turn to international diplomacy to get other countries to do the same. After that point, we can re-evaluate the situation and figure out what to do next.
2) It doesn't, it makes it comparable. A mid-tower with otherwise-comparable specs to the Mac mini isn't a comparable machine. Apple doesn't make anything that would be comparable to that.
3) Oh look, NewEgg lists the HP TouchSmart IQ524(NC701AA) on sale for $1219.99, which is more expensive than an iMac (the other models they have listed cost more than that). I think this proves my point: Macs are not more expensive than comparable systems from other vendors. I just can't imagine anybody actually buying one of these. People buy iMacs primarily because Apple doesn't sell a low-end or mid-range tower.
Unfortunately I often have to read music where Italian was not used, and am forced to decipher such gems as "Grosse Trommel mit Paukenschlaegel". One's native language is often used for instructions like this, which works great when the composer/publisher and the performer share the same native language, but not so well the rest of the time. I see instructions written in English all the time, but as an American this doesn't bother me; I'm sure it's just as annoying to others as reading German is to me.
And speaking of music in German, putting H on the scale between A and C makes no sense whatsoever; what the hell is wrong with them?
How hard can it be to fix Slashdot's handling of Unicode characters? Really?
The obvious solution is to build a whitelist of allowed characters, and prevent posts containing other characters from being submitted. Obviously the whitelist should include characters like smart quotes. Then, make sure everything is using UTF-8 for both input and output.
For a brief moment I thought the problem could be that the back-end database doesn't support Unicode characters, so everything is getting mangled there. However, since the Preview feature mangles everything too, it has to be an input processing bug, and not a database bug.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately he's such a terrible writer that he completely failed to actually make this point.
Agreed - last time I heard, IE accounted for over 50% of Slashdot page views, so dropping to under 14% is definitely significant.
What about OS share? Other than the 14%, how many of the rest are on Windows? Mac? Linux? BSD? Other?
Wikipedia has an entire article on this topic, for anyone who's curious.
The best idea I ever saw for spam subject lines was simply using random news headlines. Knowing full well it was spam and that the message body had nothing to do with the headline, I still had to fight the urge to open the message to read what it said. The headline caught my attention (I think a lot of them were political FUD attacks during the election) and I wanted to click on it to see more.
LOL and THAT's supposed to make him feel better?
No, it's supposed to make him feel better about off-shore windmills.
Ooooh, I should have checked out that link to Media Player Classic Home Cinema before posting. The release notes say it has a multi-monitor configuration, which probably isn't 100% of what I'm looking for because it probably doesn't have a control window to display on monitor 1, but I can live without that for now.
Any other options? Any way of getting an independent control window for MPC?
Hey, do any of you Windows users know of a video player app that can be configured to always display the video full-screen on a second monitor, while displaying playback controls on the primary monitor?
All the apps I've tried make you drag the video window over to the second monitor first, then go to full-screen mode, and often the on-screen playback controls are overlayed on top of the video so they show up on monitor #2 as well. Ideally I want something that will always open a video window and a control window both on monitor 1, then switch the video window to full-screen on monitor 2 when I click a button, and back to a window on monitor 1 when done. The idea is, nothing is ever displayed on monitor 2 at all except for the full-screen video when I want it, but I still have playback controls on monitor 1 the whole time.
Does such an app exist? I'm willing to look at commercial apps if they'll do precisely what I want, but of course open source is always nice. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to modify MPC to this end; that's my favorite app as well.
They've gone to plaid!
A schooner IS a sailboat, stupid head!
Can't believe you guys. Clicking on an unverified link about a virus. Duh!
No more dangerous than clicking an unverified link about anything else...
And yet, if I were to mention Dr. Phil out of context, I have little doubt that most people here would assume I meant this guy and not, say, this guy.
No, iTunes rips CDs, and it's been doing a pretty good job of it since long before the iTunes Store existed (the iTunes Store was added in version 4.0).
Sorry, but Outlook Express has already been replaced. You'll have to modernize your joke...
Come on... Spock and emotions with women? Yeah that will fit well into the overall scheme of things.
Spock has always had emotions, he just attempts to hide them, like all Vulcans do. However, being half human, he is perhaps less adept at this than other Vulcans normally are. Over time, he has learned how to strike a balance.
It totally makes sense that in his younger days, he wouldn't be as good at hiding his emotions than he is in TOS. He hasn't entirely figured out that balance yet.
They've left the number off, for precisely this reason.
Please tell me this is the start of April Fool's Day. The new movie looks like it's totally disrespecting the source material (seriously, the trailer made it look like a mindless sex-and-violence movie)... I'd rather not see more like that.
