Doesn't the online feature Tivo has require your series 2 Tivo to be using ethernet and not the modem? I still have a series 1 box, which doesn't support these features at all, so I haven't looked into them that much.
Anyways, I would assume that once you switched your Tivo to use ethernet, it would contact Tivo more than just once a day. Otherwise, how else would it know to record something scheduled during your lunch hour?
My Tivo only calls in once a day, usually around 2am.
Over 99% of all spam uses forged headers, and has for many many years. Bouncing to the reply-to or from headers will either send the spam to another non-existant mailbox, or worse still, spammers will start sticking the email addresses of people they don't like in there, so that they get a nice DDOS style email bomb (boom) I've already had idiots do this to me. Over 3 days, I got over 5000 bounces, angry messages, viruses, and lots of "remove requests" (what was that about remove requests working again?)
Furthermore, since most spam is sent through zombie'd or otherwise misconfigured machines that act as proxies, the spammer doesn't know - and doesn't care! - which addresses bounce or why.
You should at least give customers the option of receiving your newsletter or not at the time of purchase. You could even have the option checked by default (which some find a bit scummy - but I'm OK with it - so long as I can UN-check it.)
You should also point out in the newsletter that the reason people are getting it is because they did business with your website, foo.com (or whatever).
Otherwise, yes, I would probably nail the newsletter as spam - ESPECIALLY if you insist on using spammer lingo like "opt-out".
There's tons of ancedotal evidence on usenet that shows that not only don't the remove lists work - using them often resulted in the account getting *MORE* spam.
While most spam comes through (not from - there's a difference) zombies located on major US broadband networks, almost ALL of this spam also points to websites that are located in...China. Due to China's spam-friendly behavior, they're now the premiere source for so-called "bulletproof" hosting.
Personally, China, Taiwan and Korea all contribute to over 50% of my spam load. Getting rid of these 3 countries, would have a *huge* direct and indirect impact on the spam industry.
Not to mention TNT's desire for a more "action-packed" show, and started insisting on JMS turning the captain's character into more of a James T. Kirk, if you get my meaning.
Eventually JMS "stop mucking with my show" to which TNT said "make us", so JMS essentially took his ball and went home.
I'd love to see Crusade continued, even if it did seem like a remake of a certain anime series...
Ok, sure, it's the first CCG, and slightly amusing for a bit, but come on... Even the Jr. High kids have moved onto something different now. And since it is a CCG, the richest player tends to have a huge advantage.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who remembers that silly concept.
It didn't work very well back then. Basically, almost every Pentium system was automatically classed at the highest level, yet that still wasn't a guarantee that some games would work well on a given machine.
The problem is, I've gotten a few phishes that didn't send you anywhere - they were simply designed to look like some service's login in page. So when you opened the message, it looked like you were being asked to log back in to, say, Ebay.
My wife almost fell for one at work, where she has to use outlook (and I was confused too) until I figured out what was happening. Now, she makes a point of closing IE before reading email. This way, if something pops up asking her to log in, she knows it's bogus because she's not looking at any webpages at the moment.
I agree the test was mostly pointless. However, the point they seemed to be making was that any message that contains a linke that says "click here to give us information!" is almost always bogus.
The one msssage from PayPal that said you needed to give them information because your credit card information was about to expire didn't give you a link - it gave you instructions, starting with "type http://paypal.com into your browser". This way, there should be no mistaking where you're actually going.
Even if they'd left things in like the headers and the actual links, your average user wouldn't know what to look for anyways. Most people don't know that "http://earthlink.net@hacker.com/phish.cgi" doesn't actually go to Earthlink. Even then, unless they actually look at the source HTML, it's easy for a phisher to come up with a legitimiate looking, but completely bogus URL that will be too long to be fully displayed at the bottom of your browser window
A standalone, series 2 Tivo can handle music and photo files from your computer (just provide it a USB-Ethernet adaptor), and handle multiple input sources.
It doesn't handle timeshifting radio, although there wouldn't be reason you couldn't have it record a chunk of one of those digital music channels you get with your satellite or digital cable service.
I'll agree that a standalone Tivo isn't as flexible as a media-PC, but that doesn't make Tivo a useless product.
Why was this marked as flamebait? He's absolutely correct.
