I have access to a high-bandwidth FTP server which is looking for a good use...
The word on this needs to get out far and wide. The more people who have copies of these memos, the less Diebold or anyone else is able to sweep this under the rug.
BTW: If I go to vote and find Diebold machines in my precinct, what alternatives can I insist upon for casting my vote?
You don't believe you are arguing in favor of spam because you believe that unsolicited email from "legitimate businesses" isn't spam, but it doesn't change the facts.
These unsolicited messages were never considered "spam" prior to the last few years which saw a deluge of useless and annoying crap. Indeed, it took that deluge to create the meaning of "spam" which irks Hormel to no end. While the volume was extremely low (SiNR, anyone?) most folks didn't really mind. Now that the volume has skyrocketed, folks are (understandably) upset. But does that mean the folks sending unsolicited messages were sending spam? Perhaps.. should they be villified for it in the same manner as the "penis enlarger" folks? I think not.
Legitimate marketers have overused telemarketing to the point the goverment has now created a Do Not Call list and passed laws forcing marketers to honor it. The term "junk mail" came about because so many "legitimate" offers come in the mail that people consider those offers junk. Both have much higher costs to the marketer than email. Yet you expect me to believe that email marketers will control themselves and it won't be a burdon - if we could just get the pesky scam artists out of the way. Sorry, history doesn't support your argument.
With respect to the telemarketers, much of the outrage caused by them was not that they merely called, but that they called at unacceptable hours and a few did not honor requests to "remove me from your list". There were also the few that preyed upon elderly folks, scamming them out of large sums.
Instead of enforcing existing laws or setting up something to enforce better compliance with "remove" requests, we now get the "Do Not Call" list. Hell, I signed up for it myself. I didn't find myself deluged with calls, but I did have a few who refused to honor my "remove" request. It was easy for me to say "no thank you" and hang up. As long as the call was made during local business hours, I really had no objection. Calling me at 8:00pm, which interrupted my personal family activities, did annoy me. A simple restriction on times (IIRC, the cut-off time was set at 9:00pm, which is unreasonable in my opinion) and enforcement of "remove" requests would have sufficed. However, none were forthcoming so we now have a complete "Do Not Call" system (and even that has some holes in it). Here
is the registry FAQ which shows the holes. Pay special attention to #3. That's the same type of loophole which will be attacked by the same types who pervert "Opt-In".
How much junk snail mail do you receive? I receive, on average, 5 per week (outside of the usual mailers for the local supermarket, etc.). I find this high, but I realize that my address is associated with a local high-visibility sporting club (which receives much more than I do at my home). This isn't very annoying to me as I can simply drop it in the paper recycling bin.
By the way.. the USPS attributes the majority of its business to the bulk email crowd. These pieces of mail cost approximately 3 cents each. Apparently this cost is not much of an impediment to junk emailers. Their target lists cost more than that.
Where we disagree is your belief that I should have to put up with a billion "one time" offers without complaining. There are a lot of legitimate businesses out there, but they shouldn't email me unless I ask them to. If just one-tenth of 1% of the legitimate businesses in the US sends me one email a year, I'll have to dig through a whole bunch of crap I don't want.
As shown above, the cost of sending bulk post isn't much of an impediment if someone wants to contact you. The cost of a legitimate company sending email is really only slightly less (after all, they pay for bandwidth too, have their own servers to maintain, etc.). If you stripped out all of the "spam" messages you received in a month which are from the "penis enlarg
You call me a spammer, but I have never sent an unsolicited message to anyone, so I am going to let that (repeated) insult go for the moment.
there is little if any incentive to limit your mailings to people who might actually be interested. The cost for sending an extra million emails is negligible, because the costs are carried by the recipients. My mailbox gets flooded because you've decided that I'm part of your "demographic group". No thanks. Pay for your own advertising and leave me out of it unless I ask to hear from you.
What I'm attempting to do is clear up how things USED to be versus how they are now (after the abuses from unscrupulous morons). You either aren't experienced enough or clever enough to see the difference. You certainly have no real comprehension of the idea of demographics and how they are used in the legitimate advertising world.
