I've always wondered why we, as a community, don't beat them at their own game. There is more of us then them, so if only 10% of us would carpet bomb them with fake requests,
calling their 800 numbers, whatever they
want back, wouldn't that piss them off.
It's a Free Rider problem. Sure, if we all fought the spammers, intelligently, they'd be easily defeated. But part of the key there is intelligently. You'd have to make sure you get the right phone number (or email address, or website, or snail mail address), and not a decoy. And then you'd have to go through a good deal of work. And you'd have to risk, in some cases, being prosecuted.
So they throw it out? That doesn't sound like what you're saying, but that's what people do with junk mail.
Depends what the junk mail is. I've signed up for at least one credit card after getting junk mail advertising it. I'd probably do the same with junk e-mail, except for the fact that junk e-mail is pretty much universally a scam by some company I've never heard of.
If I'm offered a good deal, I'm not going to pass it up just because it was offered through junk mail. Of course, Discover Card (that "at least one" credit card company) is losing money from me. I transfer the max balance whenever they offer me 0%, and then pay it back before the offer expires.
then identify test messages, to let them through and let spammers believe that my honeypot is in fact an open proxy
How'd you manage this one? I'd be too afraid of letting the messages through to the wrong person.
I have never let it out of my box, but it definitely gave the spammers adrenaline enough to keep them around for longer...
If a bunch of us ran something like this, wouldn't it greatly increase the costs to the spammers? In fact, if you hacked around with the raw IP packets, sending ACKs prematurely to make the spammers think you received the data even thought it was dropped, you could trick them into using up much more bandwidth than you. Sort of like a DDOS, except they're the ones initiating the connections.
All this means is 10% of people who are willing to respond to surveys are willing to buy something advertised by spam. I wonder how they conducted the survey. Perhaps through unsolicited phone calls?
In a sense, of course, there's little google can do to prevent this, because even if they weighted 302-redirects lower in their "throw out duplicates" stage, I could always just go snag a copy of your website each time googlebot visits, in essence doing the redirection myself.
However, doing it through 302 redircts means that google pays for the bandwidth to go get your page, not me.
Ah, but doing it through a 302 also means that the target site can't notice you making regular hits to it and block your IP address.
There's also perhaps a legal distinction. Actively copying someone else's site without permission is pretty clearly copyright infringement. Just 302ing to it most likely isn't.
Good explanation. I see how this would be useful. After all, if I have a permanent url and point to various different temporary urls, you definitely can't display them all in a search query, there just isn't enough room in the first few results for such redundancy. If the pagerank of the "permanent url" is higher than that of the temporary one, then chances are no one is gaming the system. But what happens when someone does manage to get a higher pagerank than the targetted site?
Seems like something that's difficult to solve other than to make the pagerank algorithm as hard to fool as possible.
Actually, it *does* sound like that - "So I decided to look for other jobs and immediately got multiple offers." He got multiple offers (not interviews, but offers - as in "please come work for us") and decided to take one.
Then I don't see why he's worried about burning bridges with his old employer, when he could very well wind up burning bridges with his new one. I find it strange that he's gotten offers but has no set date that he has to start working for these new employers. Doesn't sound like a very firm offer to me.
IP addresses contain network information, not physical location information.
IP addresses in themselves don't contain any information. But unless you're using a wireless connection the IP address has to be routed to a physical port which leads to a physical location at some point.
Even if an ISP can tell you what POP an IP address is assigned to, it's not uncommon for larger ISPs to have phone companies provide "VPOP"s (virtual POPs) where calls in a large calling area are all routed to a central bank of modems.
Most 911 centers cover a large calling area. And even if you don't get the right 911 center they can always contact the people in the right center.
Last time I moved there was no dial tone when I hooked up a phone. Maybe it'll be different in my next place. Of course, if I wind up buying a new home there won't be a telephone line in the first place until I pay someone to install one.
I know a number of towns which don't have a police station (or even a police department).
I know a lot of towns which don't have a police station just for the town, but there's still a police station that covers the town (state or county).
The fire "station" is a shed with an old fire engine in it. It is manned by volunteers when they are called. Ambulance is a private company out of town.
Both of which are in service 24/7.
Nowadays, with modern communications, such coverage is more feasible. In 1904, my home town did not have electricity or telephone or paved roads. There were bells in steeples, which would call neighbors together in case of fire.
