Re:I guess lawyers work cheaper than programmers
on
Microsoft Sues Spammers
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· Score: 2, Informative
It would be interesting to know how much spam is a direct result of owned windoze boxes
This would be easy to test. If your mail server runs OpenBSD or Linux, use passive OS fingerprinting, also ported to netfilter, to scrutinize mail coming from windows boxes. Then see how much legit mail you receive from Windows hosts.
I'm saying this very seriously. They probably run the world's busiest email domain, and get a shitload of spam. If they cooperated with the community, via dcc, or even just by publishing their own blocklist -- other ISPs could start using that list tomorrow to kill pretty much all spam sources.
But Microsoft don't share, I don't buy this bull about how MS is trying to end spam. It would take 2 of their engineers and one week to set up a very effective blocklist just based on the garbage being thrown at hotmail all the time. Then the world would know about virtually all spam sources.
I dunno, they haven't been able to export beef of softwood to us for quite some time but they seem to be doing OK. Even posting a surplus budget.
If I was American, investing in the Canadian stock markets would look real attractive to me right about now. Think about it, Canada's got huge oil and other commodity/natural resource sectors. And whatever investments you make now using your US dollars will be worth more US dollars later, since the Canadian dollar is always gaining value against the US dollar. Of course you could invest in euro valued stocks too but the Europeans don't exactly have a vibrant resource economy.
Real Canadian drugs you can trust... you think everyone up here is dropping dead from bad pharms? Fake Canadian pharmacies you should avoid, like these asshole spammers (please slashdot the site into the ground, spam/scam running out of China)
I'm not someone who is pro-military, however I do think that our military shouldn't be so dependent on technology. We have lots of skilled soldiers, but let's be realistic - the proof is in the pudding, if our soldiers are losing against an enemy that doesn't have all those fancy toys, then the fancy toys probably aren't as useful as we think (drone planes etc.). With the huge defence budget, a lot of companies are just dying to get a piece of the pie with their own piece of ultra technology... but real soldiers are flesh and blood killing machines.
Heh, now I can see how USA of the future is going to run the world. A bunch of armed robots rolling around the middle east bringing freedom to every man, woman, and child while obese American schoolchildren hold the remote linked gamepads in their greasy palms, with attention divided between American Idol and a Kraft "cheese" commercial.
If this sytem is so accurate, maybe they can put the sucker in space so it can hear an ICBM whooshing by. That might be a bit more accurate than the piece-of-shit "missile defence" laser based tracking systems they've been testing.
I'm in my early 20s, and have some major difficulties with IM. Some of my contacts are younger and do prefer IM for almost everything, but I get the sense that they are suffering from continual distractions. Some have admitted to me, jokingly, that they are "addicted to MSN". I think this isn't far from the truth.
An instant conversation is nice to have, but if you have ongoing conversations throughout the day you simply can not focus on your computer work!
People often think they are smarter than they actually are. I am willing to acknowledge that I don't have the mental capacity to seriously work on more than one thing at a time. I prefer the operation of email, since communications get queued up and will be answered at my convenience. Not only are they queued up (Jabber, ICQ does that too of course) but this is the expected mode of operation, so there is no etiquette problem with delays on the order of days before a reply.
Another thing is, most of my friends who are non-techies have given up on email because: spam, and junk from friends. Well, neither of these is really a problem: wonderful, free spam filtering systems exist that will reliably get rid of 99% of your spam, and simple self discipline (and being politely firm with your contacts) will prevent your inbox from becoming the destination for circulated crap.
If I want instant conversations, I pick up the phone or go outside. This is coming from a young guy who is plenty literate with computers! Besides, you can't reliably pick up cues from girls behind a keyboard.
A 'cheating the odds' get-rich scheme mostly just makes money for the people selling the nifty new equipment.
Uh, I don't think there is any get rich quick scheme here. No company currently develops any technology for the scenario I described, nor does that kind of a grid infrastructure exist. This is just an idea from the hydrogen economy people, as I happened to understand it.