The incentive legitimate marketers have in carefully trimming their contact lists is to not piss off people or waste time on those who have absolutely no use for the particular product. A legit business also doesn't send message after message after message after message, clogging up an email box with multiple messages regarding the same offering. I believe we can agree that is a particularly onerous facet of the spam we both hate.
There are thousands of legitimate businesses which would consider me a possible customer. Grocery stores, restraunts, auto manufacturers, computer and software companies, bookstores, musicstores, and many many more. I don't want their mail over and over. I don't want to spend an hour every day playing opt out.
It's called opt in, and it works. I use it myself, both as a recipient, and as a marketing tool. Great for retention, much harder to use for getting new customers. It doesn't hurt legitimate marketers a bit. It does hurt spammers who want to sign people up without those people giving permission.
That's the point. Legit businesses do not send email over and over and over. It's a one-hit-and-out. "Opt-in" is an idea that has failed (who's definition of "Opt-in" do you use?). It has already been abused to the point of ridicule. I get a shitload of mail from people who claim I "Opted in" when I clearly know I haven't. Bzzzt. Next suggestion.
I'm not trying to decide what goes into your mailbox. I'm trying to get you to realize that I am not a spammer and am not advocating what is really spam (as apart from what used to be the occasional unsolicited-yet-interesting contact). However, you continue (even in your last message) to sling bullshit calling someone a spammer without even a shred of evidence that said person engages in bulk email.
But apparently before you bought your first dialup modem, people like me were indeed receiving what could be considered spam today and not complaining because it was seldom and often interesting (whether or not I actually followed up and transacted business predicated upon that offering).
So, when I said "is technically spam" I was trying to take into account irrational folks such as yourself who have exactly your attitude. If I visit a website and someone gathers my information and then sends me multiple unsolicited messages, is that spam? According to your take on my tradeshow booth example, no. I say yes. That's what I meant by "technically spam". What's the difference between walking into a tradeshow booth or "walking into" a website?
You really seem incapable of separating the multiple-hit, massively-bulked "penis enlargers" from the single-hit, seldom-sent, carefully targeted legitimate businesses.
I really am sorry that you have no clear vision. However, your "kill 'em all" approach is the other edge to the same sword. Balance is necessary here, but you seem to have none, nor a capacity to embrace any.
That's too bad, and that is what is going to prevent a real solution t
If you'll calm down and think a second about it (and actually READ my last message) you'll see that you suffer from the typical knee-jerk reaction I spoke about.
There is a large difference between an unsolicited email and what has been come to be known as "spam". However, you seem to keep wanting to mix up the two (even going so far as to whip out your dusty Websters Collegiate in an attempt to make a point).
First off, I did not claim that email to addresses gathered at a tradeshow booth are spam, while other unsolicited messages are not. Rather, I claimed the opposite (with a careful qualifier which will be, again, further discussed below).
Second off, this technique (targeted mailing based on demographics) has been used long before the integrated circuit (let alone personal computers and the Internet) existed. What has come to be known as spam uses no demographic qualification whatsoever and exhibits other behavior which should become clear below.
Third, I have no affiliation with or even personal respect for the DMA. I detest them as much as you do. However, I'm going to try not to respond to your repeated trolling tactics other than to give you this warning: Stop your bullshit, junior, or this conversation ends.
Now then...
Let me re-use the example of Sun Microsystems. Years ago I used to receive messages from them on the order of about once per quarter due to my job overseeing a large network of Sun systems and my subscriptions (through work) to periodicals which they published and in which they also advertised. The messages came only to my work address, as that address was demographically qualified to be interested in Sun-related hardware/software. Most of the time I was not interested (but did help to keep me informed about what the company was up to). It was seldom, and non-intrusive. At any time I could have contacted them and the mails would cease (Incidentally, I did do some work for them in the early 90s helping to streamline this process - this was my first big PERL project).
