"If the really didn't want to send spam to people who didn't want it, then why subvert a spam filter? Someone using a filter obviously doesn't want spam (by definition)"
I agree with the hatred of this individual, but your logic is mistaken. It assumes, first of all, that all commercial email is in the same category, and second of all, that a filter is capable of determining for certain that a certain message is or is not spam. I had a friend whose emails to her boss were getting dropped by their spam filter because she ended at least one sentence in every email with 10 exclamation points.
We send legitimate commercial email, and some of the people we send mail for have complained to us that they _didn't_ get the email. Why? Their spam filters were set too high. We worked with them about how to set their spam filters to not flag our stuff, and modified our messages so as to not be flagged by spam filters, since all of our email is direct opt-in (as opposed to indirect opt-in - i.e. - you opt in for service A and then you get email from 30 different organizations).
Anyway, I complain about spam filters, too, although I understand their usage in light of modern email abuse. The problem is that filters have a hard time distinguishing between legitimate and nonlegitimate commercial mail.
Personally, the way I think it should be handled is to set up a registry of commercial email providers that are automatically white-listed. As long as the email is coming through their servers, it is let through. Abuse complaints can then be handled by way of a standard legal method (whatever method was to be come up with). This way, a legitimate email marketer would be allowed to be whitelisted if he were to avail himself to public scrutiny on the email he sends, with the potential of direct fines if he steps outside the bounds of legitimate email.
Having said that, I think some of the current anti-spam sites are over-the-top, basically being completely anti-business. Not all of them, but many of them. We need a good middle ground.
Actually, as a _legitimate_ commercial mailer, the company I work for is pretty excited about the new act. Mostly, it gets us away from the stupidly crazy California law (which claims authority over email which merely passes through California, even if it is neither the origin or the destination - just if the packets go through there).
For those of us who already have rigorously-adhered to unsubscribe lists and rigorous rules about what email addresses you can legitimately send to, the CAN-SPAM act helps us - because it limits the amount of real spam that people get.
You see, one of the worst problems for a legitimate commercial emailer is spam, because it lessens the effectiveness of email in general. We like to get open rates of at least 80%, and click-throughs of at least 20% (preferably 30%) of the TOTAL SENT (some people only count click-throughs as a percentage of opens, and while that metric has some value for validating message content, the real test is the click-through rates based on the total). If people are flooded with spam, it makes them overall less responsive to legitimate email.
I was giving a lecture on doing email marketing without spam, and was shocked to learn that someone in the audience had one of his IT guys write a program for him to do web-email-harvesting! It's even happening in the mom and pop shops. Pretty scary. We also ran into an Internet Service Provider who was automatically subscribing people to a third-party mailing list without their authorization or approval.
Actually, Cingular does this. Last month, we had $100 of roaming charges, and we NEVER LEFT THE CITY. This month, our phone bill is for about $400, and we have used the cell phone less than we ever have.
The problem is not bundled software, it is _forcibly_ bundled software. For example, on Linux, each distribution has their own prepackaged software. In addition, if a hardware developer wanted to package it with a different set of prepackaged software, they could.
However, Microsoft's licensing agreements prevent the OEMs from uninstalling Microsoft's software, and are forcing them to pay for it as a part of Windows. Microsoft has such a stranglehold on the "Out of Box Experience" that OEMs have no real way to innovate.
Unions are good when there are real enemies and real problems. Think about it, if you paid your Union dues every month, and the Union did _nothing_, you'd be pretty mad about paying them, right? Therefore, the Unions are always manufacturing problems to fix, which usually involve screwing over someone.
I think anytime a Union is created, it should have an end-goal, at which point it will dissolve. There are too many organizations in America today without end-goals, who continue to stay around long after their usefulness is over, but noone has had the balls to say "wake up! It's over!"
Not necessarily. I think we stifle innovation more with it than without. Every idea builds on ideas before it. Patents promote the cathedral development model, while not having patents supports the bazaar development model.
In addition, what makes a profitable product shifts based on patent law.
With patents, _new_ ideas are the most profitable.
Without patents, good implementations are the most profitable.
I think we won't lose much if we just decided to junk the patent system altogether.
