If I pay for $40/month for personal unlimited bandwidth (well, up to the extents of the cable modem), I don't see a problem with using all of it. I paid for their network. Now I'll do what I want with it. If a company offers unlimited bandwidth of any type for $40/month, they made a mistake - I can see every business moving to it. If they offered $40/month for unlimited personal bandwidth, and I decide I want to download Madonna MP3s 24/7, that's my problem, but quite within the terms of service.
Unfortunately, the parent of my post was modded down to 0 at last check. The original post was in regards to abusing an unlimited cable account, and I said that was justified. I don't believe that a user shouldn't have to pay more money for exceeding their bandwidth maximum if TimeWarner changes their terms to that. However, if a company offers an unlimited account, I don't see any problem in using it.
That's flawed thinking. It's like going to a $5.99 all you can eat buffet and eat all the food on the buffet. Now that's bad manners, not to mention the pissed people in the buffet restaurant that can't get all the food they want cause you're hogging it all.
Correct, but to argue semantics, many buffet restruants put out more food than could possibly consumed. However, everyone else has the same opportunity to eat the whole buffet. Let's assume the following scenario - the buffet is replenished every hour (bandwidth; er, foodwidth?). There are fifteen people at the buffet (the subbuffet). Everybody wants the maximum food possible, so each eats 1/15th of the buffet an hour. Since there isn't any more food, noone can eat more, and there can't be any more hogging. However, if each of the fifteen people only wants to eat 1/30th of the buffet, there's still 1/2 of the buffet left for the taking - if one person eats that 1/2, there's no loss to the rest of the group. Essentially, I see it as the same for bandwidth - it's all shared.
I believe it's called the subsitution effect - no you can't get other cable providers, but you can get DSL (hopefully), wireless, or a nice fat T1 line:) However, I agree that having identical upload and download limits doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Why not? If I follow the terms of the terms of service, I see it as the providers problem, not mine
I paid for the service - essentially you're telling me if I go to McDonalds and eat all of the food I ordered, I have bad manners. I draw the line at breaking the terms of service - I see it as a contract for the service rendered. "Back in the old days", the internet was an academic resource. Now it's a commercial resource. It costs money. For money, I get a service. If I don't use that service, it's my perogative. If I use the service as much as I possibly can, it's my perogative. It might be their network, but for the time I "rent it" for $40/month, I'll do the hell I want with it.
The most insightful post to be made, I do believe. Bandwidth ain't cheap, and even a 256 kbps connection running 24 hours a day at full capacity costs a whole lot of money. I doubt TimeWarner will set the limit very low - people would stop subscribing, especially when there are other competitors to relocate to. I'd be guessing something along the terms of site hosting - 2-3 gB a month. It's only a small percentage of users that exceed that, but they're the ones that cost TimeWarner a lot of money. I think the move is beneficial - by capping the topend users, they reduce the cost for everybody.
The most useful and widely used benefit
on
JPEG2000 Coming Soon
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· Score: 3, Funny
Congratulations, you've discovered Einstein's Theory of Relativity;)
The only problem is that the energy required to approach the speed of light is logarithmic (or possibly exponential; I really don't have much knowledge of relativity. I'm sure someone will correct me.) - that is, it takes more energy to go 99% c to 99.01% c than it does to go from 0% c to 0.01% c (ignoring friction). Near c, the energy required to maintain the speed approaches infinity, and at c, the energy required is infinity. While what you say is possible, it'd require near-infinite amounts of energy. Even at lower speeds, the dilation of time isn't worth the massive energy expenditures. Remember, we still can't go more than about 0.005% c:)
Well, no, that'd be counterproductive. As freenet stands now, data that isn't accessed frequently assigned to fewer and fewer computers, and eventually, if the size of the freenet archive exceeds the size of the freenet's combined storage capacity, it could be deleted. Shakespeare might disappear in favor of Brittany Speares in the nude.
Gnutella and other more "traditional" P2P systems face other problems. While unpopular archived data would not be deleted as freenet does, all data is dependent on who wants to keep it on their computer. I'd prefer to keep the soundtrack to [i]Gattaca[/i] on my computer instead of the Domesday book. While there are most likely some people who would take upon the task of archiving important files on their computers, the survivability of those files is dependent on the willingness of the people to store them. If one person decides to stop sharing their copy of Othello it has essentially disappeared. While distributing the Library of Congress among all US citizens' houses may seem a noble idea to protect against an attack, it's still possible that the Constitution will disappear when someone's house burns down.
Doesn't this seem surprisingly similiar to the B5 movie A Call to Arms and the series Crusade? I'd've thought JMS would be just a bit imaginative in thinking of new series.
Maybe this will mean copyrights will no longer be enforced after authors are dead, or that the government will no longer try to prevent people from copying a CD for their person use, or maybe even that a computer class could examine source code without having to sign non-disclosure agreements and sell their soul to the devil.