The messages I could consider "consorscient" by your definitions given because they were not irritating and irrelevant and there was a high likelihood I would be responsive to the particular offer. Again, by my purchases and periodical subscriptions I was proven to be a real potential customer and understood that I was likely to receive such offerings (go look up "demographic" in your dictionary and then consider how many publishers sell their subscription lists on a routine basis).
However, in recent years, an explosion of utter bullshit has occurred in which unscrupulous types have destroyed an otherwise legitimate form of marketing. These people do not demographically qualify their mailing lists (other than some checking to determine if each address is "live"). They generally do not offer useful or interesting products. They send message after message after message after message. And there is no way to contact them to request a cessation of messages (and the few that do have an "Opt-Out" link only use that to further qualify a "live" email addy).
After a little while of this, the general email-receiving public grew tired of the irritation of clogged mailboxes and the term "spam" came into common usage. It was then used to describe *any* unsolicited email, even those that were previously never regarded with hostility (do you start to see a pattern here?).
So basically, if the explosion of irritating and mailbox-polluting spam had not occurred, no one would be whining about the occasional message regarding a product in which the recipient was very likely to be interested (and we would not be having this conversation).
What's needed is a way to clean house and not injure the legitimate marketers. This is not an easy solution both due to the scumbags who will abuse the system and the folks like you who are so oversensitized to any unsolicited messages that you're willing to stoke the fires and start the witch-hunt.
Actually, please go back to how "spam" got its nickname. It was incessant and annoying, much like the Vikings singing in the Monty Python skit.
Prior to Spam being labeled as such, companies were doing targeted mass-mailing (both snail and, for the few forward-thinkers, via email at the time). No one complained about that because it was not filling up mailboxes with repetitive banal missives from people who could not be reached. I, myself, received quite a few of those in the early days (mostly in the form of whitepapers, many of which were actually somewhat informative). I never had a problem receiving something from Sun regarding a new product offering because, as a demographic targetted by them, I was actually likely to be interested in that offering. Some I was, some I wasn't; but it was never annoying or repetitive.
Again, the large difference between the two (and what separates true spam from a "targeted email campaign") is that one uses a relatively small set of addresses highly likely to be receptive to a single offering, and the other uses a list of addresses without any qualification for multiple hits of random crap.
Unfortunately, because of the new breed of unscrupulous miscreants, that previously-valuable method of reaching potential customers is now gone. The reaction to any unsolicited email is now so hostile as to be actually counter-productive (because some, like you, are so overly-sensitive due to the actions of little more than email-borne vandalism).
Some large companies (names you'll recognize) do continue to use this, but are *extremely* careful to scrub their lists (giving multiple Opt-Out opportunities and making damned sure those requests are honored).
It would be nice if this tool hadn't been spoiled by immature morons.
Actually, they are not different. Magazines, etc., have been selling their subscriber lists LONG before email was invented. Companies routinely purchase such lists grouped according to the demographic required. These lists often cost many thousands of dollars. This allows a legitimate business to send offers to people who are likely to be receptive (whether via snailmail or email).
Spammers, on the other hand, purchase a CD of millions of addresses culled from God knows where to indiscriminately blast out crap messages without regard to demographic. This is why people like my wife sometimes receive offers to enlarge her penis.
I got the Michelangelo virus back in the day: One morning I came into work and there was paint all over my ceiling...
Anyway, I believe the days of boot sector trashing viruses are over. It's much better to root and take control of a large number of systems than to indiscriminately destroy one or two. Recent discussion regarding the SoBig variants illustrates this point (ie, possible use as a Distributed SPAM engine). There are already numerous viruses out there which allow the perpetrator to orchestrate a massive DDoS.
The "evolution" of which you speak is merely an evolution of desire and sophistication by the creators of such malware.
This may be a clumsy attempt to factor in targeted email marketing campaigns. For instance, say I work at a company selling compu-widgets and I want to send an email blast out to people who dropped by my tradeshow booth 6 months ago and/or people who subscribe to CompuWidget Magazine (who are demographically proven to be consumers of my product). The mail blast, per design, is only sent to their business email addresses because that is the context and venue in which I wish to engage the recipient.