That's exactly what I mean by 24/7 service. Apparently you didn't read what I wrote, because I specifically said "whether it's some guy who runs to the town square and rings a bell".
Landlines now have to be able to dial 911, even if you dont pay for service.
Isn't this only the case for those who can't afford to pay for telephone service? I'd like to see the actual rule, because I'm thinking about not having telephone service in my next house.
So even if you dont want phone service, you can still have a phone in your home for 911.
This isn't helpful for Vonage customers, since their phones are hooked up to Vonage, not POTS. I guess you could have two sets of phones. You could even make one blue with a little light at the top:). I'll probably just get a two-way radio though. That way it'll work even if the phone system is down.
"threatened her parents at gunpoint, eventually wounding them"
In that case, maybe Texas should sue the parents (I'm only being a bit sarcastic on that one).
Seriously, if this were a business, I think it'd be negligent to use Vonage without setting up 911 through them (from what I read it can be set up, the parents just didn't set it up for whatever reason). As it's a private residence, I have to say that the family has a right to not have 911 service, and it's certainly not Vonage's responsibility to force them to have it.
IP addresses have about much location as a grain of sand along a beach. A little wind or modem reboot on a dynamic network and things are changed enough to be irrelevant.
I'm not talking about the location of a single IP address. I'm talking about the location of the server that those dynamic addresses are connected to. This is almost always in a fixed location.
generally they are within a specific (but large) geographic area
The last hop is not generally a very large one.
and doing so even in an automated sense I would expect would be a not very small security issue
How so, are you relying on security through obscurity? What's the security problem of knowing the nearest 911 dispatch center for the next-to-last hop for an IP address?
I could buy that some of the emergency services (police/fire/ambulance) are only available during office hours. Not all areas have 24/7 police/fire/ambulance services.
Huh? There might not be someone in the station 24 hours a day, but I've never heard of a place that doesn't have police/fire/ambulance services 24/7. I mean, the service might involve pagers or radio tone calling (which activates a siren) or some guy going to the town square and ringing a bell really loud, but we've had 24/7 fire/ambulance services at the least for over a century.
I own Vonage, no secret to me that 911 worked different. Pretty clear when I installed the device. Of course, everyone who visit the house know this? No...
That there borders on negligence. Not for Vonage, but for you.
but damn, we DID NOT go through this bullshit when Cell Phones were new.
AFAIK, cell phones always worked with 911. They may not have given detailed location information, but they did at least hook you up to someone when you dialed 911.
Therefore, you will be subject to taking responsibility for all actions coming from the use of your service.
And that action would be? You're not suggesting that Vonage murdered anyone, are you? Can the state sue the television company for not letting the girl call 911? How 'bout the electric company?
If it's anyone's responsibility to have 911 service available in the home, it should be the responsibility of the person who owns the home. Assuming that Vonage never claimed to give the family 911 service, and preferably that they explicitly warned them that they wouldn't have 911 service (as of today they do this), then the only person who is even remotely responsible for the lack of 911 service is the parents who hooked up the telephones to Vonage knowing full well that they didn't have 911 service.
I don't mean to be rude, as her parents are dead, and I don't think they are at all to blame. But Vonage certainly isn't at all to blame. They provide a utility service. So what? So does the water company.
The 911 problems with VOIP are that like cell phones, you can take a VOIP phone with you. It is not tied to a location. Unlike cell phones, you can't pinpoint the location as being near a tower. You are just "on the internet" which is not nearly as helpful.
IP addresses have a location, and that location is about as accurate as a cell phone tower. Of course, now that we've got e-911, cell phones have more detailed location information.
Of course this assumes it's the responsibility of Vonage to make sure people have 911 service. A better solution is the one Vonage is working toward (point #1, hooking up to the 911 system in the first place, is the only hurdle). Then you tell them your location (for each installation) and 911 service works. If you don't tell them your location (for a particular installation), 911 service doesn't work. You'd only have to resort to GPS for a highly portable installation, such as a laptop.
This is going to do nothing but make it even harder....I find it is damned near impossible to get anyone to do a straight 1009 to an individual. You can get around it by incorporating yourself, and doing it corp to corp...