Copyright is essential, but it has been taken a bit too seriously lately.
GCP says: Perhaps we could also use the "plus convention" to allow users to effectively manage their own email address(es). Many servers are set up so that if my assigned email address is fred@foo.com, then fred+[anystring]@foo.com is still sent to fred. Tell your friends to address you as fred+friend@foo.com, and then have your client sort the "+friend" messages into a friends folder.
I think that's a good idea, but only a short-term solution. If it ever becomes wide-spread, spammers will just use brute force and send emails to fred+%dictionary_word@foo.com. It wouldn't even be that hard - most likely, people would somewhere accidentally post their "secret" email address (which happens right now) and a spambot would pick that up. Above that, most people would use common words, "secret", "spam", "free", etc. There would be huge incentive to break the system for the spammer - if they're the first to find out how to bypass the secret system, their spams are able to be read by everyone, while other spams will be filtered out. It'll simply be a race to be the first spammer to be "heard".
The solution must inevitably be, in my mind, to make spam cost something. Not necessarily money, but some sort of tangible resource. Various solutions have been proposed, all of which in my mind are not completely up to the task. However, they're the only effective long-term solution. So long as spam is free, there's no disadvantage to sending 1,000,000 emails to get one responce. I personally like Adam Backs' Hashcash program, which is at www.cypherspace.org/~adam/hashcash/> . However, the site seems to be down at the moment, so one can use Google's quite convinient cache of it at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:-g8yVfQ3vFwC: www.cypherspace.org/~adam/hashcash/.
Tracking spam to the source Finding firms behind junk e-mail is harder than just deleting By Stacy Forster
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Feb. 7 -- "Lose 20 pounds in 8 days"... "Your Million $$$$s Is Waiting"... "Exciting Home
Business Opportunity!!!!" Every day, we're deluged with junk e-mail, popularly called spam. Fad diets, home-refinancing
offers, pornography -- you name it -- pile up in our in-boxes. We've never heard of most of the companies sending the e-
mails, and many of the offers are for products and services we don't need. Almost all end up in the electronic trash can
moments after we read the subject line. STILL, WE'RE curious. Who is sending this stuff? How did they get our e-mail
boxes? Who runs the companies behind these offers? And what would happen if a person actually followed up and tried to
buy something? Armed with a fresh batch of junk mail -- culled from a work e-mail account, a personal account and from a
number of personal accounts created just for this story -- we set out to answer these questions.
E-MAIL HARVESTING I get at least 25 spams a day in my personal account, advertising every business in the book. A good portion of it promotes online porn, but I also received a fair share touting business opportunities and herbal health remedies. Rarely did I get spam from companies that are household names. Using my name and a combination of six numbers, I created a few new accounts through free online services such as Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail and Yahoo Inc.'s YahooMail. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.) I provided different registration information for each account, then sat back and waited for the deluge. It didn't take long. In only one of the e-mail accounts, I provided all of the information requested (name, address, demographics, etc.) during the registration process, and I used this e-mail address just one time -- to purchase a gift certificate from Borders.com. Less than a week later, the spam started rolling in -- jamming the in-box with more spam than the other new accounts I had created. Anne Rodems, customer-service manager for Borders.com, the online service run by Borders Group Inc., says its privacy policy prohibits Borders from selling or renting any of its customers' e-mail addresses, so it's unlikely that my e-mail address was passed along by them. Yahoo's privacy policy also bars selling or renting users' information, says Lisa Pollock, director of messaging products for Yahoo. I contacted one of the spammers, Dial Direct USA, a long-distance telephone provider in Fond du Lac, Wis., to ask how it acquired my e-mail address. Tom Johnson, the company's marketing director, says he gets e-mail addresses from an e-mail harvesting program called Target 2001, made by Microsys Technologies Inc. of Findlay, Ohio. E-mail harvesters are computer programs that scan Web sites and databases for addresses and gather them for spammers. Dial Direct's Johnson says e-mail has been an effective marketing tool for his small business, which competes with such telecommunications giants as AT&T Corp. and Sprint Corp. Dial Direct sends about 15,000 e-mails a day to potential customers in targeted areas, and the mailings net the company about 10 to 15 new clients a day, Johnson says.