Doing this is, technically, spam. But it also isn't spam in that I'm not offering penis enlargements, impossible mortgage rates, questionable knock-off drugs or soliciting assistance in moving large sums of money from African banks.
It is also merely an extension of what companies did prior to wide adoption of email - snail mail campaigns based upon the exact same criteria. I feel, both as a potential sender and recipient of this type of campaign, that this business tool needs to be protected from being lumped into the same category as the other annoying spam which has absolutely no legitimate business usage.
yup.. real world, real business. Which is why none of my businesses will use Microsoft.
And no one said Linux is "unbreakable". However, the relative ease of attacks (and the recurring number of duplicate and/or very-similar vulnerabilities) which occur in any MS-oriented OS very definitively tips the scales in favor of a *NIX-based OS (be it Unix, BSD, or Linux).
A system that requires in-depth knowledge of systems and protocols to break is a lot less likely to cause downtime and loss of revenue than one which allows some dipshit with a "VBS for Dummies" book to thoroughly root time and again.
So your argument is useless; you can't just compare absolutes (A is hackable, and so is B, so they are equal). You must further qualify the statement. And under any rational real-world business qualification, you and your favorite little OS fail it much more often than mine.
The number of attacks may be higher, but what are the number of SUCCESSFUL compromises which install the equivalent of a ROOT KIT on said compromised system?
With Windows it's an extremely high number. With Linux running (presumably) Apache, it's extremely low.
Oh, and you can't count an "attack" as someone trying a CodeRed or Nimda exploit against a Linux system...
Of course, the shit-disturber in me would have pressed the clay into oblong form and tossed in a couple of feet of Cat-5 cable (quite normal for me to carry around as I also wire networks for a living). No note, nothing to overtly attempt to raise the ire of the guards, just a little something to make the X-ray operator a tad uncomfortable.
Well, with lines like " just as they understand that homosexuality is fun," I believe it's the work of a bored fucktard and should therefore be modded down as either OffTopic or even Flamebait.
Any karma whore can make an AC request to "Mod Parent Up!". Idiots and non-article-reading morons should not be allowed to moderate.
Ahh.. the days of making sure your little metal pad didn't get lost or scratched, the days of making sure your mouse was perfectly flat on the pad, the days of making sure your mouse was perfectly centered.
Believe it or not, I really do enjoy my Microsoft optical mouse (USB/PS2 interface). For a company that puts out complete horse shit for software, the hardware (mouse) portion puts out a good product.
I live in Santa Cruz. I know (and currently work with) a few people from the Santa Cruz Operation, prior to it being sold to Caldera.
This new entity is called The SCO Group. "SCO" doesn't stand for "Santa Cruz Operation" anymore; it's an acronym without a meaning. This is similar to SGI. They are "SGI" now, not "Silicon Graphics, Inc.".
So, Mr. Damage, Inc., please review your hiring practices. SCO is bad, Santa Cruz Operation is not.
(oh yah, open letter to McBride: You blood sucking fuckwit, get the cypress tree out of your logo - there aren't any cypress trees in Utah and you're defaming one of the more beautiful aspects of the cental coast of California)
Slashdot Mirror
We're slow, but we get there safely and in style!
(like a Volvo...)
The fix to #5 is easy.
Hey Bev:
I have access to a high-bandwidth FTP server which is looking for a good use...
The word on this needs to get out far and wide. The more people who have copies of these memos, the less Diebold or anyone else is able to sweep this under the rug.
BTW: If I go to vote and find Diebold machines in my precinct, what alternatives can I insist upon for casting my vote?
Except the Redmond I believe you're talking about is in the state of Washington...
Could you imagine a whole Beowulf cluster of t$#*ds;lkASEFP NO CARRIER
You don't believe you are arguing in favor of spam because you believe that unsolicited email from "legitimate businesses" isn't spam, but it doesn't change the facts.