"Um, I'm pretty sure the PTO gets paid whether your patent is granted or not. So there's no profit motive for them in granting patents."
Yes there is. To _reject_ a patent, the PTO has to give a valid reason, including relevant prior art. This includes searching for the prior art and documenting it. To accept a patent, you just have to say that it's all okay.
I've heard that it takes 7 times as long to reject a patent than it does to accept one.
Yes, I can read your mind. I know beforehand which of my posts you want to read.
"I suggest any other slashdotters that are not interested in this, to also reply with "REMOVE""
Hmmmm... perhaps stop watching public forums? It's not hard to unsubscribe from Slashdot if you don't like public forums.
Note also that my post was not entirely about my book. It included a response to the post, and valid supporting information. The book was additional information. Would it have been different if I had linked to an Amazon book but used my shopkeeper URL?
I am anti-spam, but not anti-commerce, which some people here seem to be. Part of running a successful business is promoting it at every opportunity. If you don't believe me, I think you should talk to both successful and unsuccessful business people.
The fact is, if people don't know someone, they are more likely to vote the existing guy, even if he's a schmuck, because they don't know enough to say the other guys are better. Therefore, toward the end of the election is when it counts for people to see a new face. If they haven't seen someone for 30 days, they are just going to go with the guy they know. The way that new guys get in is by keeping their name out there for the last 30 days.
All of the media outlets want this passed, too, because it doesn't place any restrictions on them. Therefore, they have no accountability to facts. If they want to totally smear a candidate, they can, and the candidate can't respond.
In order to correct these failings, they are going to enact legislation to have publicly-funded campaigns. Well, if everyone gets a publicly-funded soapbox, it will cost too much. This will wind up meaning that the government gets to choose the candidates that they will give money, too, making the problem even worse. You may think that I'm just guessing on this paragraph, but in fact it's already being discussed (publicly-funded elections, that is).
We really need to get rid of our supreme court justices and put in people that will uphold the Constitution AS WRITTEN. If you don't like everything in the constitution as it's written, that's fine, that's what the AMENDMENT process is for. The Constitution is a changeable document and does not need the "dynamic interpretation" (that's Sandra O'Connor's word) that the supreme court justices are trying to give it. If you want to change something in there, make an amendment. Don't use the courts to circumvent a well-established process.
You should read Justice Skalia's dissenting opinion.
The most interesting thing about spam is that it's not very effective. Legitimate, opt-in email marketing opens you up to much better responses. At our company New Media Worx, we help people send email to opt-in lists they make themselves (i.e. not rented lists), which usually result in 10-50% click-through rates, as opposed to spam, which tends to get 0.2% for a really successful campaign.
Actually, this week the Supreme Court basically said that the 1st amendment could be thrown out the Window. The new campaign finance reform law (i.e. - the incumbent protection act) was upheld. Campaigners can't run ads for the 30 days leading up to an election.
"Sure, you might get Oracle installed on Debian or Slackware, but if you have ANY problems they will not support you."
This is different, though. You can get someone else to support YOUR EXACT VERSION of Linux, which is what Progeny is doing. They aren't selling you a new OS, they are simply giving you bugfixes and security fixes to a stable, tested OS.
I would be really surprised if Oracle objected to this.
It doesn't do HTML email, but it tries. It includes it's own, half-baked, POS HTML renderer that majorly sucks.
If you can't show the HTML, then show the stupid text!!! Unfortunately, there's not even an _option_ to do that. You're just stuck looking at half-rendered HTML with URLs instead of images.
Please burn all computers having Outlook 97 so they have an excuse to run something better.
You miss the point. Progeny is offering support for RH8 and RH9. The ONLY REASON they can do this is because the source is available.
When Microsoft discontinues Win98, there is NOONE ELSE who can support Win98. You are stuck. With open-source, any company can offer support for any product. A true free market, which is only available by having open source code.
I don't compile my own anything anymore, except a few Perl modules. However, having the source available means that my RH8 boxes will continue to be in healthful condition over the next few years.
"Consumers have no right to say if a company should open their source."
Yes they do. Customers have every right to demand anything they want from a company. That's what a free market system is all about. The company that actually satisfies the customer's demands is the one that stays in business.