NO LOVE LOST HERE A spam from one of the other e-mail accounts that caught my eye was one after my own heart -- literally. A message from "lrichey@123goal.com" promised to provide me with an online place where I could meet thousands of other singles. "Find Your True Love Here," the e-mail beckoned, followed by a link to a Web site called Date.com. My e-mail reply to "lrichey" was returned as undeliverable. The online-dating site included lists of personal ads for singles all over the country. The site doesn't ask for payment to submit a profile, but when users convert to "premium" memberships -- which allows other members to contact them -- they must pay $25. New York-based Date.com says the e-mail I received didn't come from it, but instead was generated by one of its Web affiliates that gets paid for driving traffic to the Date.com Web site. Although the company does send e-mail marketing pitches to people who have opted in to receive them, Date.com Chief Executive Meir Strahlberg says the company has a zero-tolerance policy for spammers. "[Date.com] is a real, legitimate company that has a legitimate service," he says, noting that the site signs up 7,000 to 10,000 new users a day. Date.com is the fifth-largest personals site, with 1.2 million unique visitors in December 2001, according to Internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. The company pays affiliate Web sites a commission of $25 for each free user that registers with the site, then Date.com works to convert them to paying members. Getting them to pay for that second month is where Date.com makes its money, Strahlberg says. E-mail marketing to people who have opted to accept sales pitches is part of a larger advertising strategy that also includes banner ads. But the equation is dependent on relationships with the other Web sites that drive traffic to Date.com. "Sometimes these Web masters go beyond the terms and conditions that we set forth," Strahlberg says. "They send it and we have no way of controlling it other than cutting off their accounts." A peek at the Date.com site's privacy policy revealed that to register for the site, users must give "personally identifiable information" such as Social Security numbers or bank- account information. Not what I'd call privacy. Strahlberg says individuals are asked to supply the "personally identifiable information" only when making a payment, and that the company guards that information closely and doesn't sell or rent it to third parties. I called the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York, which had started a file on the company in mid-January. The BBB had received some inquiries about Date.com and had sent a questionnaire to the Web site for more information, says Susan McMillan, a spokeswoman for the BBB. No one from Date.com has responded; Strahlberg says Date.com hasn't received the questionnaire, but the company's legal department is now looking into it.
REAL_BUSINESS_AT_HOME Facing a two-hour-each-way commute these days, working from home is sounding better every day. A message from "thefutureisnow4u" boasted its service could help me make $2,000 a week from my home using just a computer and telephone, and wouldn't require me to do any selling. Sweet. I called "Mel & Jan" at the toll- free number listed at the bottom of the e-mail. A recording said I could earn up to $5,000 as long as I was "coachable and teachable," and it instructed me to leave some basic details to receive more information. I left my phone number and area code, twice, after being instructed to by the recording... which also said the company's decision about calling me back would hinge on my ability to follow directions. Later that day, a woman who would identify herself only as "Jan" returned my message. When I told her I was a reporter and wanted more information, she said she didn't have time to talk at length about her business because more than 4,000 people had responded to her electronic ad. Jan said she and her husband run a consulting firm called MJ Enterprises, which helps people set up home offices. She declined to provide more details on how the business works. "I help budding entrepreneurs find the right opportunity for them," she said, before abruptly hanging up on me. Further calls to the toll-free number went unreturned. These work-at-home offers aren't confined to the Internet, but can reach a broader audience there and therefore have become more prolific, says Jennifer Mandigo, a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. She stressed that not all work-from- home opportunities are scams, but consumers need to pay close attention to the claims being made. "If the advertisement is making promises about how much you can make doing this work at home job, it's probably not going to pan out," she says. Sigh. Guess I'll keep my day job.
'NON-ACCREDITED UNIVERSITY' Tracing that e-mail proved a lot easier than spam sent to some of my other Hotmail accounts. One message, from "AdamGreenpea@excite.com," offered to sell me a diploma from a "prestigious non- accredited" university for an undisclosed cost. I tried to respond to the address provided in his e-mail, but the message was returned to me as being undeliverable. The e-mail also included a phone number in Chicago, but the same solicitation sent to one of my colleagues directed me to a phone number in New York. I made a quick call to both offices of the "University Degree Program," and was instructed by voice mail to leave my name and two phone numbers for more information. A company representative from the New York number phoned me back the next morning. After I explained the reason for my call, the suddenly highly agitated woman rushed me off the phone but promised to have someone call me back to explain the program. A person claiming to be associated with the University Degree Program returned my phone call, but declined to be interviewed by telephone for this story. I decided to check the Better Business Bureau to see if any complaints had been filed about the company. The only listing for a company with that name was based in California City, Calif., and a call to the BBB chapter there turned up nothing but a report that the company was classified as a school or academic institution, and was entered in the system in November 2001. Vicky Phillips, chief executive of GetEducated.com, a distance-learning research and consulting firm in Essex Junction, Vt., says that in general "degree mills" like these are an old scam. "The Internet has made it easier to target people," she says. Companies that offer diplomas or degrees for a fee, and don't require purchasers to submit transcripts or take any tests -- neither of which were a pre-requisite in the spam I received -- are tipoffs that the degrees are worthless, Phillips says. Having a degree from a college or university that's not accredited is "sort of like having a luxury car with no engine," she says. So much for higher education.