These unsolicited messages were never considered "spam" prior to the last few years which saw a deluge of useless and annoying crap. Indeed, it took that deluge to create the meaning of "spam" which irks Hormel to no end. While the volume was extremely low (SiNR, anyone?) most folks didn't really mind. Now that the volume has skyrocketed, folks are (understandably) upset. But does that mean the folks sending unsolicited messages were sending spam? Perhaps.. should they be villified for it in the same manner as the "penis enlarger" folks? I think not.
Legitimate marketers have overused telemarketing to the point the goverment has now created a Do Not Call list and passed laws forcing marketers to honor it. The term "junk mail" came about because so many "legitimate" offers come in the mail that people consider those offers junk. Both have much higher costs to the marketer than email. Yet you expect me to believe that email marketers will control themselves and it won't be a burdon - if we could just get the pesky scam artists out of the way. Sorry, history doesn't support your argument.
With respect to the telemarketers, much of the outrage caused by them was not that they merely called, but that they called at unacceptable hours and a few did not honor requests to "remove me from your list". There were also the few that preyed upon elderly folks, scamming them out of large sums.
Instead of enforcing existing laws or setting up something to enforce better compliance with "remove" requests, we now get the "Do Not Call" list. Hell, I signed up for it myself. I didn't find myself deluged with calls, but I did have a few who refused to honor my "remove" request. It was easy for me to say "no thank you" and hang up. As long as the call was made during local business hours, I really had no objection. Calling me at 8:00pm, which interrupted my personal family activities, did annoy me. A simple restriction on times (IIRC, the cut-off time was set at 9:00pm, which is unreasonable in my opinion) and enforcement of "remove" requests would have sufficed. However, none were forthcoming so we now have a complete "Do Not Call" system (and even that has some holes in it). Here is the registry FAQ which shows the holes. Pay special attention to #3. That's the same type of loophole which will be attacked by the same types who pervert "Opt-In".
How much junk snail mail do you receive? I receive, on average, 5 per week (outside of the usual mailers for the local supermarket, etc.). I find this high, but I realize that my address is associated with a local high-visibility sporting club (which receives much more than I do at my home). This isn't very annoying to me as I can simply drop it in the paper recycling bin.
By the way.. the USPS attributes the majority of its business to the bulk email crowd. These pieces of mail cost approximately 3 cents each. Apparently this cost is not much of an impediment to junk emailers. Their target lists cost more than that.
Where we disagree is your belief that I should have to put up with a billion "one time" offers without complaining. There are a lot of legitimate businesses out there, but they shouldn't email me unless I ask them to. If just one-tenth of 1% of the legitimate businesses in the US sends me one email a year, I'll have to dig through a whole bunch of crap I don't want.
As shown above, the cost of sending bulk post isn't much of an impediment if someone wants to contact you. The cost of a legitimate company sending email is really only slightly less (after all, they pay for bandwidth too, have their own servers to maintain, etc.). If you stripped out all of the "spam" messages you received in a month which are from the "penis enlarg
You have a complete inability to separate.
You call me a spammer, but I have never sent an unsolicited message to anyone, so I am going to let that (repeated) insult go for the moment.
there is little if any incentive to limit your mailings to people who might actually be interested. The cost for sending an extra million emails is negligible, because the costs are carried by the recipients. My mailbox gets flooded because you've decided that I'm part of your "demographic group". No thanks. Pay for your own advertising and leave me out of it unless I ask to hear from you.
What I'm attempting to do is clear up how things USED to be versus how they are now (after the abuses from unscrupulous morons). You either aren't experienced enough or clever enough to see the difference. You certainly have no real comprehension of the idea of demographics and how they are used in the legitimate advertising world.
The incentive legitimate marketers have in carefully trimming their contact lists is to not piss off people or waste time on those who have absolutely no use for the particular product. A legit business also doesn't send message after message after message after message, clogging up an email box with multiple messages regarding the same offering. I believe we can agree that is a particularly onerous facet of the spam we both hate.