Corp to corp isn't that difficult. For a few hundred dollars a year you can easily set up an S-corp and have a CPA handle most of the nitty gritty details. Chances are you'll benefit more than this from the tax savings anyway - with an S-corp you generally don't pay social security taxes on your entire earnings, only the fair amount you pay yourself, and you can deduct your expenses directly against your income (no messing with the 2% floor on miscellaneous itemized deductions, no messing with AMT or phased out itemized deductions, etc).
The idea of 'contract' employee is you work to create a very spific thing, by a specific date.
You can:
1) Work where you want
2) When you want
3) wearing what you want.
Are you joking? When I sign a contract to hire a limo driver he can pick me up whenever he wants, take me whereever he wants, and wear whatever he wants while he does it?
You're terribly confused. There are some restrictions as to what a contractor can do, but it's nowhere near that bad.
Now my boss wants 6 weeks notice plus on call service for another 3 months at subsidized rates. Is my boss being reasonable?
It's perfectly reasonable to want something. It's also perfectly reasonable for you to say no.
But I don't think I am bound by any law that I should provide those kinds of services (since we have no contract in place).
In most states you don't even owe any notice by law, but two weeks is kind of the unwritten rule in any case.
Should I negotiate or just ignore them? Is a burnt bridge worth it?
It sounds like you don't have another job lined up already (or you'd have told us your new job starts in X weeks). If that's the case, maybe a burnt bridge isn't worth it. In fact, if that's the case maybe you shouldn't be quitting in the first place. Ultimately it's a decision only you can make, though. What's your opportunity cost? What would you be doing in those extra weeks/months if you weren't working? How much is that worth to you? Is your employer offering more or less? If it's more then your decision is pretty easy. If it's a little less, maybe you can negotiate. Otherwise, well, you've gotta factor in the cost of the burnt bridge.
You can enable general freedom of speech without forcing people to host child pornography against their will. The problem with freenet is that it confuses free speech with forcing others to distribute your speech. Hopefully one day we'll have a freenet-like system which allows you to remove content from your own hard drive which you don't wish to assist in the distribution of.
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I've always wondered why we, as a community, don't beat them at their own game. There is more of us then them, so if only 10% of us would carpet bomb them with fake requests, calling their 800 numbers, whatever they want back, wouldn't that piss them off.
It's a Free Rider problem. Sure, if we all fought the spammers, intelligently, they'd be easily defeated. But part of the key there is intelligently. You'd have to make sure you get the right phone number (or email address, or website, or snail mail address), and not a decoy. And then you'd have to go through a good deal of work. And you'd have to risk, in some cases, being prosecuted.
So they throw it out? That doesn't sound like what you're saying, but that's what people do with junk mail.
Depends what the junk mail is. I've signed up for at least one credit card after getting junk mail advertising it. I'd probably do the same with junk e-mail, except for the fact that junk e-mail is pretty much universally a scam by some company I've never heard of.
If I'm offered a good deal, I'm not going to pass it up just because it was offered through junk mail. Of course, Discover Card (that "at least one" credit card company) is losing money from me. I transfer the max balance whenever they offer me 0%, and then pay it back before the offer expires.
then identify test messages, to let them through and let spammers believe that my honeypot is in fact an open proxy
How'd you manage this one? I'd be too afraid of letting the messages through to the wrong person.
I have never let it out of my box, but it definitely gave the spammers adrenaline enough to keep them around for longer ...
If a bunch of us ran something like this, wouldn't it greatly increase the costs to the spammers? In fact, if you hacked around with the raw IP packets, sending ACKs prematurely to make the spammers think you received the data even thought it was dropped, you could trick them into using up much more bandwidth than you. Sort of like a DDOS, except they're the ones initiating the connections.
All this means is 10% of people who are willing to respond to surveys are willing to buy something advertised by spam. I wonder how they conducted the survey. Perhaps through unsolicited phone calls?
In a sense, of course, there's little google can do to prevent this, because even if they weighted 302-redirects lower in their "throw out duplicates" stage, I could always just go snag a copy of your website each time googlebot visits, in essence doing the redirection myself.
However, doing it through 302 redircts means that google pays for the bandwidth to go get your page, not me.
Ah, but doing it through a 302 also means that the target site can't notice you making regular hits to it and block your IP address.
There's also perhaps a legal distinction. Actively copying someone else's site without permission is pretty clearly copyright infringement. Just 302ing to it most likely isn't.
