1. Spammers use stolen resources (hijacked zombie computers, DSL/cable connections) in order to further their business.
Some but not all. And there is nearly always a trail back to their customers. Spammers are like drug pushers. As long they have customers, they will be with us. Don't confuse their victims with their customers. The people who respond to spam are victims. A spammer's customer is the business or individual whos product is advertised. They are the ones you need to go after. They will utilize spammers as long as it is profitable for them and they suffer no ill consequences. Arresting a spammer solves only part of the problem. There needs to be dire consequences for the people up stream of the actual spammer.
3. Spammers generally disrespect requests for them to stop sending unsolicited email, and in fact often send more mail after such requests (selling 'confirmed' addresses to colleagues)
This isn't really true. I've gotten several spammers on the phone over the last year. When you can speak to them directly, they will generally stop. Tracking down spammers isn't particularly difficult. Any competent mail admin can do it. However, it takes time, and most of us don't have the time available to do it.
4. Spammers deliberately conceal their location of 'business', mislead consumers in their 'marketing campaigns' and forge their identities.
They can conceal it but not hide it. There is always a trail if you are willing to dig. Sometimes the trail leads through places you (as a civilian) can't go, but it's always there.
Weinberg's seminal paper is there. "A model of leptons" is number 18. I don't think Abdus Salam is actually cited very frequently.
Another thing, the paper counts the number of citations IN Phys Rev papers, not the number of citations OF Phys Rev papers. A paper doesn't have to have been published in Phys Rev to be counted, only cited there. The idea is that the papers in Phys Rev form a random sample of all physics literature. I think a lot of people are missing that point.
Well gosh, on my Fedora system there doesn't seem to be a big difference in the library problem between Gnome and KDE. Konqueror shows 32 library dependencies on my system. Next time try a valid argument.
Last year I bought a new Philips television set. The remote was supposed to be a universal remote that could be programmed to control my DVD, VCR and cable box. So I tried to program it. I was doing really well until I reached the line "Turn to pages 29-32 to find the three digit code for your device."
Pages 29-32 were filled with four digit codes.
Would the remote accept a four digit code? Of course not! That would have been too easy. It would only accept three digits and then change channels to the fourth digit.
It itches so correctly
on
Spam as Poetry
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I got a spam the other day that was written in German, more or less. I ran it through babelfish and got the following amusing blank verse. You gotta love "rat-sharp Girls in the wildest floats." It has such a lovely rhythm.
Geile, lsterne virgins with those it itches so correctly.
They want you, it need it.
Heie galleries and sharp picture series.
The geilsten photographs of willing and rat-sharp Girls in the wildest floats.
You want the heiesten Teeniesex?
Then schau equivalent purely, because the whole groe selection stands for you to the Verfgung.
This just proves the danger of these near earth asteroids. While this one wasn't large enough to cause a mass extinction, it was big enough to wipe out a small web server.
When I read the article I was more strongly reminded of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's "Roadside Picnic".
Travelers from the star Vega stop on Earth while passing through on their way to somewhere else. The result is an area so contaiminated with alien litter and microbes that the place is uninhabitable. Scientists enter the area to gather artifacts, but the consequences of wandering off of the well marked trails can be deadly. Really great, spooky story.
Macmillan published a lot of Russian science fiction in the US during the late 70s and early 80s. I have five or six volumes that I picked up in a clearance bin years ago. Sadly it is all out of print here again.
Really? You do know that they made up the word google, don't you? It never existed prior to this. How do you know that they didn't "noun a verb?" Google certainly sounds more like a verb than a noun to me.
The Earth's magnetic field is being temporarily withdrawn while a new business model is developed. Free access to the magnetic field was always a weak business model, and in today's economy is no longer tenable. Once a method for allowing metered access is developed, the magnetic field will be restored.
There is a "gentleman's agreement" between the vendors that require that if a virus sample is submitted to one, the others get it, too
This is what's called an "old boys network." It seeks to protect the privileges of a select group from infiltration by "outsiders." This is just as pernicious as keeping the information completely internal to the company, because it serves as a barrier to others. There is no simple way to join the "club" without already being a member.