There are thousands of legitimate businesses which would consider me a possible customer. Grocery stores, restraunts, auto manufacturers, computer and software companies, bookstores, musicstores, and many many more. I don't want their mail over and over. I don't want to spend an hour every day playing opt out.
It's called opt in, and it works. I use it myself, both as a recipient, and as a marketing tool. Great for retention, much harder to use for getting new customers. It doesn't hurt legitimate marketers a bit. It does hurt spammers who want to sign people up without those people giving permission.
That's the point. Legit businesses do not send email over and over and over. It's a one-hit-and-out. "Opt-in" is an idea that has failed (who's definition of "Opt-in" do you use?). It has already been abused to the point of ridicule. I get a shitload of mail from people who claim I "Opted in" when I clearly know I haven't. Bzzzt. Next suggestion.
I'm not trying to decide what goes into your mailbox. I'm trying to get you to realize that I am not a spammer and am not advocating what is really spam (as apart from what used to be the occasional unsolicited-yet-interesting contact). However, you continue (even in your last message) to sling bullshit calling someone a spammer without even a shred of evidence that said person engages in bulk email.
But apparently before you bought your first dialup modem, people like me were indeed receiving what could be considered spam today and not complaining because it was seldom and often interesting (whether or not I actually followed up and transacted business predicated upon that offering).
So, when I said "is technically spam" I was trying to take into account irrational folks such as yourself who have exactly your attitude. If I visit a website and someone gathers my information and then sends me multiple unsolicited messages, is that spam? According to your take on my tradeshow booth example, no. I say yes. That's what I meant by "technically spam". What's the difference between walking into a tradeshow booth or "walking into" a website?
You really seem incapable of separating the multiple-hit, massively-bulked "penis enlargers" from the single-hit, seldom-sent, carefully targeted legitimate businesses.
I really am sorry that you have no clear vision. However, your "kill 'em all" approach is the other edge to the same sword. Balance is necessary here, but you seem to have none, nor a capacity to embrace any.
That's too bad, and that is what is going to prevent a real solution t
If you'll calm down and think a second about it (and actually READ my last message) you'll see that you suffer from the typical knee-jerk reaction I spoke about.
There is a large difference between an unsolicited email and what has been come to be known as "spam". However, you seem to keep wanting to mix up the two (even going so far as to whip out your dusty Websters Collegiate in an attempt to make a point).
First off, I did not claim that email to addresses gathered at a tradeshow booth are spam, while other unsolicited messages are not. Rather, I claimed the opposite (with a careful qualifier which will be, again, further discussed below).
Second off, this technique (targeted mailing based on demographics) has been used long before the integrated circuit (let alone personal computers and the Internet) existed. What has come to be known as spam uses no demographic qualification whatsoever and exhibits other behavior which should become clear below.
Third, I have no affiliation with or even personal respect for the DMA. I detest them as much as you do. However, I'm going to try not to respond to your repeated trolling tactics other than to give you this warning: Stop your bullshit, junior, or this conversation ends.
Now then...
Let me re-use the example of Sun Microsystems. Years ago I used to receive messages from them on the order of about once per quarter due to my job overseeing a large network of Sun systems and my subscriptions (through work) to periodicals which they published and in which they also advertised. The messages came only to my work address, as that address was demographically qualified to be interested in Sun-related hardware/software. Most of the time I was not interested (but did help to keep me informed about what the company was up to). It was seldom, and non-intrusive. At any time I could have contacted them and the mails would cease (Incidentally, I did do some work for them in the early 90s helping to streamline this process - this was my first big PERL project).
The messages I could consider "consorscient" by your definitions given because they were not irritating and irrelevant and there was a high likelihood I would be responsive to the particular offer. Again, by my purchases and periodical subscriptions I was proven to be a real potential customer and understood that I was likely to receive such offerings (go look up "demographic" in your dictionary and then consider how many publishers sell their subscription lists on a routine basis).
