> An interesting update from Blue Security, the group that introduces the Blue Frog initiative to fight spam, claims that during the past few days at least one spammer had frequently deleted domains he owned as a result of their system. In another update in their blog they report they have already recruited over 21,000 users. It's about time spammers start feeling the heat! I'm just surprised they show results so soon."
An interesting update from Spammers-R-Us, Inc [...]
In another update in their blog, they report they have already gotten over 21,000 Slashdotters to hit the Blue Frog site. It's about time spamfighters started feeling the heat! I'm just surprised they show the results within 20 posts on the thread!
> Sadly the "kick in the pants" has always been things like a world war or having a well funded arch enemy, like the old US vs. USSR enimity. Adversity breeds inovation. Prosperity breeds complacency. So, be careful what you wish for.
Which is why, for what little it's worth, I was disappointed to find that 2004 MN4 was going to miss the Earth in 2038.
Because 35 years is just about the right length of time, not just to develop the technology to deflect the thing, but also to generate a new generation of kids - who won't merely value science and engineering as career paths, but who will see them as essential survival tools for the species.
Instead, we've got a dumbed-down educational system that would make Harrison Bergeron cringe, and the mentality that the only careers worth having are those of criminal/thug, celebrity/whore, or lawyer/lobbyist/politician.
> > Overclocking experiment results in largest single release of thermal energy in Japan since 1945.
> > > > Casualty figures as yet unknown.
> > Some tasteful moderation there by whoever modded the parent "Flamebait"...;-)
No, that goes to the some guy named Harris who overclocked an AMD CPU in Dresden. *zzzzing!*
/is it hot in here or what?
Note: To everyone complaining about this thread -- have you never driven a Toyota to the grocery store, then come home to grill some Bratwurst, and wash it down with a pint of Guinness? Maybe everybody won World War II.
> As much as I dislike spammers, is 640 years appropriate for one man? He didn't even kill anyone.
He didn't? Let's assume (conservatively), that he sent out one spam per customer record he stole. 1.6 billion spams. Let's further assume that it takes a human being one second to "Just Hit Delete". 1.6 billion person-seconds wasted. 444,444 person-hours wasted. 18,518 person-days wasted. 50 person-years if you're working 24/7. At 8 hours a day, that's the entire productive lifespan of three people. Three lives - stolen just as effectively as if he'd killed them.
> Maybe he should have gotten something more brutal, like 64000 hours of community service...as a tech support operator!
64,000 hours, at 8 hours a day, is 40000 days, or 218 years, so you're not too far off the 640-year mark.
640 years ought to be enough for anybody, but what I'd really like to see is to have him locked in a cell, "Just Hitting Delete", once for every spam he sent, for 16 waking hours a day.
Four or five times a day, an email with a From: line like "Your Warden", "Health Services", or "Cafeteria" with a Subject: line such as "Extended recreation hours!", "Take a break!", or "Lunchtime!" will appear.
He has to reply to this mail to get an hour of exercise, have his medical checkups, or his meals.
Hey, it's just spam, right? Doesn't hurt anyone, right? Just delete it, right? Well, if he hasn't starved to death when he runs out of 1.6 billion spams on which to Just Hit Delete, he can walk away a free man.
> Parents simply assume all games are designed for children. The folks in the government seem to assume the same thing.
The government sees the governed as children, regardless of their age. Regardless of the party in power, "it takes a village".
And did you ever notice that it's always someone else that might be tempted to do something horrible by these awful, awful video games, and it's this someone else who has to be protected by having the games banned?
Just once, I'd like some blue-haired fundie to stand up and say "I played $media_bugaboo, and it was so shocking/arousing/offensive that it tempted me to do $evilthing, and therefore it must be banned for my own protection." I'd still disagree with the call bannination, but I could at least give the fundie crowd a few points for integrity.
> Richter said that he and his company had changed their e-mailing practices and pledged not to send spam to anyone who has not asked to be sent commercial e-mail.
...the more they stay the same.
10,000 Quatloos says that Richter pays for his judgement with the proceeds from his new company - YouOptedInReallyBigger.info - that sends spam only to people who opted in, because every ASCII string with at least one "@" character, from a@a, to my email address, to the Message-IDs of every USENET post made since the Epoch, has opted in according to one spammer or another.
Let's review.
(Rule #0: Spam is theft.)
Rule #1: Spammers lie.
Rule #2: If you think a spammer is telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Let's hope that Microsoft isn't ignorant of Rules #1 and #2, and can take advantage of Rules #3 and #4...
Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.
Rule #4: The natural course of a spamming business is to go bankrupt.
...and the new bankruptcy law to put Richter and into debt peonage for the rest of his miserable life.
> What else could be done to get to space with minimal harm to the planet?