"You don't ask KFC to reveal their "seven herbs and spices" do you? Well, maybe you do, but they don't have to tell you, nor should they."
They should if a significant portion of their customer base is going to switch to another company if they don't.
"When Microsoft EOLs its products after 6 or 7 years, they're doing it to force customers into upgrades."
I think you missed the point in this article. Whem Microsoft EOLs its products, YOU HAVE NO ALTERNATIVES. When RH EOLs its products, you can turn to any company willing to offer support.
Since the source code isn't available for Windows, you just don't have that option. Therefore, Microsoft has a much higher responsibility with how it handles product lifecycles.
Re:Stuck with Windows?
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 1
"Except you can't legally statically link most Linux libs (such as glibc)"
2 things:
1) you don't need to, you can just ship it with the product
2) yes, you can. On LGPL libraries, you can statically link as long as you also provide somewhere unlinked.o files so that the user can link with a later version if they wish.
"And even if Sun did statically link that wouldn't change the fact that it was RedHat's kernel threads that broke the Java, not glibc."
I'm pretty sure it was glibc. It was just that glibc was compiled for the new threads interface, not the old one. The old one is still around if you make the right system calls (which is what glibc does).
Re:Stuck with Windows?
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 1
That's a problem with your proprietary application's vendor. If you have a proprietary application, you should either statically link or include the libraries you link against. This is how Mathematica works, and it works with every incarnation of Linux known to man. I believe OpenOffice/StarOffice does this as well. Your proprietary application vendor probably also has difficulties making applications work consistently across Windows versions. The issues are exactly the same, as are the solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
No, capitalism operates within the confines of law. He admitted to breaking and entering into others' computers.
"If the really didn't want to send spam to people who didn't want it, then why subvert a spam filter? Someone using a filter obviously doesn't want spam (by definition)"
I agree with the hatred of this individual, but your logic is mistaken. It assumes, first of all, that all commercial email is in the same category, and second of all, that a filter is capable of determining for certain that a certain message is or is not spam. I had a friend whose emails to her boss were getting dropped by their spam filter because she ended at least one sentence in every email with 10 exclamation points.
We send legitimate commercial email, and some of the people we send mail for have complained to us that they _didn't_ get the email. Why? Their spam filters were set too high. We worked with them about how to set their spam filters to not flag our stuff, and modified our messages so as to not be flagged by spam filters, since all of our email is direct opt-in (as opposed to indirect opt-in - i.e. - you opt in for service A and then you get email from 30 different organizations).
Anyway, I complain about spam filters, too, although I understand their usage in light of modern email abuse. The problem is that filters have a hard time distinguishing between legitimate and nonlegitimate commercial mail.
Personally, the way I think it should be handled is to set up a registry of commercial email providers that are automatically white-listed. As long as the email is coming through their servers, it is let through. Abuse complaints can then be handled by way of a standard legal method (whatever method was to be come up with). This way, a legitimate email marketer would be allowed to be whitelisted if he were to avail himself to public scrutiny on the email he sends, with the potential of direct fines if he steps outside the bounds of legitimate email.
Having said that, I think some of the current anti-spam sites are over-the-top, basically being completely anti-business. Not all of them, but many of them. We need a good middle ground.
Actually, as a _legitimate_ commercial mailer, the company I work for is pretty excited about the new act. Mostly, it gets us away from the stupidly crazy California law (which claims authority over email which merely passes through California, even if it is neither the origin or the destination - just if the packets go through there).
For those of us who already have rigorously-adhered to unsubscribe lists and rigorous rules about what email addresses you can legitimately send to, the CAN-SPAM act helps us - because it limits the amount of real spam that people get.
You see, one of the worst problems for a legitimate commercial emailer is spam, because it lessens the effectiveness of email in general. We like to get open rates of at least 80%, and click-throughs of at least 20% (preferably 30%) of the TOTAL SENT (some people only count click-throughs as a percentage of opens, and while that metric has some value for validating message content, the real test is the click-through rates based on the total). If people are flooded with spam, it makes them overall less responsive to legitimate email.