The fellas at Ballard Power Systems seem to have an interesting vision in this regard. (I'm trying to recall what I heard on a CBC interview with one of the company's founders, so what I describe here may be partly my own fabrication). Anyway, they describe an electrical grid in which individual cars help generate and store electricity for the entire system. Something about micro power plants. You may choose to sell your power to the grid (when your car is unused), benefitting from the current market price of the power. Similarly, you can purchase electricity and store it in your car (in hydrogen form) hopefully taking advantage of a cheap power rate. Buy low, sell high. Anyway it all seems very interesting to me, an idea of millions of micro power plants contributing to the greater power grid. One big distributed storage and generation system, probably better at absorbing peak power demands too -- you see that it's 1 pm on a hot summer day and the grid will pay big $$ for your power, you take advantage of that.
That thing is still gold, if you can get your hands on one. I used to sample the robotic audio into techno music. Then I started hearing it in the clubs, and I'd be like, damn is that a Speak n Spell? "D. F. F." anyone?
I wrote a typing tutor-esque program at least a decade ago, using GW-Basic no less. It provided educational feedback of various kinds to both students and teachers.
What if you set up your Linux system with User Mode Linux, or your FreeBSD system with FreeBSD jails, like modern hosting companies provide. This will provide your external customer/vendor with root access, but within a locked in virtual server. If your external vendor wants to maintain their database installation, fine: they have root on their own "machine", on their own IP, and there is very little risk to the larger system with real root.
Why not use a blocklist that lists specific IP addresses, rather than wide sweeping ranges? Blocking ranges is always bound to lead to false positives. By using a proper blocklist like CBL or Spamhaus you will still block the majority of abusive traffic, without risking false positives.
I've read a few posts here about this being a bad way to fight spam, because it's an immoral attack in response to a spam attack, and Lycos is open to being sued...
I don't believe this is the case. In the first place, the spam is advertising the URL. They are literally inviting traffic, and the screen saver satisfies the request with traffic.
Second, many sites serving spam are compromised hosts at ISPs that are too lame to control their IP addresses. I highly doubt that the screen saver is going to send traffic to an actual business's web server (e.g. a colocated server that a business is paying money for). Much more likely, the IP address has already been stolen. I don't think anyone is going to sue Lycos for hammering one of their zombies with traffic.
Heck, a friend of mine just heard that a few class A blocks were just assigned to APNIC and immediately firewalled them off. There's got to be a better solution!
This is probably less of a problem than you think. People who block all communications from Asia are just depriving themselves of real business and contacts in the world's most rapidly growing economy. Anyone who conducts serious international business is definitely not going to block Asian IPs -- I certainly don't.
Does anyone know if theyre allowed to "spy" on foreign citizen?
Are you trying to be funny? They're a spy agency. Their goal is to gather intelligence. You think the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, and Koreans love being spied on by the USA? The CIA can damn well spy on anyone they want to, at any time. And of course, the CIA isn't the only international organization spying on you, silly.
I'd think anyone planning crimes on IRC would be a complete moron
People have planned crimes on IRC, and got caught for it. One of the recent instances was someone tied to Foonet talking organizing DDoS attacks -- Foonet got busted by the FBI. These were the fellows that did attacks-for-hire (including against antispam services) if you remember.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm saying this very seriously. They probably run the world's busiest email domain, and get a shitload of spam. If they cooperated with the community, via dcc, or even just by publishing their own blocklist -- other ISPs could start using that list tomorrow to kill pretty much all spam sources.
But Microsoft don't share, I don't buy this bull about how MS is trying to end spam. It would take 2 of their engineers and one week to set up a very effective blocklist just based on the garbage being thrown at hotmail all the time. Then the world would know about virtually all spam sources.
Real Canadian drugs you can trust... you think everyone up here is dropping dead from bad pharms? Fake Canadian pharmacies you should avoid, like these asshole spammers (please slashdot the site into the ground, spam/scam running out of China)
Sweet, what a deal for Americans! Only $0.83 a download, no wait, $0.85, oop, make that $0.92, don't worry guys it'll stop any day now, shit! $1.05 ...
I'm not someone who is pro-military, however I do think that our military shouldn't be so dependent on technology. We have lots of skilled soldiers, but let's be realistic - the proof is in the pudding, if our soldiers are losing against an enemy that doesn't have all those fancy toys, then the fancy toys probably aren't as useful as we think (drone planes etc.). With the huge defence budget, a lot of companies are just dying to get a piece of the pie with their own piece of ultra technology... but real soldiers are flesh and blood killing machines.