1) Get to space.
As long as you're stuck on this step, you're going to have to have an entire planet's worth of heavy industries, energy generation, and resource extraction being performed on the surface of said planet.
Arguing about the "greenness" of space exploration is like someone having a heart attack deciding not to call an ambulance because being a passenger in a vehicle that's going faster than the posted speed limits in city streets is a health hazard.
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas
of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new
research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and
ask for one."
Remember kids -- if there's a brand-new black SUV out in front of your home within 15 minutes of replying to a post on Slashdot, you may not have hacked your way into a career in the infosec industry, but at the very least, you've earned yourself a very exciting job interview!
> One should also note the weasel word being used, "manual hacker attatcks". Apparently for some OS's (which shall remain nameless), hacker attacks are automatic.
Yeah, don't fuck with the people who wrote nroff source for your manual pages.
.\" Take this out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until .\" the time_t's wrap around. .Pp
You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tune a fish.
> From the article: The problem here is some activities, such as the creation of software, can be used for legal and illegal purposes, as is the case with Grokster...It gets really messy, because it is unclear what is legal or not legal, and it is problematic to operate with such abstract terms.
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said
Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that
it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know
that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power
and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick,
and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares
so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live
without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens'
What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that
can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and
you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.
Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you
understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Whoever came up with the "abstract terms" locution was pretty clever; that's certainly a new twist on it. Usually, the folks who want unenforceable laws want the laws to be abstract. Now that there's so little left unregulated, they can take the gloves off and come out and say it --
"everything not compulsory must be forbidden, and everything not forbidden must be compulsory."
> A slow-motion clip of the now-famous ET foam shedding event has been inserted at the time it occurred -- about 1:40 after liftoff
A slow-downloading clip of the soon-to-be-famous halon fire extinguisher video has been inserted into the server room at the time it occurred -- about 1:40 after a link to a page with a 14-megabyte STS-114 video went live on Slashdot.
> I hired a bunch of monkeys and I can't wait for them to write Shakespearian works!
Well, I couldn't hire monkeys, but I did the next best thing - outsourced the documentation department.
Romeo, Romeo, why is it that they are calling you Mister Romeo?
You should be talking to your father about getting your name changed,
And if you will not be doing that, oh please just be renewing my contract,
And I will be changing my name to Julie or something else that sounds kind of American!
(Shall I be listening to the on-hold music, or shall I just punch "0" and hope to be transferred?)
They didn't quite meet the "all documentation shall be written in iambic pentameter" part of the specification, but it wasn't bad for $6/hr... and it was still better English than what my alma mater's graduating these days. I'm convinced!
> Because this ruling was very specific and in a single case, and only applied to dating or fraternization off-duty with clients or coworkers while in their work uniforms.
[Emphasis added by previous poster]
In other words, naked fraternization or dating of clients and co-workers is now officially sanctioned!
> Unfortunately, New Scientist reports that Astronauts traveling to Mars would be exposed to so much cosmic radiation that 10% would die of cancer.
So, out of 10 astronauts, one dies of cancer that he or she wouldn't have gotten had she or she stayed at home.
For each astronaut, there's a 90% chance of suffering no ill effects from the increased radiation exposure. (That is, they'll get to die of a heart attack, stroke, of an injury after a fall, in an auto wreck, or of a cancer they were going to get anyway).
For a crew of six, there's about a 50% probability (that is, 0.9^6) that one of them will die of cancer. And there'll really be no easy way to know whether the one unlucky sonofabitch got his cancer from the trip, or he was just an... unlucky sonofabitch.
If we're talking about a trip with a 6-month stay, those are pretty good odds.
If we're talking about permanent colonization - considering that living on a planet where the ambient temperature is too low to support most life, and the atmosphere's unbreathable by humans, and where the only food you'll get is what you can grow in carefully-maintained greenhouses - it seems to me that there are plenty of nasty ways to die on Mars that don't involve a 10% increase in the odds that I'll get cancer.
So either way - it sounds like a great adventure, with better odds of living a long and happy life than anyone on the Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria ever had. I'll fly tomorrow. Who's with me?
> This might just be a/. variation on the factual test applied to gray boxes in the 1980s: "it ain't really IBM PC compatible until it runs Lotus 1-2-3 and draws a chart".
Or as I learned it, with double the irony! "It ain't really an IBM PC compatible until it runs Microsoft Flight Simulator".
> > The UK has bigger problems right now than worrying about a bunch of Spice Girl piratez.
> >
Exactly. Why isn't anyone doing anything about all the bloody trolls sneaking into the country on cargo ships from Norway?
How's this for a Norwegian troll?