I was giving a lecture on doing email marketing without spam, and was shocked to learn that someone in the audience had one of his IT guys write a program for him to do web-email-harvesting! It's even happening in the mom and pop shops. Pretty scary. We also ran into an Internet Service Provider who was automatically subscribing people to a third-party mailing list without their authorization or approval.
It's pretty scary out there.
Actually, Cingular does this. Last month, we had $100 of roaming charges, and we NEVER LEFT THE CITY. This month, our phone bill is for about $400, and we have used the cell phone less than we ever have.
The problem is not bundled software, it is _forcibly_ bundled software. For example, on Linux, each distribution has their own prepackaged software. In addition, if a hardware developer wanted to package it with a different set of prepackaged software, they could.
However, Microsoft's licensing agreements prevent the OEMs from uninstalling Microsoft's software, and are forcing them to pay for it as a part of Windows. Microsoft has such a stranglehold on the "Out of Box Experience" that OEMs have no real way to innovate.
"It is extremely rare to see what happened in the 90's people shouldn't expect more than 50k out of school, nor should you demand it"
Maybe that's why I've always been gainfully employed. At the companies I've worked for, I've been a senior developer making under $45.
I agreee somewhat.
Unions used to be good. Today they are not.
Unions are good when there are real enemies and real problems. Think about it, if you paid your Union dues every month, and the Union did _nothing_, you'd be pretty mad about paying them, right? Therefore, the Unions are always manufacturing problems to fix, which usually involve screwing over someone.
I think anytime a Union is created, it should have an end-goal, at which point it will dissolve. There are too many organizations in America today without end-goals, who continue to stay around long after their usefulness is over, but noone has had the balls to say "wake up! It's over!"
Most Unions fall into this category.
"Without patent law, we stifle innovation."
Not necessarily. I think we stifle innovation more with it than without. Every idea builds on ideas before it. Patents promote the cathedral development model, while not having patents supports the bazaar development model.
In addition, what makes a profitable product shifts based on patent law.
With patents, _new_ ideas are the most profitable.
Without patents, good implementations are the most profitable.
I think we won't lose much if we just decided to junk the patent system altogether.
"Um, I'm pretty sure the PTO gets paid whether your patent is granted or not. So there's no profit motive for them in granting patents."
Yes there is. To _reject_ a patent, the PTO has to give a valid reason, including relevant prior art. This includes searching for the prior art and documenting it. To accept a patent, you just have to say that it's all okay.
I've heard that it takes 7 times as long to reject a patent than it does to accept one.
"Sorry, but I did not opt in to read this. "
Yes, I can read your mind. I know beforehand which of my posts you want to read.
"I suggest any other slashdotters that are not interested in this, to also reply with "REMOVE""
Hmmmm... perhaps stop watching public forums? It's not hard to unsubscribe from Slashdot if you don't like public forums.
Note also that my post was not entirely about my book. It included a response to the post, and valid supporting information. The book was additional information. Would it have been different if I had linked to an Amazon book but used my shopkeeper URL?
I am anti-spam, but not anti-commerce, which some people here seem to be. Part of running a successful business is promoting it at every opportunity. If you don't believe me, I think you should talk to both successful and unsuccessful business people.
The fact is, if people don't know someone, they are more likely to vote the existing guy, even if he's a schmuck, because they don't know enough to say the other guys are better. Therefore, toward the end of the election is when it counts for people to see a new face. If they haven't seen someone for 30 days, they are just going to go with the guy they know. The way that new guys get in is by keeping their name out there for the last 30 days.
All of the media outlets want this passed, too, because it doesn't place any restrictions on them. Therefore, they have no accountability to facts. If they want to totally smear a candidate, they can, and the candidate can't respond.
In order to correct these failings, they are going to enact legislation to have publicly-funded campaigns. Well, if everyone gets a publicly-funded soapbox, it will cost too much. This will wind up meaning that the government gets to choose the candidates that they will give money, too, making the problem even worse. You may think that I'm just guessing on this paragraph, but in fact it's already being discussed (publicly-funded elections, that is).
We really need to get rid of our supreme court justices and put in people that will uphold the Constitution AS WRITTEN. If you don't like everything in the constitution as it's written, that's fine, that's what the AMENDMENT process is for. The Constitution is a changeable document and does not need the "dynamic interpretation" (that's Sandra O'Connor's word) that the supreme court justices are trying to give it. If you want to change something in there, make an amendment. Don't use the courts to circumvent a well-established process.