However, in recent years, an explosion of utter bullshit has occurred in which unscrupulous types have destroyed an otherwise legitimate form of marketing. These people do not demographically qualify their mailing lists (other than some checking to determine if each address is "live"). They generally do not offer useful or interesting products. They send message after message after message after message. And there is no way to contact them to request a cessation of messages (and the few that do have an "Opt-Out" link only use that to further qualify a "live" email addy).
After a little while of this, the general email-receiving public grew tired of the irritation of clogged mailboxes and the term "spam" came into common usage. It was then used to describe *any* unsolicited email, even those that were previously never regarded with hostility (do you start to see a pattern here?).
So basically, if the explosion of irritating and mailbox-polluting spam had not occurred, no one would be whining about the occasional message regarding a product in which the recipient was very likely to be interested (and we would not be having this conversation).
What's needed is a way to clean house and not injure the legitimate marketers. This is not an easy solution both due to the scumbags who will abuse the system and the folks like you who are so oversensitized to any unsolicited messages that you're willing to stoke the fires and start the witch-hunt.
Actually, please go back to how "spam" got its nickname. It was incessant and annoying, much like the Vikings singing in the Monty Python skit.
Prior to Spam being labeled as such, companies were doing targeted mass-mailing (both snail and, for the few forward-thinkers, via email at the time). No one complained about that because it was not filling up mailboxes with repetitive banal missives from people who could not be reached. I, myself, received quite a few of those in the early days (mostly in the form of whitepapers, many of which were actually somewhat informative). I never had a problem receiving something from Sun regarding a new product offering because, as a demographic targetted by them, I was actually likely to be interested in that offering. Some I was, some I wasn't; but it was never annoying or repetitive.
Again, the large difference between the two (and what separates true spam from a "targeted email campaign") is that one uses a relatively small set of addresses highly likely to be receptive to a single offering, and the other uses a list of addresses without any qualification for multiple hits of random crap.
Unfortunately, because of the new breed of unscrupulous miscreants, that previously-valuable method of reaching potential customers is now gone. The reaction to any unsolicited email is now so hostile as to be actually counter-productive (because some, like you, are so overly-sensitive due to the actions of little more than email-borne vandalism).
Some large companies (names you'll recognize) do continue to use this, but are *extremely* careful to scrub their lists (giving multiple Opt-Out opportunities and making damned sure those requests are honored).
It would be nice if this tool hadn't been spoiled by immature morons.
I prefer The Ventures' version...
(of course, I prefer The Ventures as a matter of point...)
Actually, they are not different. Magazines, etc., have been selling their subscriber lists LONG before email was invented. Companies routinely purchase such lists grouped according to the demographic required. These lists often cost many thousands of dollars. This allows a legitimate business to send offers to people who are likely to be receptive (whether via snailmail or email).
Spammers, on the other hand, purchase a CD of millions of addresses culled from God knows where to indiscriminately blast out crap messages without regard to demographic. This is why people like my wife sometimes receive offers to enlarge her penis.
See the difference?
Dude..I pour a beer into *ME* and I don't work either.
(ok, well.. it takes a few more.. like 12 or so... but still)
I, for one, welcome our new Cyberalcoholic Overlords.
I got the Michelangelo virus back in the day: One morning I came into work and there was paint all over my ceiling...
Anyway, I believe the days of boot sector trashing viruses are over. It's much better to root and take control of a large number of systems than to indiscriminately destroy one or two. Recent discussion regarding the SoBig variants illustrates this point (ie, possible use as a Distributed SPAM engine). There are already numerous viruses out there which allow the perpetrator to orchestrate a massive DDoS.
The "evolution" of which you speak is merely an evolution of desire and sophistication by the creators of such malware.
Well.. a group of guys in the UK are directly responsible for unsolicited mass-email being called "Spam" in the first place...
In a restaurant somewhere a group of disheveled men in Viking costumes are laughing.