You know, if they made a really great Star Trek movie that was totally true to everything we hold dear... the best thing they could do is make the trailers for it look like a mindless sex-and-violence movie, to ensure box office success. I'm not saying that's the case here, just saying... when was the last time you heard someone comment about how accurate a trailer was?
Seriously, can't the alleged editors of this site pretend to give a fuck about the accuracy of what they post?
Why should they bother? Somebody will post any corrections in the comments.
In short, spam works because it is profitable. Spammers don't sent out spam just because it annoys people, they send it out because they make money off the products that they push through spam.
While this is partly true, it's definitely not the only way spammers make money. Spammers also make money by 1) selling their services to businesses who want to sell products, collecting their fee in advance regardless of any products sold; 2) running penny stock pump&dump schemes; 3) Nigerian 419 scams; 4) Phishing; 5) selling mailing lists to other spammers; 6) other creative ideas I haven't thought of.
could you scoot over in that coffin there? thanks
time to shuffle off this mortal cat cable
It's not time yet. Businesses still rely on SMTP, although many individuals have abandoned it for social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and as the next generation takes over the business world, I think we can expect to see companies stop using e-mail for communication. Give it another decade, though.
When can we filter out all the paper junk mails stuffed in my real mailbox?
When you're ready to shut down the US Postal Service, which would cease to be a financially viable enterprise if junk mail were eliminated.
Spam filtration is an arms race
That part I agree with.
However, I still say that spam filters will never solve the problem. Spammers will just keep finding new ways around them, and all the while we will continue having to pay the costs of transporting and filtering the junk email (in terms of bandwidth and cpu costs, in particular).
The only way to stop spam is to remove the reason why it exists in the first place:
If spammers can't make money off of sending out spam, they won't send it out to begin with.
You're correct, of course, but removing the profit is not a simple proposition.
Technical solutions for making spam more expensive to send haven't worked, and they never will. Congress managed to define spam well enough that all current spam is clearly illegal while legitimate e-mail is OK (if you jump through the required hoops), but there's no enforcement at all, and of course US law doesn't apply overseas.
It's not just a matter of convincing people not to buy products that are advertised in spam; the vast majority don't anyway. Spammers don't just make their money from stupid people buying advertised products; spammers make their money by following Rule #1. They don't have to actually convince people to buy their product, as long as they can convince someone to pay them to advertise it via a "legitimate double-opt-in targeted mailing list" (actually just a bunch of addresses scraped off the web). There's a sucker born every minute, so by the time the client figures out the spam didn't generate any new sales and their existing customer base hates them now, the spammer has a new client lined up.
So what do you suggest? Personally I see the only effective course of action being to lobby Congress to earmark funding for law enforcement, but because our filtering techniques have gotten so effective, the scale of the problem isn't widely understood, and I don't expect Congress to be particularly sympathetic to the cause. However, if that happened, we should see an immediate drop in spam volumes again as the FBI picks the low-hanging fruit, then we can turn to international diplomacy to get other countries to do the same. After that point, we can re-evaluate the situation and figure out what to do next.
1) You RTFA? YMBNH.
2) It doesn't, it makes it comparable. A mid-tower with otherwise-comparable specs to the Mac mini isn't a comparable machine. Apple doesn't make anything that would be comparable to that.
3) Oh look, NewEgg lists the HP TouchSmart IQ524(NC701AA) on sale for $1219.99, which is more expensive than an iMac (the other models they have listed cost more than that). I think this proves my point: Macs are not more expensive than comparable systems from other vendors. I just can't imagine anybody actually buying one of these. People buy iMacs primarily because Apple doesn't sell a low-end or mid-range tower.
Unfortunately I often have to read music where Italian was not used, and am forced to decipher such gems as "Grosse Trommel mit Paukenschlaegel". One's native language is often used for instructions like this, which works great when the composer/publisher and the performer share the same native language, but not so well the rest of the time. I see instructions written in English all the time, but as an American this doesn't bother me; I'm sure it's just as annoying to others as reading German is to me.
And speaking of music in German, putting H on the scale between A and C makes no sense whatsoever; what the hell is wrong with them?
Show me a comparable mini PC that's 2" tall.
Show me a comparable all-in-one PC with built-in 20" or 24" LCD.
How hard can it be to fix Slashdot's handling of Unicode characters? Really?
The obvious solution is to build a whitelist of allowed characters, and prevent posts containing other characters from being submitted. Obviously the whitelist should include characters like smart quotes. Then, make sure everything is using UTF-8 for both input and output.
For a brief moment I thought the problem could be that the back-end database doesn't support Unicode characters, so everything is getting mangled there. However, since the Preview feature mangles everything too, it has to be an input processing bug, and not a database bug.