SLIM CHANCE Running down an e-mail that promised a "healthier, slimmer and more vibrant" me turned out to be harder than losing those last 10 pounds. According to the ad, the diet product, called "2-Day Slim Down," is made with aloe vera and "a futuristic blend of thermogenic herbs" that burn fat. It also claimed to have 100 percent of the required levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that an average person needs in a day. For $39.95, I'd get a bottle of the 2-Day Slim Down and a bottle of PermaSlim Fat Burning Capsules to help keep the weight off. But all attempts to track the e-mail proved futile. There is no company name, phone number or contact information anywhere on the Web site, even in the area where customers are asked to place an order. Buyers can either pay by credit card or send money electronically from a bank account. The 2-Day Slim Down diet Web site was a subdirectory of a main site called "www.1monthfree.biz." A domain-name registry search for that URL indicated that someone named Josh Lambert was the contact for "1monthfree." I tried calling the phone number in the registry, but it had been disconnected. E-mails to Josh Lambert went unanswered. Roxanne Moore, a registered dietitian in Baltimore, Md., and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said the 2-Day Slim Down product would likely work as a laxative, cleansing your body's systems but not really doing anything to change eating habits or add nutritional value -- the cornerstones of a healthy weight-loss plan. "The weight is off Monday and Tuesday, but it's back on by Saturday," she says. "These [products] are always on the market and if one was successful, it would be the only one." The FTC encourages consumers to forward unsolicited commercial spam to uce@ftc.gov.
I'm rather ambiguous about the open source "movement", but I have to appreciate any company that gives out their products when they no longer are being supported. I've been screwed too many times with products that were truly good, but just a year out of date.
Hopefully other companies will take bungie.net's lead and release server software as well. In my mind, it can't hurt the company (although some way will probably be pointed out to me:) ), it simply allows their software to be even better supported. It extends the "shelf-life" of the software - maybe they'll make some money from the $5 bargain bin, even if the company is no longer running the server for the product. It also allows for very quick security fixes, and for playability fixes that usually take weeks to months for companies to implement. I can already invision custom designed servers for different groups.
Or this might just be my ever idealistic mind... Til later.
I would love a consumer-level system that allowed me to record video onto a DVD-quality media. Unfortunately, I'd have to find a device to defeat the MacroVision encoding on the DVD discs (not that they don't exist, I just don't have one;) ), or, alternatively, a TV source that I could record for decent quality (the cable here sucks, there's no point in recording on anything but VHS tapes).
However, I don't think the average person in the public does. I really don't think the average person cares that their DVD player offers higher resolution video than a poorly recorded VHS tape. The average person uses the standard RCA cables that come with their VCR. The average person uses the speakers that're in their TV. The average person doesn't rip MP3s at 256 kbps.
There's very little economic justification for creating such a system. CDs were introduced in the mid-1980s. CD-Rs weren't widespread until the late-1990s. Most people don't record things. It's not worth the bother. Even when people could record CDs onto tape without any copy protection mechanisms to deal with, people still prefered to buy CDs. It's simply easier. Additionally, most people don't record rented videos. It's easily possible. Just look in any electronics magazine and buy a MacroVision defeater. However, for all the effort of stringing two VCRs together and getting the recording to work, most people would rather just buy the VCR.
It's not value customers contend with, it's convinience. Everyone knows that MP3s are traded online, but it's still a relatively few number of people that have more than 10 or so songs from online. Why bother after all? On a 56.6kbps dialup, each song is (assuming no disconnects) a 30 minute download. Now think of movies. It just took me a whole night to download a single episode of Futurama. I'm hoping to get broadband relatively soon, but I don't think even with broadband that burning movies will become commonplace soon.
I've gone on a complete tangent, but the message is quite clear. Even if consumers have a DVHS system that'll be able to record video at DVD resolution, they still won't bother. Remember, it's not that the consumer is always right, it's that the consumer is always stupid.
If someone desired to work in the spam industry, this would seem the most efficient way to get in. When in Rome, do as the Romans do:)
Very Semantical Correction
on
A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 4, Interesting
John Nash never received a Nobel Prize.
The only "real" Nobel prizes are the ones in chemistry, peace, literature, physics, and medicine/physiology. Those were the ones established by Alfred Nobel in his will, and first awarded in 1901.
The Nobel prize for Economics was established about 70 years later, in 1968. The Bank of Sweden created a foundation to award, "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It was basically a marketting ploy to celebrate it's 300th anniversary.:)
While the selection process is done similarly (the Economics award is done by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, which also awards the prizes for chemistry and physics), the awards are quite distinct. Some physicians will complain bitterly if one mentions the Nobel Prize in Economics, since economics is not a "real" science.
I agree, but with HDTV, most of the spectrum assigned to WKRC-TV isn't going to be used anyways. Most channels get enough spectrum for ~16 HDTV channels, so unless the station has 16 channels to broadcast, most of the spectrum they have will be put to waste anyways. I'd rather have (possibly) cheap broadband than wasted spectrum.
What would more appropriate to use the spectrum for, anyways?