Good explanation. I see how this would be useful. After all, if I have a permanent url and point to various different temporary urls, you definitely can't display them all in a search query, there just isn't enough room in the first few results for such redundancy. If the pagerank of the "permanent url" is higher than that of the temporary one, then chances are no one is gaming the system. But what happens when someone does manage to get a higher pagerank than the targetted site?
Seems like something that's difficult to solve other than to make the pagerank algorithm as hard to fool as possible.
Hopefully you didn't waste too much time reading irrelevant tax code. I hate tax code.
I work for a CPA, so I spend all day reading irrelevant tax code.
Anyway, you're right that being entitled to benefits doesn't follow from being called an employee by the IRS. Not all employees get benefits.
Actually, it *does* sound like that - "So I decided to look for other jobs and immediately got multiple offers." He got multiple offers (not interviews, but offers - as in "please come work for us") and decided to take one.
Then I don't see why he's worried about burning bridges with his old employer, when he could very well wind up burning bridges with his new one. I find it strange that he's gotten offers but has no set date that he has to start working for these new employers. Doesn't sound like a very firm offer to me.
IP addresses contain network information, not physical location information.
IP addresses in themselves don't contain any information. But unless you're using a wireless connection the IP address has to be routed to a physical port which leads to a physical location at some point.
Even if an ISP can tell you what POP an IP address is assigned to, it's not uncommon for larger ISPs to have phone companies provide "VPOP"s (virtual POPs) where calls in a large calling area are all routed to a central bank of modems.
Most 911 centers cover a large calling area. And even if you don't get the right 911 center they can always contact the people in the right center.
At an extreme, almost every ISP in Britain
We're talking here about the US, though.
Last time I moved there was no dial tone when I hooked up a phone. Maybe it'll be different in my next place. Of course, if I wind up buying a new home there won't be a telephone line in the first place until I pay someone to install one.
I know a number of towns which don't have a police station (or even a police department).
I know a lot of towns which don't have a police station just for the town, but there's still a police station that covers the town (state or county).
The fire "station" is a shed with an old fire engine in it. It is manned by volunteers when they are called. Ambulance is a private company out of town.
Both of which are in service 24/7.
Nowadays, with modern communications, such coverage is more feasible. In 1904, my home town did not have electricity or telephone or paved roads. There were bells in steeples, which would call neighbors together in case of fire.
That's exactly what I mean by 24/7 service. Apparently you didn't read what I wrote, because I specifically said "whether it's some guy who runs to the town square and rings a bell".
If he had phones in the house but no phone service (i.e. no dialtone), yeah, it would.
Landlines now have to be able to dial 911, even if you dont pay for service.
Isn't this only the case for those who can't afford to pay for telephone service? I'd like to see the actual rule, because I'm thinking about not having telephone service in my next house.
So even if you dont want phone service, you can still have a phone in your home for 911.
This isn't helpful for Vonage customers, since their phones are hooked up to Vonage, not POTS. I guess you could have two sets of phones. You could even make one blue with a little light at the top :). I'll probably just get a two-way radio though. That way it'll work even if the phone system is down.
"threatened her parents at gunpoint, eventually wounding them"
In that case, maybe Texas should sue the parents (I'm only being a bit sarcastic on that one).
Seriously, if this were a business, I think it'd be negligent to use Vonage without setting up 911 through them (from what I read it can be set up, the parents just didn't set it up for whatever reason). As it's a private residence, I have to say that the family has a right to not have 911 service, and it's certainly not Vonage's responsibility to force them to have it.
IP addresses have about much location as a grain of sand along a beach. A little wind or modem reboot on a dynamic network and things are changed enough to be irrelevant.
I'm not talking about the location of a single IP address. I'm talking about the location of the server that those dynamic addresses are connected to. This is almost always in a fixed location.
generally they are within a specific (but large) geographic area
The last hop is not generally a very large one.
and doing so even in an automated sense I would expect would be a not very small security issue
How so, are you relying on security through obscurity? What's the security problem of knowing the nearest 911 dispatch center for the next-to-last hop for an IP address?
Amazing how the data gets routed, then. I guess they just randomly send it places until someone gets it?
I could buy that some of the emergency services (police/fire/ambulance) are only available during office hours. Not all areas have 24/7 police/fire/ambulance services.
Huh? There might not be someone in the station 24 hours a day, but I've never heard of a place that doesn't have police/fire/ambulance services 24/7. I mean, the service might involve pagers or radio tone calling (which activates a siren) or some guy going to the town square and ringing a bell really loud, but we've had 24/7 fire/ambulance services at the least for over a century.