You can use some Tivo's without the service, but then it's essentially just a VCR with a HD instead of a tape. So while you can still record with it, you have to tell it what day, time and channel to record and for how long. If there are multiple shows on at the same time, you have to choose which one to record.
Many of the big networks love to play "scramble the schedule" - remember when The Tick was on Fox? In my area, no two episodes aired on the same night or time and a few of them didn't even show up in the TV Guide. But Tivo caught them all. Just because I told it to record The Tick on Fox.
There is a model of Tivo that includes a DVD burner. It works with DVD-R or DVD-RW discs, so you could just spin a bunch of shows off onto a reusable disc and take it with you.
I ended up getting a fridge, washer and dryer from BB since I was unable to get anyone to help me at the Home Depot next door. The guy at BB was helpful, friendly, and let me haggle on a freezer.
Anyways, a weeks later, BB advertised they were having a huge appliance sale. The sales guy told me if they dropped their prices in 30 days, I could come in and get the difference refunded. So I brought in my receipt. Except, that I was told that I had paid *LESS* than their current prices. I didn't believe them, so I wandered through the appliance area quickly to check on the models I had bought, and sure enough, the prices were all $50-80 higher than what I had paid before they went on "sale" - and that was ignoring the bargin on the freezer.
Although this worked out in my favor, I don't think I'll buy appliances from BB again...
Way back when spam was young, it was proposed that spammers pre-pend [AD] to their subject lines.
It should be obvious how well THAT worked out...
At the begining of this year, we got the CAN-SPAM law which dictates each spam must contain the snail mail address of the company advertising, as well as a working opt-out mechanism. Guess what? I probably see less than 5% of spam actually adhering to this law (not that I as an individual user can take any legal action against the spammers...)
I wasn't even aware spammers were supposed to be putting "sexually explicit" on their porn spams until I read slashdot. All the spam I got continues to ignore this and all other spam laws.
Spammers don't care about legal consequences. The only way to get spammers to pay attention to a spam-law is to pass one that says "Spam is illegal - spammers can be shot on sight." And even then, this would merely result in spammers leaving the US to continue their nefarious and anti-social methods overseas...at least until the rest of the world's nations pass similar laws.
The majority of spam I see falls into one of these two categories:
* Spam originated from - or was relayed through - a country I do not want to receive email from (eg. China, Taiwan, Korea, etc.)
* Spam was relayed through a zombie'd PC on an American broadband ISP (eg. roadrunner, comcast), and advertises a website hosted in a spam-friendly country (Russia, Korea, China,...) Said website is registered by someone NOT in the US.
Neither CAN-SPAM or this new joke of a law has had any effect on the level of spam I'm seeing or filtering. In fact, when CAN-SPAM went into effect, my spam load jumped over 50%. I'm filtering about 1000 spams a day.
This is what's impressed me about SSX3. It offers a variety of different methods to progress to the different peaks, depending on your individual style of play. I don't do so well at the races - that's OK, I can concentrate on the freestyle events and still progress.
Sure, there are rewards that you can earn only after winning all events and the game rewards those who are either skilled at racing and tricks but if that's just not your thing, you can just go for the free runs down the mountain.
The only thing SSX3 needs is a tutorial area for learning/practicing tricks. SSX/SSX Tricky had this as part of the trickbook. It'd show you precisely what buttons you needed to push and what the trick looked like, as well as letting you try until you got it right. SSX3, meanwhile, seems to assume that you remember from SSX/Tricky what all the tricks are and how to perform them. It's been awhile since I played SSX Tricky, so I don't remember how to pull a FS 360 Flying Squirell...
Playing through OOT for the first time, and many of the puzzles didn't make any sense to me at first.
I still don't understand how you're supposed to know that playing the "time" song causes certain blocks to move around. I didn't see any clues about it previously...
I made it to the Bongo Bongo boss, and gave up. I'm not that good with the bow & arrorw, and I was just getting tired of the game. I'd already uncovered most of the secrets up until that point and didn't really feel that compelled to continue.
Most fighters rely on the player's skill somewhat. A truly skilled player isn't going to rely on his character's special moves exclusively.
Still, even a skilled player is going to have a tough time against someone who just mashes the controls randomly. This is why my sister can routinely beat her boyfriend even though she has no idea what she's doing. (I dunno, maybe she's some sort of fighter-savant?;)
At least the Capcom fighters have a common set of commands, even if the individual attacks differ. For instance, who here doesn't know 'fireball'? Of course, anyone who tries to rely on just fireball will quickly find his character on its back...