Frankly, I am beginning to be of the opinion that virus protection should be considered a "public health" issue. I have to worry not just about the quality of virus protection on my computer, but also on my neighor's computers. Distributed DoS attacks show the necessity of protecting strangers to protect ourselves.
Biological epidemiology should be a guide. We use our governments, the WHO and others to fight the spread of communicable diseases worldwide. It is insufficient to rely on education and inherent self-interest for protection. Instead governments provide vaccinations for most of the truely dangerous communicable diseases. Private drug companies and doctors play vital roles within the system, but ultimately governments try to protect the public welfare. It is not a perfect system, but the incidences of tuberculosis, small pox, polio and many other crippling diseases have dropped dramatically since the government became involved .
Am I saying that all antivirus software should become the fiefdom of a government agency? No! But the government could be used to serve as a clearinghouse for computer virus definitions, that virus definition updates should be freely available for the public good and that there should be a low barrier to access to the information necessary to write anti-virus software.
Please note that the last point does not imply that the actual virus needs to be available for public dissemination. Just the information necessary to detect, identify and repair the damage from the malicious code. Access to more detailed information could (but not necessarily has to) be dependent upon signing a liability agreement. If your intention really is research, then you should not have a problem with such a requirement. Nor should you have a problem with minimum system requirements for such access. What would be wrong with requiring that such research be restricted to isolated computer networks in a clean room environment? Universities, small businesses and independent researchers could easily meet such a requirement.
I work for a small R&D firm. My time is worth more to the company than my salary. Why? When I'm working on a contract, there's this little concept called overhead. For every dollar that I'm paid out of the contract, about two dollars from the contract are placed in the company overhead account. This provides the operating budget for the business. It pays the lights, rent, phones, secretaries, etc., but it doesn't pay my normal salary.
When I have to change hats to clean up after a virus, I'm being paid out of the overhead account. It's not billable time. When I'm not working on contract, it costs the company more money than just my salary. For every dollar that I earned cleaning up after SirCam, there was one dollar deleted from the overhead budget and two dollars that were not "earned" by overhead. In other words, for every dollar that I was paid to clean up after SirCam, the company lost three dollars from the operating/overhead budget--one dollar for my salary and two dollars in lost revenues. The contract dollars are still there, but my time is gone forever.
So just because I was already being paid, doesn't mean that it didn't cost the company money. It cost them a great deal. In the end, we figured that SirCam cost us about $2500, which is probably on the high end of the distribution. (We have a lot of unattended, networked computers scattered throughout the labs. Despite my repeated complaints, some of the researchers and graduate students still did not have anti-virus software on these computers. "But I never read email on that computer!" Half a dozen of them turned out to be infected with SirCam.)
If you accept the figure of $2500 dollars for our company, then it only requires 4000 similar infections to total $10 million in lost revenue. There were probably far more than 4000 infections. Is the number $10 Billion inflated? Probably, but it still cost a tremendous amount of money to fight SirCam.
Slashdot Mirror
Some but not all. And there is nearly always a trail back to their customers. Spammers are like drug pushers. As long they have customers, they will be with us. Don't confuse their victims with their customers. The people who respond to spam are victims. A spammer's customer is the business or individual whos product is advertised. They are the ones you need to go after. They will utilize spammers as long as it is profitable for them and they suffer no ill consequences. Arresting a spammer solves only part of the problem. There needs to be dire consequences for the people up stream of the actual spammer.
This isn't really true. I've gotten several spammers on the phone over the last year. When you can speak to them directly, they will generally stop. Tracking down spammers isn't particularly difficult. Any competent mail admin can do it. However, it takes time, and most of us don't have the time available to do it.
They can conceal it but not hide it. There is always a trail if you are willing to dig. Sometimes the trail leads through places you (as a civilian) can't go, but it's always there.
(LyX is decent, too, but I like raw LaTeX in emacs myself).
Emacs?! Pah! Real men just wrap a coil of wire around a nail and put the bits on disk themselves!
