Sadly just about everyone runs shit as Administrator (it is the default mode for XP Home installs) to make life easier and as MSFT has noted they are opening themselves up to the attacks... For those that will mention that Linux is so much better remember that these are the same people that wouldn't like to have to change to root (sudo, su, login, whatever) to install anything
I've virtually no choice but to run my WinXP box with an administrator account. Almost all the software I use on a daily basis, from applications to the kids educational stuff, requires that it be run under an administrator account. If the software developers aren't going to deliver stuff that can run under a limited account then they're hardly helping solve the problems.
I forgot to mention, I got into IT because I love it. Never saw the need to get a degree in something I'd been passionate about since I was in short trousers. Might as well go learn something new instead.
I'm an IT Professional with a non-IT degree, I read psychology. It's actually come in more handy than an IT degree probably would have. Not only was it a big help in landing the job in the first place (the value of being different from the herd). The content itself has continued to be timely and useful even ten years on, be it a behavioural approach to OO systems or knowing what makes meetings more productive.
I'd recommend any beginning IT professional to minor/subsid in a good psychology course, it'll last you a lot longer than some of your IT knowledge;)
Yet again we see people with no understanding of what it means for something to be a scientific theory. The theory of gravity is only a scientific theory.
I'd recommend "Abusing Science, the Case Against Creationism" to anyone whose scientific education stopped in high school and who doesn't really understand why the creationist point of view is not an alternative explanation.
The more I thought about it the more I've come to the conclusion that the sole purpose of the first article was to declare end-user spam solutions dead to set up the need for the second article.
The author has a point when he says that end-user solutions don't stop the spam traversing the network and consuming bandwidth and resources. However, if significant numbers of internet users employed effective end-user anti-spam tools then it would eventually hit the spammers economic return.
Spam becoming a less lucrative quick-buck will probably be the thing that eventually kills it off. That's a long-term goal that can probably be as well achieved by educating the masses as to the wealth of excellent end-user tools available as it can by expensive and unwieldy protocol changes.
When I took a look at the first of these two articles which examines end-user anti-spam solutions I had to wonder if the writer had actually tried any of the technology or was relying purely on hearsay. For example:
Spam senders and their bulk-mailing applications are not static -- they rapidly adapt around filters. For example, to counter word lists, spam senders randomize the spelling of words ("viagra", "V1agra", "\/iaagra"). Hash-busters (sequences of random characters that differ in each email) were created for bypassing hash filters. And the currently popular Bayesian filters are being bypassed by the inclusion of random words and sentences. Most spam filters are
only effective for a few weeks at best
This is the view of someone who clearly has no experience at all with a high-quality Bayesian classifier like POPFile. I've been using this program for almost a year and it most certainly has not been defeated by random words or spelling. Many of the tokens that trip email as being spam are actually unusual items in the headers or sales terminology. After a very brief training period POPFile has continued to provide me with excellent protection from spam and malicious email, with only a few false negatives to retrain on.
If that's not a good end-user anti-spam solution then I don't know what is.
I'll be 34 this year and I watch virtually zero regular television. Just about the only regular show I'll make a note to watch is "Faking It" My news comes from online sources and my entertainment from online gaming.
Compared to gaming I find television is simply far too passive. Even if that wasn't the case the content is hardly filled with quality and innovation. I do have a small library of DVDs which includes movies and British TV Comedy (are you local?) but again that's what I want, when I want rather than what the TV company chooses to push into my house.
Visual Studio only costs that much for the Enterprise version. I have the standard edition (Version 6) and it was under 100 sterling. Sure that's 100 more than downloading a Linux distro and getting everything for free, but it's not half as bad as you're trying to make out.
I doubt the injunction will stop the inevitable availability of this software on just about any file-sharing service you care to name. What it might stop though is legitimate companies developing software like this so that you, I and anyone else can exercise our right to make working backups of the software, movies or anything else that we've purchased.