You should read Justice Skalia's dissenting opinion.
Whoring yes. Spamming... no. It was quite ontopic.
I didn't claim it was a new concept. I simply tell how to do it right so it's most effective.
"the problem is that the spammers will probably move out of the country."
Or use more effective email marketing than spam.
The most interesting thing about spam is that it's not very effective. Legitimate, opt-in email marketing opens you up to much better responses. At our company New Media Worx, we help people send email to opt-in lists they make themselves (i.e. not rented lists), which usually result in 10-50% click-through rates, as opposed to spam, which tends to get 0.2% for a really successful campaign.
If you want to know more about sending legitimate email marketing, check out my book, Email Marketing without the Spam.
Actually, this week the Supreme Court basically said that the 1st amendment could be thrown out the Window. The new campaign finance reform law (i.e. - the incumbent protection act) was upheld. Campaigners can't run ads for the 30 days leading up to an election.
I once saw the funniest thing. Someone had tried to spam-hide their email in the text, but in their href link had their email fully viewable.
"Sure, you might get Oracle installed on Debian or Slackware, but if you have ANY problems they will not support you."
This is different, though. You can get someone else to support YOUR EXACT VERSION of Linux, which is what Progeny is doing. They aren't selling you a new OS, they are simply giving you bugfixes and security fixes to a stable, tested OS.
I would be really surprised if Oracle objected to this.
Outlook 97 is THE WORST email client, ever.
It doesn't do HTML email, but it tries. It includes it's own, half-baked, POS HTML renderer that majorly sucks.
If you can't show the HTML, then show the stupid text!!! Unfortunately, there's not even an _option_ to do that. You're just stuck looking at half-rendered HTML with URLs instead of images.
Please burn all computers having Outlook 97 so they have an excuse to run something better.
You miss the point. Progeny is offering support for RH8 and RH9. The ONLY REASON they can do this is because the source is available.
When Microsoft discontinues Win98, there is NOONE ELSE who can support Win98. You are stuck. With open-source, any company can offer support for any product. A true free market, which is only available by having open source code.
I don't compile my own anything anymore, except a few Perl modules. However, having the source available means that my RH8 boxes will continue to be in healthful condition over the next few years.
"Consumers have no right to say if a company should open their source."
Yes they do. Customers have every right to demand anything they want from a company. That's what a free market system is all about. The company that actually satisfies the customer's demands is the one that stays in business.
"You don't ask KFC to reveal their "seven herbs and spices" do you? Well, maybe you do, but they don't have to tell you, nor should they."
They should if a significant portion of their customer base is going to switch to another company if they don't.
Win95 OSR2 supported USB.
"When Microsoft EOLs its products after 6 or 7 years, they're doing it to force customers into upgrades."
I think you missed the point in this article. Whem Microsoft EOLs its products, YOU HAVE NO ALTERNATIVES. When RH EOLs its products, you can turn to any company willing to offer support.
Since the source code isn't available for Windows, you just don't have that option. Therefore, Microsoft has a much higher responsibility with how it handles product lifecycles.
"Except you can't legally statically link most Linux libs (such as glibc)"
.o files so that the user can link with a later version if they wish.
2 things:
1) you don't need to, you can just ship it with the product
2) yes, you can. On LGPL libraries, you can statically link as long as you also provide somewhere unlinked
"And even if Sun did statically link that wouldn't change the fact that it was RedHat's kernel threads that broke the Java, not glibc."
I'm pretty sure it was glibc. It was just that glibc was compiled for the new threads interface, not the old one. The old one is still around if you make the right system calls (which is what glibc does).
That's a problem with your proprietary application's vendor. If you have a proprietary application, you should either statically link or include the libraries you link against. This is how Mathematica works, and it works with every incarnation of Linux known to man. I believe OpenOffice/StarOffice does this as well. Your proprietary application vendor probably also has difficulties making applications work consistently across Windows versions. The issues are exactly the same, as are the solutions.
Honestly, was XFree86 out 10 years ago for Linux? The Linux _project_ just started in 1992, didn't it?