Isn't it obvious? The software industry isn't about "the next big thing" - it's about how finding the minimal number of new features required by the market such that you can make them buy a whole new version each year.
I'm really surprised there isn't a program that will allow an admin to scan every Windows PC under his control looking for unauthorized software - this would include viruses, worms, spyware, malware, and other applications defined by the admin (eg. AOL messenger) Admins could determine action policies for the scanner to take - such as automatically removing viruses/spy/malware, or notifiying the admin that Bob in Accounting is running an unrecognized, unauthorized application and needs to be reminded of the company's IT policy.
In fact, it could go a step further and check that certain applications are installed and running, like the company's choice of anti-virus client.
The software companies have failed to realize thus far that these 3 tasks as are actually part of the same job of keeping a network secure and stable. Why make admins use multiple and incompatible tools when realistically, the functions should be combined into a single solution.
I've had the unfortunate experience where I've done business with a company online (in this case, EBGames.com), unchecked all their "spam me" options, and specified all email be sent to me in plain text (for informing me about my order's status - not for marketing junk.)
A few months later, what do I find? A large HTML-laden email from said company that started out "We haven't heard from you in a few months, and wanted to let you know about our new offers!"
I checked my account on their website. All the "spam me" buttons were unchecked, and the plain-text option was still set.
I couldn't even opt-out of the message as it had no opt-out instructions!
So, instead, I printed out their message, printed out my account setting page, and wrote a short, terse, letter explaining why I would never, ever, shop with them again. They never replied, but never spammed me again.
That was about 3 years, and at least $1000 in purchases ago. Good riddance.
Slashdot Mirror
What was Comcast buying?
Same thing that happens with corporate mergers/takeovers. If you can't compete, you "buy them out", completely removing them from the market.
Doesn't the online feature Tivo has require your series 2 Tivo to be using ethernet and not the modem? I still have a series 1 box, which doesn't support these features at all, so I haven't looked into them that much.
Anyways, I would assume that once you switched your Tivo to use ethernet, it would contact Tivo more than just once a day. Otherwise, how else would it know to record something scheduled during your lunch hour?
My Tivo only calls in once a day, usually around 2am.
Bounce it...where?
Over 99% of all spam uses forged headers, and has for many many years. Bouncing to the reply-to or from headers will either send the spam to another non-existant mailbox, or worse still, spammers will start sticking the email addresses of people they don't like in there, so that they get a nice DDOS style email bomb (boom) I've already had idiots do this to me. Over 3 days, I got over 5000 bounces, angry messages, viruses, and lots of "remove requests" (what was that about remove requests working again?)
Furthermore, since most spam is sent through zombie'd or otherwise misconfigured machines that act as proxies, the spammer doesn't know - and doesn't care! - which addresses bounce or why.
You should at least give customers the option of receiving your newsletter or not at the time of purchase. You could even have the option checked by default (which some find a bit scummy - but I'm OK with it - so long as I can UN-check it.)
You should also point out in the newsletter that the reason people are getting it is because they did business with your website, foo.com (or whatever).
Otherwise, yes, I would probably nail the newsletter as spam - ESPECIALLY if you insist on using spammer lingo like "opt-out".
There's tons of ancedotal evidence on usenet that shows that not only don't the remove lists work - using them often resulted in the account getting *MORE* spam.
While most spam comes through (not from - there's a difference) zombies located on major US broadband networks, almost ALL of this spam also points to websites that are located in...China. Due to China's spam-friendly behavior, they're now the premiere source for so-called "bulletproof" hosting.
Personally, China, Taiwan and Korea all contribute to over 50% of my spam load. Getting rid of these 3 countries, would have a *huge* direct and indirect impact on the spam industry.
Not to mention TNT's desire for a more "action-packed" show, and started insisting on JMS turning the captain's character into more of a James T. Kirk, if you get my meaning.
Eventually JMS "stop mucking with my show" to which TNT said "make us", so JMS essentially took his ball and went home.
I'd love to see Crusade continued, even if it did seem like a remake of a certain anime series...
Magic-The Gathering?
Ok, sure, it's the first CCG, and slightly amusing for a bit, but come on... Even the Jr. High kids have moved onto something different now. And since it is a CCG, the richest player tends to have a huge advantage.