Slashdot Mirror
If I pay for $40/month for personal unlimited bandwidth (well, up to the extents of the cable modem), I don't see a problem with using all of it. I paid for their network. Now I'll do what I want with it. If a company offers unlimited bandwidth of any type for $40/month, they made a mistake - I can see every business moving to it. If they offered $40/month for unlimited personal bandwidth, and I decide I want to download Madonna MP3s 24/7, that's my problem, but quite within the terms of service.
Unfortunately, the parent of my post was modded down to 0 at last check. The original post was in regards to abusing an unlimited cable account, and I said that was justified. I don't believe that a user shouldn't have to pay more money for exceeding their bandwidth maximum if TimeWarner changes their terms to that. However, if a company offers an unlimited account, I don't see any problem in using it.
That's flawed thinking. It's like going to a $5.99 all you can eat buffet and eat all the food on the buffet. Now that's bad manners, not to mention the pissed people in the buffet restaurant that can't get all the food they want cause you're hogging it all.
Correct, but to argue semantics, many buffet restruants put out more food than could possibly consumed. However, everyone else has the same opportunity to eat the whole buffet. Let's assume the following scenario - the buffet is replenished every hour (bandwidth; er, foodwidth?). There are fifteen people at the buffet (the subbuffet). Everybody wants the maximum food possible, so each eats 1/15th of the buffet an hour. Since there isn't any more food, noone can eat more, and there can't be any more hogging. However, if each of the fifteen people only wants to eat 1/30th of the buffet, there's still 1/2 of the buffet left for the taking - if one person eats that 1/2, there's no loss to the rest of the group. Essentially, I see it as the same for bandwidth - it's all shared.
I believe it's called the subsitution effect - no you can't get other cable providers, but you can get DSL (hopefully), wireless, or a nice fat T1 line :) However, I agree that having identical upload and download limits doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Why not? If I follow the terms of the terms of service, I see it as the providers problem, not mine
I paid for the service - essentially you're telling me if I go to McDonalds and eat all of the food I ordered, I have bad manners. I draw the line at breaking the terms of service - I see it as a contract for the service rendered. "Back in the old days", the internet was an academic resource. Now it's a commercial resource. It costs money. For money, I get a service. If I don't use that service, it's my perogative. If I use the service as much as I possibly can, it's my perogative. It might be their network, but for the time I "rent it" for $40/month, I'll do the hell I want with it.
The most insightful post to be made, I do believe. Bandwidth ain't cheap, and even a 256 kbps connection running 24 hours a day at full capacity costs a whole lot of money. I doubt TimeWarner will set the limit very low - people would stop subscribing, especially when there are other competitors to relocate to. I'd be guessing something along the terms of site hosting - 2-3 gB a month. It's only a small percentage of users that exceed that, but they're the ones that cost TimeWarner a lot of money. I think the move is beneficial - by capping the topend users, they reduce the cost for everybody.
More pr0n, quicker.
Congratulations, you've discovered Einstein's Theory of Relativity ;)
The only problem is that the energy required to approach the speed of light is logarithmic (or possibly exponential; I really don't have much knowledge of relativity. I'm sure someone will correct me.) - that is, it takes more energy to go 99% c to 99.01% c than it does to go from 0% c to 0.01% c (ignoring friction). Near c, the energy required to maintain the speed approaches infinity, and at c, the energy required is infinity. While what you say is possible, it'd require near-infinite amounts of energy. Even at lower speeds, the dilation of time isn't worth the massive energy expenditures. Remember, we still can't go more than about 0.005% c :)
I said: [i]Gattaca[/i] Ah, so this isn't UBB? Oops :)
Well, no, that'd be counterproductive. As freenet stands now, data that isn't accessed frequently assigned to fewer and fewer computers, and eventually, if the size of the freenet archive exceeds the size of the freenet's combined storage capacity, it could be deleted. Shakespeare might disappear in favor of Brittany Speares in the nude.
Gnutella and other more "traditional" P2P systems face other problems. While unpopular archived data would not be deleted as freenet does, all data is dependent on who wants to keep it on their computer. I'd prefer to keep the soundtrack to [i]Gattaca[/i] on my computer instead of the Domesday book. While there are most likely some people who would take upon the task of archiving important files on their computers, the survivability of those files is dependent on the willingness of the people to store them. If one person decides to stop sharing their copy of Othello it has essentially disappeared. While distributing the Library of Congress among all US citizens' houses may seem a noble idea to protect against an attack, it's still possible that the Constitution will disappear when someone's house burns down.
Doesn't this seem surprisingly similiar to the B5 movie A Call to Arms and the series Crusade? I'd've thought JMS would be just a bit imaginative in thinking of new series.
Maybe this will mean copyrights will no longer be enforced after authors are dead, or that the government will no longer try to prevent people from copying a CD for their person use, or maybe even that a computer class could examine source code without having to sign non-disclosure agreements and sell their soul to the devil. Copyright is essential, but it has been taken a bit too seriously lately.