I own Vonage, no secret to me that 911 worked different. Pretty clear when I installed the device. Of course, everyone who visit the house know this? No...
That there borders on negligence. Not for Vonage, but for you.
but damn, we DID NOT go through this bullshit when Cell Phones were new.
AFAIK, cell phones always worked with 911. They may not have given detailed location information, but they did at least hook you up to someone when you dialed 911.
Therefore, you will be subject to taking responsibility for all actions coming from the use of your service.
And that action would be? You're not suggesting that Vonage murdered anyone, are you? Can the state sue the television company for not letting the girl call 911? How 'bout the electric company?
If it's anyone's responsibility to have 911 service available in the home, it should be the responsibility of the person who owns the home. Assuming that Vonage never claimed to give the family 911 service, and preferably that they explicitly warned them that they wouldn't have 911 service (as of today they do this), then the only person who is even remotely responsible for the lack of 911 service is the parents who hooked up the telephones to Vonage knowing full well that they didn't have 911 service.
I don't mean to be rude, as her parents are dead, and I don't think they are at all to blame. But Vonage certainly isn't at all to blame. They provide a utility service. So what? So does the water company.
The 911 problems with VOIP are that like cell phones, you can take a VOIP phone with you. It is not tied to a location. Unlike cell phones, you can't pinpoint the location as being near a tower. You are just "on the internet" which is not nearly as helpful.
IP addresses have a location, and that location is about as accurate as a cell phone tower. Of course, now that we've got e-911, cell phones have more detailed location information.
Of course this assumes it's the responsibility of Vonage to make sure people have 911 service. A better solution is the one Vonage is working toward (point #1, hooking up to the 911 system in the first place, is the only hurdle). Then you tell them your location (for each installation) and 911 service works. If you don't tell them your location (for a particular installation), 911 service doesn't work. You'd only have to resort to GPS for a highly portable installation, such as a laptop.
This is going to do nothing but make it even harder....I find it is damned near impossible to get anyone to do a straight 1009 to an individual. You can get around it by incorporating yourself, and doing it corp to corp...
Corp to corp isn't that difficult. For a few hundred dollars a year you can easily set up an S-corp and have a CPA handle most of the nitty gritty details. Chances are you'll benefit more than this from the tax savings anyway - with an S-corp you generally don't pay social security taxes on your entire earnings, only the fair amount you pay yourself, and you can deduct your expenses directly against your income (no messing with the 2% floor on miscellaneous itemized deductions, no messing with AMT or phased out itemized deductions, etc).
For more information on who is an employee and who is a contractor, see IRS Publication 15-A.
The idea of 'contract' employee is you work to create a very spific thing, by a specific date.
You can:
1) Work where you want
2) When you want
3) wearing what you want.
Are you joking? When I sign a contract to hire a limo driver he can pick me up whenever he wants, take me whereever he wants, and wear whatever he wants while he does it?
You're terribly confused. There are some restrictions as to what a contractor can do, but it's nowhere near that bad.
Now my boss wants 6 weeks notice plus on call service for another 3 months at subsidized rates. Is my boss being reasonable?
It's perfectly reasonable to want something. It's also perfectly reasonable for you to say no.
But I don't think I am bound by any law that I should provide those kinds of services (since we have no contract in place).
In most states you don't even owe any notice by law, but two weeks is kind of the unwritten rule in any case.
Should I negotiate or just ignore them? Is a burnt bridge worth it?
It sounds like you don't have another job lined up already (or you'd have told us your new job starts in X weeks). If that's the case, maybe a burnt bridge isn't worth it. In fact, if that's the case maybe you shouldn't be quitting in the first place. Ultimately it's a decision only you can make, though. What's your opportunity cost? What would you be doing in those extra weeks/months if you weren't working? How much is that worth to you? Is your employer offering more or less? If it's more then your decision is pretty easy. If it's a little less, maybe you can negotiate. Otherwise, well, you've gotta factor in the cost of the burnt bridge.
You can enable general freedom of speech without forcing people to host child pornography against their will. The problem with freenet is that it confuses free speech with forcing others to distribute your speech. Hopefully one day we'll have a freenet-like system which allows you to remove content from your own hard drive which you don't wish to assist in the distribution of.