After all why would anyone want to spend time, effort and money developing software that allows people to do sensible, legal things with their property if the MPAA, RIAA or anyone else with a big enough cheque book is going to shut them down before they get going? Chalk up another victory for big corporations in their seemingly unstoppable war against the rights of the law abiding majority in their pursuit of the lawless minority.
I forgot to add that it's the fact that everybody's outer ear has a uniquely different physical structure that apparently makes it so difficult to simulate surround sound in a way that works for everybody. Everybody's outer ear distorts the sound in a different way, so modulating the sound in a way that would make placement perfect for me wouldn't work for someone else at all.
I can't decide whether in posting this question I've learned more about hearing or about the mentality of people who didn't see that there's an interesting question here, even even though Zalman is obviously not selling hi-tech snake oil. It's widely known that human hearing uses the delay between hearing a sound in each ear and the relative volume at each ear to do some placement, but these headphones take all that away. I wonder if you could sort the responses to my question into geek and non-geek based on who saw that left the question "how the heck does it work then?", and those who just couldn't resist telling me I was dumb for even asking.
I found out the actual answer to my question, and no it isn't on Zalman's site or in the reviews, and yes I expect that they did think about this before putting a product out.
The answer is that the pinna (the outer part of the ear) catches the sound and funnels it down to the ear-drum. The folds and curves of the pinna alter the waveform of the sound as its funneled, and this happens in different ways depending on the direction in which the sound enters the pinna. The brain picks up those differences and is able to tell whether a sound originated in front, behind, above, below etc.
So that's how you're able to spatially place a sound you can only hear in one ear. Neat.
It's false to suggest that the spammer would have "no idea" that the relay wouldn't be passing on his spam. All he has to do is include a throw-away email address he has access to in the mail shot, if it arrives the relay was good.
Spamhole would have no way of knowing which of the millions of addresses being spammed was the relay test address, so it would be very hard to cirumvent.
Granted you may still cost the spammer some wasted time, but each relay is only going to trick one spammer one time, if they're smart.
You pay a monthly sub for your TV, but you still have to watch ads every ten minutes AND pay extra for special events, not to mention the way they continually group and regroup channels into packages to force you to take the maximum number possible.
Somehow I think the TV companies have enough experience in screwing money out of people to make ends meet.
Since I started using POPFile I simply don't see my spam anymore. It's a naive bayesian classifier and after a few months useage I have about 98.5% accuracy with it, and only 1 or 2 false positives. I highly recommend it.
Hey, that sounds like a spam:D
...or Russia, or Eastern Europe, or anywhere else these deadbeats have to move their operations to in order to operate without getting pinched.
Surely the money would be better sent educating users as to the benefits of a good Bayesian filter, or even subsidising their inclusion into commercial software. Imagine if all those millions of copies of Outlook Express came with a well advertised, easy to use Bayesian filter pre-installed and ready to go.
Sadly I've had nothing but trouble with dealing with Intuit. I use their Quicken software and a couple of years ago found a bug that was double-counting the items in my budgets (ouch!). I checked their (UK) site, no contact email for support. Just a premium rate telephone number for support and a free number for sales.
Thinking it was ludicrous to pay them money to report a bug in their own software I called the sales number and asked them very nicely if they would pass on the details or put me through to someone who could deal with it. Oh no. Did not compute. I had to call the support number if I was having trouble. Sorry, but I don't pay companies to report bugs in their software.
This is the first generation that allows the kind of personal use that we have deemed appropriate
Excuse me? Who gave the record labels authority to decide what is the appropriate personal use of the music I or anybody else buys? Don't we have a legal system anymore or did I go to sleep and wake up in a world we've given up and handed complete control to big corporations?
It's still a bait-and-switch. Broadband ISPs signed up virtually their entire customer base by promising "always on, unlimited access", but are now looking to renege on this.