Additionally, f = ma, not f = mg :)
Rather semantical though, since g is a form of a.
GCP says: Perhaps we could also use the "plus convention" to allow users to effectively manage their own email address(es). Many servers are set up so that if my assigned email address is fred@foo.com, then fred+[anystring]@foo.com is still sent to fred. Tell your friends to address you as fred+friend@foo.com, and then have your client sort the "+friend" messages into a friends folder.
: www.cypherspace.org/~adam/hashcash/.
I think that's a good idea, but only a short-term solution. If it ever becomes wide-spread, spammers will just use brute force and send emails to fred+%dictionary_word@foo.com. It wouldn't even be that hard - most likely, people would somewhere accidentally post their "secret" email address (which happens right now) and a spambot would pick that up. Above that, most people would use common words, "secret", "spam", "free", etc. There would be huge incentive to break the system for the spammer - if they're the first to find out how to bypass the secret system, their spams are able to be read by everyone, while other spams will be filtered out. It'll simply be a race to be the first spammer to be "heard".
The solution must inevitably be, in my mind, to make spam cost something. Not necessarily money, but some sort of tangible resource. Various solutions have been proposed, all of which in my mind are not completely up to the task. However, they're the only effective long-term solution. So long as spam is free, there's no disadvantage to sending 1,000,000 emails to get one responce. I personally like Adam Backs' Hashcash program, which is at www.cypherspace.org/~adam/hashcash/> . However, the site seems to be down at the moment, so one can use Google's quite convinient cache of it at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:-g8yVfQ3vFwC
Tracking spam to the source ... "Your Million $$$$s Is Waiting" ... "Exciting Home
Business Opportunity!!!!" Every day, we're deluged with junk e-mail, popularly called spam. Fad diets, home-refinancing
offers, pornography -- you name it -- pile up in our in-boxes. We've never heard of most of the companies sending the e-
mails, and many of the offers are for products and services we don't need. Almost all end up in the electronic trash can
moments after we read the subject line. STILL, WE'RE curious. Who is sending this stuff? How did they get our e-mail
boxes? Who runs the companies behind these offers? And what would happen if a person actually followed up and tried to
buy something? Armed with a fresh batch of junk mail -- culled from a work e-mail account, a personal account and from a
number of personal accounts created just for this story -- we set out to answer these questions.
... which also said the company's decision about calling me back would hinge on my ability to follow directions. Later that day, a woman who would identify herself only as "Jan" returned my message. When I told her I was a reporter and wanted more information, she said she didn't have time to talk at length about her business because more than 4,000 people had responded to her electronic ad. Jan said she and her husband run a consulting firm called MJ Enterprises, which helps people set up home offices. She declined to provide more details on how the business works. "I help budding entrepreneurs find the right opportunity for them," she said, before abruptly hanging up on me. Further calls to the toll-free number went unreturned. These work-at-home offers aren't confined to the Internet, but can reach a broader audience there and therefore have become more prolific, says Jennifer Mandigo, a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. She stressed that not all work-from- home opportunities are scams, but consumers need to pay close attention to the claims being made. "If the advertisement is making promises about how much you can make doing this work at home job, it's probably not going to pan out," she says. Sigh. Guess I'll keep my day job.
Finding firms behind junk e-mail is harder than just deleting
By Stacy Forster
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Feb. 7 -- "Lose 20 pounds in 8 days"
E-MAIL HARVESTING
I get at least 25 spams a day in my personal account, advertising every business in the book. A good portion of it promotes online porn, but I also received a fair share touting business opportunities and herbal health remedies. Rarely did I get spam from companies that are household names. Using my name and a combination of six numbers, I created a few new accounts through free online services such as Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail and Yahoo Inc.'s YahooMail. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.) I provided different registration information for each account, then sat back and waited for the deluge. It didn't take long. In only one of the e-mail accounts, I provided all of the information requested (name, address, demographics, etc.) during the registration process, and I used this e-mail address just one time -- to purchase a gift certificate from Borders.com. Less than a week later, the spam started rolling in -- jamming the in-box with more spam than the other new accounts I had created. Anne Rodems, customer-service manager for Borders.com, the online service run by Borders Group Inc., says its privacy policy prohibits Borders from selling or renting any of its customers' e-mail addresses, so it's unlikely that my e-mail address was passed along by them. Yahoo's privacy policy also bars selling or renting users' information, says Lisa Pollock, director of messaging products for Yahoo. I contacted one of the spammers, Dial Direct USA, a long-distance telephone provider in Fond du Lac, Wis., to ask how it acquired my e-mail address. Tom Johnson, the company's marketing director, says he gets e-mail addresses from an e-mail harvesting program called Target 2001, made by Microsys Technologies Inc. of Findlay, Ohio. E-mail harvesters are computer programs that scan Web sites and databases for addresses and gather them for spammers. Dial Direct's Johnson says e-mail has been an effective marketing tool for his small business, which competes with such telecommunications giants as AT&T Corp. and Sprint Corp. Dial Direct sends about 15,000 e-mails a day to potential customers in targeted areas, and the mailings net the company about 10 to 15 new clients a day, Johnson says.