MTG - how 1992...
Glad to see I'm not the only one who remembers that silly concept.
It didn't work very well back then. Basically, almost every Pentium system was automatically classed at the highest level, yet that still wasn't a guarantee that some games would work well on a given machine.
The problem is, I've gotten a few phishes that didn't send you anywhere - they were simply designed to look like some service's login in page. So when you opened the message, it looked like you were being asked to log back in to, say, Ebay.
My wife almost fell for one at work, where she has to use outlook (and I was confused too) until I figured out what was happening. Now, she makes a point of closing IE before reading email. This way, if something pops up asking her to log in, she knows it's bogus because she's not looking at any webpages at the moment.
I agree the test was mostly pointless. However, the point they seemed to be making was that any message that contains a linke that says "click here to give us information!" is almost always bogus.
The one msssage from PayPal that said you needed to give them information because your credit card information was about to expire didn't give you a link - it gave you instructions, starting with "type http://paypal.com into your browser". This way, there should be no mistaking where you're actually going.
Even if they'd left things in like the headers and the actual links, your average user wouldn't know what to look for anyways. Most people don't know that "http://earthlink.net@hacker.com/phish.cgi" doesn't actually go to Earthlink. Even then, unless they actually look at the source HTML, it's easy for a phisher to come up with a legitimiate looking, but completely bogus URL that will be too long to be fully displayed at the bottom of your browser window
Best Buy marked their prices *UP* and then declared a "sale". At the very least, that's deceptive advertising.
Even though I (unknowingly at the time) benefitted from this practice of theirs, I'm certainly not going to shop there in the future.
A standalone, series 2 Tivo can handle music and photo files from your computer (just provide it a USB-Ethernet adaptor), and handle multiple input sources.
It doesn't handle timeshifting radio, although there wouldn't be reason you couldn't have it record a chunk of one of those digital music channels you get with your satellite or digital cable service.
I'll agree that a standalone Tivo isn't as flexible as a media-PC, but that doesn't make Tivo a useless product.
Why was this marked as flamebait? He's absolutely correct.
You can use some Tivo's without the service, but then it's essentially just a VCR with a HD instead of a tape. So while you can still record with it, you have to tell it what day, time and channel to record and for how long. If there are multiple shows on at the same time, you have to choose which one to record.
Many of the big networks love to play "scramble the schedule" - remember when The Tick was on Fox? In my area, no two episodes aired on the same night or time and a few of them didn't even show up in the TV Guide. But Tivo caught them all. Just because I told it to record The Tick on Fox.
There is a model of Tivo that includes a DVD burner. It works with DVD-R or DVD-RW discs, so you could just spin a bunch of shows off onto a reusable disc and take it with you.
Funny you mention "sales".
I ended up getting a fridge, washer and dryer from BB since I was unable to get anyone to help me at the Home Depot next door. The guy at BB was helpful, friendly, and let me haggle on a freezer.
Anyways, a weeks later, BB advertised they were having a huge appliance sale. The sales guy told me if they dropped their prices in 30 days, I could come in and get the difference refunded. So I brought in my receipt. Except, that I was told that I had paid *LESS* than their current prices. I didn't believe them, so I wandered through the appliance area quickly to check on the models I had bought, and sure enough, the prices were all $50-80 higher than what I had paid before they went on "sale" - and that was ignoring the bargin on the freezer.
Although this worked out in my favor, I don't think I'll buy appliances from BB again...
Way back when spam was young, it was proposed that spammers pre-pend [AD] to their subject lines.
It should be obvious how well THAT worked out...
At the begining of this year, we got the CAN-SPAM law which dictates each spam must contain the snail mail address of the company advertising, as well as a working opt-out mechanism. Guess what? I probably see less than 5% of spam actually adhering to this law (not that I as an individual user can take any legal action against the spammers...)
I wasn't even aware spammers were supposed to be putting "sexually explicit" on their porn spams until I read slashdot. All the spam I got continues to ignore this and all other spam laws.
Spammers don't care about legal consequences. The only way to get spammers to pay attention to a spam-law is to pass one that says "Spam is illegal - spammers can be shot on sight." And even then, this would merely result in spammers leaving the US to continue their nefarious and anti-social methods overseas...at least until the rest of the world's nations pass similar laws.
"US based spam"? Please define.