"As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of a Micro$oft shill making a comparison involving Linus Torvalds approaches 1"
> If you execute a specific elisp file at a key time, emacs displays a very graphic mini-game involving Richard Stallman. As a responsible parent, I want to make sure that this sort of thing isn't seen by my children when I'm not watching them.
You think you've got trouble? I bought this goddamn O'Reilly book, and right there in Bob-damned Chapter 15 if it ain't instructions on how to get Hot Coffee!
> This hit me like a brick in the face and sounded like someone claiming that Hustler was actually owned by Billy Graham.
>
Whisky Tango Foxtrot, wasn't expecting this.
Not inconsistent at all.
You don't have to write code to compile copies of it. You don't have to be Larry Flynt to have a pile of sticky magazines in your desk drawer.
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting update from Spammers-R-Us, Inc [...] In another update in their blog, they report they have already gotten over 21,000 Slashdotters to hit the Blue Frog site. It's about time spamfighters started feeling the heat! I'm just surprised they show the results within 20 posts on the thread!
- with apologies to the original article poster :)
Which is why, for what little it's worth, I was disappointed to find that 2004 MN4 was going to miss the Earth in 2038.
Because 35 years is just about the right length of time, not just to develop the technology to deflect the thing, but also to generate a new generation of kids - who won't merely value science and engineering as career paths, but who will see them as essential survival tools for the species.
Instead, we've got a dumbed-down educational system that would make Harrison Bergeron cringe, and the mentality that the only careers worth having are those of criminal/thug, celebrity/whore, or lawyer/lobbyist/politician.
Fuck it. We deserve to have that rock hit us.
> >
> > Casualty figures as yet unknown.
>
> Some tasteful moderation there by whoever modded the parent "Flamebait"...
No, that goes to the some guy named Harris who overclocked an AMD CPU in Dresden. *zzzzing!*
Note: To everyone complaining about this thread -- have you never driven a Toyota to the grocery store, then come home to grill some Bratwurst, and wash it down with a pint of Guinness? Maybe everybody won World War II.
He didn't? Let's assume (conservatively), that he sent out one spam per customer record he stole. 1.6 billion spams. Let's further assume that it takes a human being one second to "Just Hit Delete". 1.6 billion person-seconds wasted. 444,444 person-hours wasted. 18,518 person-days wasted. 50 person-years if you're working 24/7. At 8 hours a day, that's the entire productive lifespan of three people. Three lives - stolen just as effectively as if he'd killed them.
> Maybe he should have gotten something more brutal, like 64000 hours of community service...as a tech support operator!
64,000 hours, at 8 hours a day, is 40000 days, or 218 years, so you're not too far off the 640-year mark.
640 years ought to be enough for anybody, but what I'd really like to see is to have him locked in a cell, "Just Hitting Delete", once for every spam he sent, for 16 waking hours a day.
Four or five times a day, an email with a From: line like "Your Warden", "Health Services", or "Cafeteria" with a Subject: line such as "Extended recreation hours!", "Take a break!", or "Lunchtime!" will appear.
He has to reply to this mail to get an hour of exercise, have his medical checkups, or his meals.
Hey, it's just spam, right? Doesn't hurt anyone, right? Just delete it, right? Well, if he hasn't starved to death when he runs out of 1.6 billion spams on which to Just Hit Delete, he can walk away a free man.
The government sees the governed as children, regardless of their age. Regardless of the party in power, "it takes a village".
And did you ever notice that it's always someone else that might be tempted to do something horrible by these awful, awful video games, and it's this someone else who has to be protected by having the games banned?
Just once, I'd like some blue-haired fundie to stand up and say "I played $media_bugaboo, and it was so shocking/arousing/offensive that it tempted me to do $evilthing, and therefore it must be banned for my own protection." I'd still disagree with the call bannination, but I could at least give the fundie crowd a few points for integrity.
"Nothing to hear for you, see? Please move along."
- SJ-421, Reality Field Manipulation Detachment
Silly privacy-advocate! The forehead and right hand are expressly reserved for the Mark of the Beast.
Tattoos, on the other hand, go on the chest or the inner forearm.
10,000 Quatloos says that Richter pays for his judgement with the proceeds from his new company - YouOptedInReallyBigger.info - that sends spam only to people who opted in, because every ASCII string with at least one "@" character, from a@a, to my email address, to the Message-IDs of every USENET post made since the Epoch, has opted in according to one spammer or another.
Let's review.
(Rule #0: Spam is theft.)
Rule #1: Spammers lie.
Rule #2: If you think a spammer is telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Let's hope that Microsoft isn't ignorant of Rules #1 and #2, and can take advantage of Rules #3 and #4...
Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.
Rule #4: The natural course of a spamming business is to go bankrupt.
1) Get to space.
As long as you're stuck on this step, you're going to have to have an entire planet's worth of heavy industries, energy generation, and resource extraction being performed on the surface of said planet.