This may be a clumsy attempt to factor in targeted email marketing campaigns. For instance, say I work at a company selling compu-widgets and I want to send an email blast out to people who dropped by my tradeshow booth 6 months ago and/or people who subscribe to CompuWidget Magazine (who are demographically proven to be consumers of my product). The mail blast, per design, is only sent to their business email addresses because that is the context and venue in which I wish to engage the recipient.
Doing this is, technically, spam. But it also isn't spam in that I'm not offering penis enlargements, impossible mortgage rates, questionable knock-off drugs or soliciting assistance in moving large sums of money from African banks.
It is also merely an extension of what companies did prior to wide adoption of email - snail mail campaigns based upon the exact same criteria. I feel, both as a potential sender and recipient of this type of campaign, that this business tool needs to be protected from being lumped into the same category as the other annoying spam which has absolutely no legitimate business usage.
yup.. real world, real business. Which is why none of my businesses will use Microsoft.
And no one said Linux is "unbreakable". However, the relative ease of attacks (and the recurring number of duplicate and/or very-similar vulnerabilities) which occur in any MS-oriented OS very definitively tips the scales in favor of a *NIX-based OS (be it Unix, BSD, or Linux).
A system that requires in-depth knowledge of systems and protocols to break is a lot less likely to cause downtime and loss of revenue than one which allows some dipshit with a "VBS for Dummies" book to thoroughly root time and again.
So your argument is useless; you can't just compare absolutes (A is hackable, and so is B, so they are equal). You must further qualify the statement. And under any rational real-world business qualification, you and your favorite little OS fail it much more often than mine.
So, again, "Bzzzzt. Try again Mr. Alchin."
The number of attacks may be higher, but what are the number of SUCCESSFUL compromises which install the equivalent of a ROOT KIT on said compromised system?
With Windows it's an extremely high number. With Linux running (presumably) Apache, it's extremely low.
Oh, and you can't count an "attack" as someone trying a CodeRed or Nimda exploit against a Linux system...
Bzzzzzt. Try again, Mr. Alchin.
"confirmed on slashdot"
sounds like part of a poorly re-written chain email about a new virus called "Good Times".
And anyone who doesn't patch a known vulnerability, whether "exploitable" or not, is a +5 Fucking_Idiot.
"encryption".
That assumes some people actually read RFCs.
Most people hear "RFC" and think about either nasty fried chicken or some old TV show starring Andy Griffith.
Your saving grace is the absence of nitrates.
Of course, the shit-disturber in me would have pressed the clay into oblong form and tossed in a couple of feet of Cat-5 cable (quite normal for me to carry around as I also wire networks for a living). No note, nothing to overtly attempt to raise the ire of the guards, just a little something to make the X-ray operator a tad uncomfortable.
Well, with lines like " just as they understand that homosexuality is fun," I believe it's the work of a bored fucktard and should therefore be modded down as either OffTopic or even Flamebait.
Any karma whore can make an AC request to "Mod Parent Up!". Idiots and non-article-reading morons should not be allowed to moderate.
Ahh.. the days of making sure your little metal pad didn't get lost or scratched, the days of making sure your mouse was perfectly flat on the pad, the days of making sure your mouse was perfectly centered.
Believe it or not, I really do enjoy my Microsoft optical mouse (USB/PS2 interface). For a company that puts out complete horse shit for software, the hardware (mouse) portion puts out a good product.
It isn't the "Santa Cruz Operation" anymore.
I live in Santa Cruz. I know (and currently work with) a few people from the Santa Cruz Operation, prior to it being sold to Caldera.
This new entity is called The SCO Group. "SCO" doesn't stand for "Santa Cruz Operation" anymore; it's an acronym without a meaning. This is similar to SGI. They are "SGI" now, not "Silicon Graphics, Inc.".
So, Mr. Damage, Inc., please review your hiring practices. SCO is bad, Santa Cruz Operation is not.
(oh yah, open letter to McBride: You blood sucking fuckwit, get the cypress tree out of your logo - there aren't any cypress trees in Utah and you're defaming one of the more beautiful aspects of the cental coast of California)