Heh, now I can see how USA of the future is going to run the world. A bunch of armed robots rolling around the middle east bringing freedom to every man, woman, and child while obese American schoolchildren hold the remote linked gamepads in their greasy palms, with attention divided between American Idol and a Kraft "cheese" commercial.
If this sytem is so accurate, maybe they can put the sucker in space so it can hear an ICBM whooshing by. That might be a bit more accurate than the piece-of-shit "missile defence" laser based tracking systems they've been testing.
I'm in my early 20s, and have some major difficulties with IM. Some of my contacts are younger and do prefer IM for almost everything, but I get the sense that they are suffering from continual distractions. Some have admitted to me, jokingly, that they are "addicted to MSN". I think this isn't far from the truth.
An instant conversation is nice to have, but if you have ongoing conversations throughout the day you simply can not focus on your computer work!
People often think they are smarter than they actually are. I am willing to acknowledge that I don't have the mental capacity to seriously work on more than one thing at a time. I prefer the operation of email, since communications get queued up and will be answered at my convenience. Not only are they queued up (Jabber, ICQ does that too of course) but this is the expected mode of operation, so there is no etiquette problem with delays on the order of days before a reply.
Another thing is, most of my friends who are non-techies have given up on email because: spam, and junk from friends. Well, neither of these is really a problem: wonderful, free spam filtering systems exist that will reliably get rid of 99% of your spam, and simple self discipline (and being politely firm with your contacts) will prevent your inbox from becoming the destination for circulated crap.
If I want instant conversations, I pick up the phone or go outside. This is coming from a young guy who is plenty literate with computers! Besides, you can't reliably pick up cues from girls behind a keyboard.
The fellas at Ballard Power Systems seem to have an interesting vision in this regard. (I'm trying to recall what I heard on a CBC interview with one of the company's founders, so what I describe here may be partly my own fabrication). Anyway, they describe an electrical grid in which individual cars help generate and store electricity for the entire system. Something about micro power plants. You may choose to sell your power to the grid (when your car is unused), benefitting from the current market price of the power. Similarly, you can purchase electricity and store it in your car (in hydrogen form) hopefully taking advantage of a cheap power rate. Buy low, sell high. Anyway it all seems very interesting to me, an idea of millions of micro power plants contributing to the greater power grid. One big distributed storage and generation system, probably better at absorbing peak power demands too -- you see that it's 1 pm on a hot summer day and the grid will pay big $$ for your power, you take advantage of that.
I wrote a typing tutor-esque program at least a decade ago, using GW-Basic no less. It provided educational feedback of various kinds to both students and teachers.
What if you set up your Linux system with User Mode Linux, or your FreeBSD system with FreeBSD jails, like modern hosting companies provide. This will provide your external customer/vendor with root access, but within a locked in virtual server. If your external vendor wants to maintain their database installation, fine: they have root on their own "machine", on their own IP, and there is very little risk to the larger system with real root.
Why not use a blocklist that lists specific IP addresses, rather than wide sweeping ranges? Blocking ranges is always bound to lead to false positives. By using a proper blocklist like CBL or Spamhaus you will still block the majority of abusive traffic, without risking false positives.
I've read a few posts here about this being a bad way to fight spam, because it's an immoral attack in response to a spam attack, and Lycos is open to being sued...
I don't believe this is the case. In the first place, the spam is advertising the URL. They are literally inviting traffic, and the screen saver satisfies the request with traffic.
Second, many sites serving spam are compromised hosts at ISPs that are too lame to control their IP addresses. I highly doubt that the screen saver is going to send traffic to an actual business's web server (e.g. a colocated server that a business is paying money for). Much more likely, the IP address has already been stolen. I don't think anyone is going to sue Lycos for hammering one of their zombies with traffic.
Open source TV would be great, as long as there aren't any Windows ads
I say slashdot bring back Geeks in Space (yeah that's right, I found the old school link).
Hey, can't have a police state without keeping your eyes on your own. You never know when the citizens turn unpatriotic.