Arguing about the "greenness" of space exploration is like someone having a heart attack deciding not to call an ambulance because being a passenger in a vehicle that's going faster than the posted speed limits in city streets is a health hazard.
Remember kids -- if there's a brand-new black SUV out in front of your home within 15 minutes of replying to a post on Slashdot, you may not have hacked your way into a career in the infosec industry, but at the very least, you've earned yourself a very exciting job interview!
Yeah, don't fuck with the people who wrote nroff source for your manual pages.
Anyone got a SCO box handy?
$ man tunefs
If it doesn't say "You can tune a filesystem but you can't tune a fish", Darl deserves whatever he gets. Don't believe me? Use the nroff source, Luke.
$ cat /usr/share/man/man8/tunefs.8.gz | gzip -d
2038's still 33 years away, Darl.
Whoever came up with the "abstract terms" locution was pretty clever; that's certainly a new twist on it. Usually, the folks who want unenforceable laws want the laws to be abstract. Now that there's so little left unregulated, they can take the gloves off and come out and say it -- "everything not compulsory must be forbidden, and everything not forbidden must be compulsory."
A slow-downloading clip of the soon-to-be-famous halon fire extinguisher video has been inserted into the server room at the time it occurred -- about 1:40 after a link to a page with a 14-megabyte STS-114 video went live on Slashdot.
The latter. You are not the customer, and neither Intel nor AMD are the vendors.
Microsoft is the vendor. Intel and AMD are the customers. The guy who actually sits behind the keyboard is the product.
I dunno. I had an 8" floppy. Mabel may have been plain, but she never complained.
Then one year it was 5.25" floppy, a few years later it was 3.5" and kinda stiff, and nowadays it's all about these little compact flash thingies.
Must be something Google's putting in the water.
Well, I couldn't hire monkeys, but I did the next best thing - outsourced the documentation department.
Romeo, Romeo, why is it that they are calling you Mister Romeo?
You should be talking to your father about getting your name changed,
And if you will not be doing that, oh please just be renewing my contract,
And I will be changing my name to Julie or something else that sounds kind of American!
(Shall I be listening to the on-hold music, or shall I just punch "0" and hope to be transferred?)
They didn't quite meet the "all documentation shall be written in iambic pentameter" part of the specification, but it wasn't bad for $6/hr... and it was still better English than what my alma mater's graduating these days. I'm convinced!
[Emphasis added by previous poster]
In other words, naked fraternization or dating of clients and co-workers is now officially sanctioned!
So, out of 10 astronauts, one dies of cancer that he or she wouldn't have gotten had she or she stayed at home.
For each astronaut, there's a 90% chance of suffering no ill effects from the increased radiation exposure. (That is, they'll get to die of a heart attack, stroke, of an injury after a fall, in an auto wreck, or of a cancer they were going to get anyway).
For a crew of six, there's about a 50% probability (that is, 0.9^6) that one of them will die of cancer. And there'll really be no easy way to know whether the one unlucky sonofabitch got his cancer from the trip, or he was just an... unlucky sonofabitch.
If we're talking about a trip with a 6-month stay, those are pretty good odds.
If we're talking about permanent colonization - considering that living on a planet where the ambient temperature is too low to support most life, and the atmosphere's unbreathable by humans, and where the only food you'll get is what you can grow in carefully-maintained greenhouses - it seems to me that there are plenty of nasty ways to die on Mars that don't involve a 10% increase in the odds that I'll get cancer.
So either way - it sounds like a great adventure, with better odds of living a long and happy life than anyone on the Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria ever had. I'll fly tomorrow. Who's with me?
Or as I learned it, with double the irony! "It ain't really an IBM PC compatible until it runs Microsoft Flight Simulator".
>
> Exactly. Why isn't anyone doing anything about all the bloody trolls sneaking into the country on cargo ships from Norway?
How's this for a Norwegian troll?
"As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of a Micro$oft shill making a comparison involving Linus Torvalds approaches 1"
("It's got beautiful bridgework...")
And the next-best thing is to ditch the technology.
"The more they over think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
- Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, Star Trek III
$ ls -l /usr/dict/words /usr/dict/words
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 206662 Sep 1 1998
Back in the good old days, it was short enough that we didn't need a .torrent for a spell checker!
Hey, these aren't crumbs! Crumbs aren't curl-eeeeew!
You think you've got trouble? I bought this goddamn O'Reilly book, and right there in Bob-damned Chapter 15 if it ain't instructions on how to get Hot Coffee!
> Whisky Tango Foxtrot, wasn't expecting this.
Not inconsistent at all.
You don't have to write code to compile copies of it. You don't have to be Larry Flynt to have a pile of sticky magazines in your desk drawer.