NO LOVE LOST HERE
A spam from one of the other e-mail accounts that caught my eye was one after my own heart -- literally. A message from "lrichey@123goal.com" promised to provide me with an online place where I could meet thousands of other singles. "Find Your True Love Here," the e-mail beckoned, followed by a link to a Web site called Date.com. My e-mail reply to "lrichey" was returned as undeliverable. The online-dating site included lists of personal ads for singles all over the country. The site doesn't ask for payment to submit a profile, but when users convert to "premium" memberships -- which allows other members to contact them -- they must pay $25. New York-based Date.com says the e-mail I received didn't come from it, but instead was generated by one of its Web affiliates that gets paid for driving traffic to the Date.com Web site. Although the company does send e-mail marketing pitches to people who have opted in to receive them, Date.com Chief Executive Meir Strahlberg says the company has a zero-tolerance policy for spammers. "[Date.com] is a real, legitimate company that has a legitimate service," he says, noting that the site signs up 7,000 to 10,000 new users a day. Date.com is the fifth-largest personals site, with 1.2 million unique visitors in December 2001, according to Internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. The company pays affiliate Web sites a commission of $25 for each free user that registers with the site, then Date.com works to convert them to paying members. Getting them to pay for that second month is where Date.com makes its money, Strahlberg says. E-mail marketing to people who have opted to accept sales pitches is part of a larger advertising strategy that also includes banner ads. But the equation is dependent on relationships with the other Web sites that drive traffic to Date.com. "Sometimes these Web masters go beyond the terms and conditions that we set forth," Strahlberg says. "They send it and we have no way of controlling it other than cutting off their accounts." A peek at the Date.com site's privacy policy revealed that to register for the site, users must give "personally identifiable information" such as Social Security numbers or bank- account information. Not what I'd call privacy. Strahlberg says individuals are asked to supply the "personally identifiable information" only when making a payment, and that the company guards that information closely and doesn't sell or rent it to third parties. I called the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York, which had started a file on the company in mid-January. The BBB had received some inquiries about Date.com and had sent a questionnaire to the Web site for more information, says Susan McMillan, a spokeswoman for the BBB. No one from Date.com has responded; Strahlberg says Date.com hasn't received the questionnaire, but the company's legal department is now looking into it.
REAL_BUSINESS_AT_HOME
Facing a two-hour-each-way commute these days, working from home is sounding better every day. A message from "thefutureisnow4u" boasted its service could help me make $2,000 a week from my home using just a computer and telephone, and wouldn't require me to do any selling. Sweet. I called "Mel & Jan" at the toll- free number listed at the bottom of the e-mail. A recording said I could earn up to $5,000 as long as I was "coachable and teachable," and it instructed me to leave some basic details to receive more information. I left my phone number and area code, twice, after being instructed to by the recording
'NON-ACCREDITED UNIVERSITY'
Tracing that e-mail proved a lot easier than spam sent to some of my other Hotmail accounts. One message, from "AdamGreenpea@excite.com," offered to sell me a diploma from a "prestigious non- accredited" university for an undisclosed cost. I tried to respond to the address provided in his e-mail, but the message was returned to me as being undeliverable. The e-mail also included a phone number in Chicago, but the same solicitation sent to one of my colleagues directed me to a phone number in New York. I made a quick call to both offices of the "University Degree Program," and was instructed by voice mail to leave my name and two phone numbers for more information. A company representative from the New York number phoned me back the next morning. After I explained the reason for my call, the suddenly highly agitated woman rushed me off the phone but promised to have someone call me back to explain the program. A person claiming to be associated with the University Degree Program returned my phone call, but declined to be interviewed by telephone for this story. I decided to check the Better Business Bureau to see if any complaints had been filed about the company. The only listing for a company with that name was based in California City, Calif., and a call to the BBB chapter there turned up nothing but a report that the company was classified as a school or academic institution, and was entered in the system in November 2001. Vicky Phillips, chief executive of GetEducated.com, a distance-learning research and consulting firm in Essex Junction, Vt., says that in general "degree mills" like these are an old scam. "The Internet has made it easier to target people," she says. Companies that offer diplomas or degrees for a fee, and don't require purchasers to submit transcripts or take any tests -- neither of which were a pre-requisite in the spam I received -- are tipoffs that the degrees are worthless, Phillips says. Having a degree from a college or university that's not accredited is "sort of like having a luxury car with no engine," she says. So much for higher education.