...) Said website is registered by someone NOT in the US.
The majority of spam I see falls into one of these two categories:
* Spam originated from - or was relayed through - a country I do not want to receive email from (eg. China, Taiwan, Korea, etc.)
* Spam was relayed through a zombie'd PC on an American broadband ISP (eg. roadrunner, comcast), and advertises a website hosted in a spam-friendly country (Russia, Korea, China,
Neither CAN-SPAM or this new joke of a law has had any effect on the level of spam I'm seeing or filtering. In fact, when CAN-SPAM went into effect, my spam load jumped over 50%. I'm filtering about 1000 spams a day.
Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that the US Army can be hired out for publicity stunts like some over-priced birthday clown?
:p
Aren't government agencies forbidden from private endorsement/advertising?
What's next? Navy Seals advertising Old Navy pullovers?
Maybe the Green Berets are available for that special corporate event?
Lord knows the military needs the money
That's part of the genius that is "The Sims" - it's only as nasty as you think it is.
This is what's impressed me about SSX3. It offers a variety of different methods to progress to the different peaks, depending on your individual style of play. I don't do so well at the races - that's OK, I can concentrate on the freestyle events and still progress.
Sure, there are rewards that you can earn only after winning all events and the game rewards those who are either skilled at racing and tricks but if that's just not your thing, you can just go for the free runs down the mountain.
The only thing SSX3 needs is a tutorial area for learning/practicing tricks. SSX/SSX Tricky had this as part of the trickbook. It'd show you precisely what buttons you needed to push and what the trick looked like, as well as letting you try until you got it right. SSX3, meanwhile, seems to assume that you remember from SSX/Tricky what all the tricks are and how to perform them. It's been awhile since I played SSX Tricky, so I don't remember how to pull a FS 360 Flying Squirell...
Playing through OOT for the first time, and many of the puzzles didn't make any sense to me at first.
I still don't understand how you're supposed to know that playing the "time" song causes certain blocks to move around. I didn't see any clues about it previously...
I made it to the Bongo Bongo boss, and gave up. I'm not that good with the bow & arrorw, and I was just getting tired of the game. I'd already uncovered most of the secrets up until that point and didn't really feel that compelled to continue.
Most fighters rely on the player's skill somewhat. A truly skilled player isn't going to rely on his character's special moves exclusively.
;)
Still, even a skilled player is going to have a tough time against someone who just mashes the controls randomly. This is why my sister can routinely beat her boyfriend even though she has no idea what she's doing. (I dunno, maybe she's some sort of fighter-savant?
At least the Capcom fighters have a common set of commands, even if the individual attacks differ. For instance, who here doesn't know 'fireball'? Of course, anyone who tries to rely on just fireball will quickly find his character on its back...
Isn't it obvious? The software industry isn't about "the next big thing" - it's about how finding the minimal number of new features required by the market such that you can make them buy a whole new version each year.
I'm really surprised there isn't a program that will allow an admin to scan every Windows PC under his control looking for unauthorized software - this would include viruses, worms, spyware, malware, and other applications defined by the admin (eg. AOL messenger) Admins could determine action policies for the scanner to take - such as automatically removing viruses/spy/malware, or notifiying the admin that Bob in Accounting is running an unrecognized, unauthorized application and needs to be reminded of the company's IT policy.
In fact, it could go a step further and check that certain applications are installed and running, like the company's choice of anti-virus client.
The software companies have failed to realize thus far that these 3 tasks as are actually part of the same job of keeping a network secure and stable. Why make admins use multiple and incompatible tools when realistically, the functions should be combined into a single solution.
Do you actually trust the buttons at all?
I've had the unfortunate experience where I've done business with a company online (in this case, EBGames.com), unchecked all their "spam me" options, and specified all email be sent to me in plain text (for informing me about my order's status - not for marketing junk.)
A few months later, what do I find? A large HTML-laden email from said company that started out "We haven't heard from you in a few months, and wanted to let you know about our new offers!"
I checked my account on their website. All the "spam me" buttons were unchecked, and the plain-text option was still set.
I couldn't even opt-out of the message as it had no opt-out instructions!
So, instead, I printed out their message, printed out my account setting page, and wrote a short, terse, letter explaining why I would never, ever, shop with them again. They never replied, but never spammed me again.
That was about 3 years, and at least $1000 in purchases ago. Good riddance.