Weinberg's seminal paper is there. "A model of leptons" is number 18. I don't think Abdus Salam is actually cited very frequently.
Another thing, the paper counts the number of citations IN Phys Rev papers, not the number of citations OF Phys Rev papers. A paper doesn't have to have been published in Phys Rev to be counted, only cited there. The idea is that the papers in Phys Rev form a random sample of all physics literature. I think a lot of people are missing that point.
Well gosh, on my Fedora system there doesn't seem to be a big difference in the library problem between Gnome and KDE. Konqueror shows 32 library dependencies on my system. Next time try a valid argument.
/usr/lib/konqueror.so (0x003b0000) /usr/lib/libkonq.so.4 (0x005df000) /usr/lib/libkparts.so.2 (0x0035e000) /usr/lib/libkio.so.4 (0x00657000) /usr/lib/libkdeui.so.4 (0x00bdb000) /usr/lib/libkdesu.so.4 (0x00111000) /usr/lib/libkdecore.so.4 (0x0012b000) /usr/lib/libDCOP.so.4 (0x002af000) /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00e28000) /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x002e0000) /usr/lib/libart_lgpl_2.so.2 (0x0090b000) /usr/lib/libkdefx.so.4 (0x002f2000) /opt/qt/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 (0x00e2b000) /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0x0031b000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x0033f000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x0045a000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x0034d000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x00399000) /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0x0059d000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0x00355000) /lib/libutil.so.1 (0x00538000) /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x0053b000) /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x009d3000) /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00bc7000) /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0x0054c000) /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x00a8b000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x009bd000) /usr/lib/tls/libGL.so.1 (0x00921000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0x0056e000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0x00584000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0x00588000) /usr/lib/tls/libGLcore.so.1 (0x0157c000) /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x064cc000)
ldd `which konqueror`
konqueror.so =>
libkonq.so.4 =>
libkparts.so.2 =>
libkio.so.4 =>
libkdeui.so.4 =>
libkdesu.so.4 =>
libkdecore.so.4 =>
libDCOP.so.4 =>
libdl.so.2 =>
libresolv.so.2 =>
libart_lgpl_2.so.2 =>
libkdefx.so.4 =>
libqt-mt.so.3 =>
libpng12.so.0 =>
libXext.so.6 =>
libX11.so.6 =>
libSM.so.6 =>
libICE.so.6 =>
libpthread.so.0 =>
libXrender.so.1 =>
libutil.so.1 =>
libz.so.1 =>
libstdc++.so.5 =>
libgcc_s.so.1 =>
libm.so.6 =>
libc.so.6 =>
libGL.so.1 =>
libXmu.so.6 =>
libXrandr.so.2 =>
libXcursor.so.1 =>
libGLcore.so.1 =>
libXt.so.6 =>
Last year I bought a new Philips television set. The remote was supposed to be a universal remote that could be programmed to control my DVD, VCR and cable box. So I tried to program it. I was doing really well until I reached the line "Turn to pages 29-32 to find the three digit code for your device."
Pages 29-32 were filled with four digit codes.
Would the remote accept a four digit code? Of course not! That would have been too easy. It would only accept three digits and then change channels to the fourth digit.
I got a spam the other day that was written in German, more or less. I ran it through babelfish and got the following amusing blank verse. You gotta love "rat-sharp Girls in the wildest floats." It has such a lovely rhythm.
Geile, lsterne virgins with those
it itches so correctly.
They want you,
it need it.
Heie galleries and sharp picture series.
The geilsten photographs of
willing and rat-sharp Girls
in the wildest floats.
You want the heiesten Teeniesex?
Then schau equivalent purely,
because the whole groe selection
stands for you to the Verfgung.
This just proves the danger of these near earth asteroids. While this one wasn't large enough to cause a mass extinction, it was big enough to wipe out a small web server.