SLIM CHANCE
Running down an e-mail that promised a "healthier, slimmer and more vibrant" me turned out to be harder than losing those last 10 pounds. According to the ad, the diet product, called "2-Day Slim Down," is made with aloe vera and "a futuristic blend of thermogenic herbs" that burn fat. It also claimed to have 100 percent of the required levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that an average person needs in a day. For $39.95, I'd get a bottle of the 2-Day Slim Down and a bottle of PermaSlim Fat Burning Capsules to help keep the weight off. But all attempts to track the e-mail proved futile. There is no company name, phone number or contact information anywhere on the Web site, even in the area where customers are asked to place an order. Buyers can either pay by credit card or send money electronically from a bank account. The 2-Day Slim Down diet Web site was a subdirectory of a main site called "www.1monthfree.biz." A domain-name registry search for that URL indicated that someone named Josh Lambert was the contact for "1monthfree." I tried calling the phone number in the registry, but it had been disconnected. E-mails to Josh Lambert went unanswered. Roxanne Moore, a registered dietitian in Baltimore, Md., and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said the 2-Day Slim Down product would likely work as a laxative, cleansing your body's systems but not really doing anything to change eating habits or add nutritional value -- the cornerstones of a healthy weight-loss plan. "The weight is off Monday and Tuesday, but it's back on by Saturday," she says. "These [products] are always on the market and if one was successful, it would be the only one." The FTC encourages consumers to forward unsolicited commercial spam to uce@ftc.gov.
I'm rather ambiguous about the open source "movement", but I have to appreciate any company that gives out their products when they no longer are being supported. I've been screwed too many times with products that were truly good, but just a year out of date.
:) ), it simply allows their software to be even better supported. It extends the "shelf-life" of the software - maybe they'll make some money from the $5 bargain bin, even if the company is no longer running the server for the product. It also allows for very quick security fixes, and for playability fixes that usually take weeks to months for companies to implement. I can already invision custom designed servers for different groups.
Hopefully other companies will take bungie.net's lead and release server software as well. In my mind, it can't hurt the company (although some way will probably be pointed out to me
Or this might just be my ever idealistic mind... Til later.
Unfortunately, the link is slightly misdone. Try http://www.radwin.org/michael/projects/voting.html
Well, I have to disagree.
;) ), or, alternatively, a TV source that I could record for decent quality (the cable here sucks, there's no point in recording on anything but VHS tapes).
I would love a consumer-level system that allowed me to record video onto a DVD-quality media. Unfortunately, I'd have to find a device to defeat the MacroVision encoding on the DVD discs (not that they don't exist, I just don't have one
However, I don't think the average person in the public does. I really don't think the average person cares that their DVD player offers higher resolution video than a poorly recorded VHS tape. The average person uses the standard RCA cables that come with their VCR. The average person uses the speakers that're in their TV. The average person doesn't rip MP3s at 256 kbps.
There's very little economic justification for creating such a system. CDs were introduced in the mid-1980s. CD-Rs weren't widespread until the late-1990s. Most people don't record things. It's not worth the bother. Even when people could record CDs onto tape without any copy protection mechanisms to deal with, people still prefered to buy CDs. It's simply easier. Additionally, most people don't record rented videos. It's easily possible. Just look in any electronics magazine and buy a MacroVision defeater. However, for all the effort of stringing two VCRs together and getting the recording to work, most people would rather just buy the VCR.
It's not value customers contend with, it's convinience. Everyone knows that MP3s are traded online, but it's still a relatively few number of people that have more than 10 or so songs from online. Why bother after all? On a 56.6kbps dialup, each song is (assuming no disconnects) a 30 minute download. Now think of movies. It just took me a whole night to download a single episode of Futurama. I'm hoping to get broadband relatively soon, but I don't think even with broadband that burning movies will become commonplace soon.
I've gone on a complete tangent, but the message is quite clear. Even if consumers have a DVHS system that'll be able to record video at DVD resolution, they still won't bother. Remember, it's not that the consumer is always right, it's that the consumer is always stupid.
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If someone desired to work in the spam industry, this would seem the most efficient way to get in. When in Rome, do as the Romans do :)
John Nash never received a Nobel Prize. The only "real" Nobel prizes are the ones in chemistry, peace, literature, physics, and medicine/physiology. Those were the ones established by Alfred Nobel in his will, and first awarded in 1901. The Nobel prize for Economics was established about 70 years later, in 1968. The Bank of Sweden created a foundation to award, "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It was basically a marketting ploy to celebrate it's 300th anniversary. :)
While the selection process is done similarly (the Economics award is done by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, which also awards the prizes for chemistry and physics), the awards are quite distinct. Some physicians will complain bitterly if one mentions the Nobel Prize in Economics, since economics is not a "real" science.
You've got Linux!
I agree, but with HDTV, most of the spectrum assigned to WKRC-TV isn't going to be used anyways. Most channels get enough spectrum for ~16 HDTV channels, so unless the station has 16 channels to broadcast, most of the spectrum they have will be put to waste anyways. I'd rather have (possibly) cheap broadband than wasted spectrum. What would more appropriate to use the spectrum for, anyways?