When I read the article I was more strongly reminded of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's "Roadside Picnic". Travelers from the star Vega stop on Earth while passing through on their way to somewhere else. The result is an area so contaiminated with alien litter and microbes that the place is uninhabitable. Scientists enter the area to gather artifacts, but the consequences of wandering off of the well marked trails can be deadly. Really great, spooky story. Macmillan published a lot of Russian science fiction in the US during the late 70s and early 80s. I have five or six volumes that I picked up in a clearance bin years ago. Sadly it is all out of print here again.
Exactly! When George Bush needed to assassinate Saddam Hussein's waiter, the B-2 was the go to weapon of choice.
Really? You do know that they made up the word google, don't you? It never existed prior to this. How do you know that they didn't "noun a verb?" Google certainly sounds more like a verb than a noun to me.
The Earth's magnetic field is being temporarily withdrawn while a new business model is developed. Free access to the magnetic field was always a weak business model, and in today's economy is no longer tenable. Once a method for allowing metered access is developed, the magnetic field will be restored.
disclaimer: this is neither a troll nor am i a lunatic (NATOL)
Well, you're half right.
This is what's called an "old boys network." It seeks to protect the privileges of a select group from infiltration by "outsiders." This is just as pernicious as keeping the information completely internal to the company, because it serves as a barrier to others. There is no simple way to join the "club" without already being a member.
Frankly, I am beginning to be of the opinion that virus protection should be considered a "public health" issue. I have to worry not just about the quality of virus protection on my computer, but also on my neighor's computers. Distributed DoS attacks show the necessity of protecting strangers to protect ourselves.
Biological epidemiology should be a guide. We use our governments, the WHO and others to fight the spread of communicable diseases worldwide. It is insufficient to rely on education and inherent self-interest for protection. Instead governments provide vaccinations for most of the truely dangerous communicable diseases. Private drug companies and doctors play vital roles within the system, but ultimately governments try to protect the public welfare. It is not a perfect system, but the incidences of tuberculosis, small pox, polio and many other crippling diseases have dropped dramatically since the government became involved .
Am I saying that all antivirus software should become the fiefdom of a government agency? No! But the government could be used to serve as a clearinghouse for computer virus definitions, that virus definition updates should be freely available for the public good and that there should be a low barrier to access to the information necessary to write anti-virus software.
Please note that the last point does not imply that the actual virus needs to be available for public dissemination. Just the information necessary to detect, identify and repair the damage from the malicious code. Access to more detailed information could (but not necessarily has to) be dependent upon signing a liability agreement. If your intention really is research, then you should not have a problem with such a requirement. Nor should you have a problem with minimum system requirements for such access. What would be wrong with requiring that such research be restricted to isolated computer networks in a clean room environment? Universities, small businesses and independent researchers could easily meet such a requirement.
I work for a small R&D firm. My time is worth more to the company than my salary. Why? When I'm working on a contract, there's this little concept called overhead. For every dollar that I'm paid out of the contract, about two dollars from the contract are placed in the company overhead account. This provides the operating budget for the business. It pays the lights, rent, phones, secretaries, etc., but it doesn't pay my normal salary.
When I have to change hats to clean up after a virus, I'm being paid out of the overhead account. It's not billable time. When I'm not working on contract, it costs the company more money than just my salary. For every dollar that I earned cleaning up after SirCam, there was one dollar deleted from the overhead budget and two dollars that were not "earned" by overhead. In other words, for every dollar that I was paid to clean up after SirCam, the company lost three dollars from the operating/overhead budget--one dollar for my salary and two dollars in lost revenues. The contract dollars are still there, but my time is gone forever.
So just because I was already being paid, doesn't mean that it didn't cost the company money. It cost them a great deal. In the end, we figured that SirCam cost us about $2500, which is probably on the high end of the distribution. (We have a lot of unattended, networked computers scattered throughout the labs. Despite my repeated complaints, some of the researchers and graduate students still did not have anti-virus software on these computers. "But I never read email on that computer!" Half a dozen of them turned out to be infected with SirCam.)
If you accept the figure of $2500 dollars for our company, then it only requires 4000 similar infections to total $10 million in lost revenue. There were probably far more than 4000 infections. Is the number $10 Billion inflated? Probably, but it still cost a tremendous amount of money to fight SirCam.