I remain utterly unconvinced that any major ISP has enough customers utilising so much bandwidth that they are significantly slowing the service for everyone else. You're trying telling me that NTL can push hundreds of channels of broadcast television to its entire customer base simultaneously but a handful of Joe-Downloaders are causing the cable internet system to slow to a crawl? I don't think so.
P2P users are the excuse that broadband ISPs have been looking for to switch everyone from flat fee to more profitable metered/tiered/limited access. The bottom line is the driving force here.
Contest organisers insist that clock C travels with mouse A in Space Ship B. Space Ship B returns and organiser's declare mouse to be only 5 minutes older than when it left.
Just a random thought, but if someone holds a trademark for which they haven't yet registered the domain, the new Verisign system will display a verisign page when someone types in www.insert-trademark-here.com.
Isn't that still cybersquatting, and what's more isn't it squatting on a whole heap of registered trademarks with no registered domain?
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly just about everyone runs shit as Administrator (it is the default mode for XP Home installs) to make life easier and as MSFT has noted they are opening themselves up to the attacks... For those that will mention that Linux is so much better remember that these are the same people that wouldn't like to have to change to root (sudo, su, login, whatever) to install anything
I've virtually no choice but to run my WinXP box with an administrator account. Almost all the software I use on a daily basis, from applications to the kids educational stuff, requires that it be run under an administrator account. If the software developers aren't going to deliver stuff that can run under a limited account then they're hardly helping solve the problems.
I forgot to mention, I got into IT because I love it. Never saw the need to get a degree in something I'd been passionate about since I was in short trousers. Might as well go learn something new instead.
I'm an IT Professional with a non-IT degree, I read psychology. It's actually come in more handy than an IT degree probably would have. Not only was it a big help in landing the job in the first place (the value of being different from the herd). The content itself has continued to be timely and useful even ten years on, be it a behavioural approach to OO systems or knowing what makes meetings more productive.
;)
I'd recommend any beginning IT professional to minor/subsid in a good psychology course, it'll last you a lot longer than some of your IT knowledge
Yet again we see people with no understanding of what it means for something to be a scientific theory. The theory of gravity is only a scientific theory.
I'd recommend "Abusing Science, the Case Against Creationism" to anyone whose scientific education stopped in high school and who doesn't really understand why the creationist point of view is not an alternative explanation.
The more I thought about it the more I've come to the conclusion that the sole purpose of the first article was to declare end-user spam solutions dead to set up the need for the second article.
The author has a point when he says that end-user solutions don't stop the spam traversing the network and consuming bandwidth and resources. However, if significant numbers of internet users employed effective end-user anti-spam tools then it would eventually hit the spammers economic return.
Spam becoming a less lucrative quick-buck will probably be the thing that eventually kills it off. That's a long-term goal that can probably be as well achieved by educating the masses as to the wealth of excellent end-user tools available as it can by expensive and unwieldy protocol changes.
When I took a look at the first of these two articles which examines end-user anti-spam solutions I had to wonder if the writer had actually tried any of the technology or was relying purely on hearsay. For example:
Spam senders and their bulk-mailing applications are not static -- they rapidly adapt around filters. For example, to counter word lists, spam senders randomize the spelling of words ("viagra", "V1agra", "\/iaagra"). Hash-busters (sequences of random characters that differ in each email) were created for bypassing hash filters. And the currently popular Bayesian filters are being bypassed by the inclusion of random words and sentences. Most spam filters are only effective for a few weeks at best
This is the view of someone who clearly has no experience at all with a high-quality Bayesian classifier like POPFile. I've been using this program for almost a year and it most certainly has not been defeated by random words or spelling. Many of the tokens that trip email as being spam are actually unusual items in the headers or sales terminology. After a very brief training period POPFile has continued to provide me with excellent protection from spam and malicious email, with only a few false negatives to retrain on.
If that's not a good end-user anti-spam solution then I don't know what is.
I'll be 34 this year and I watch virtually zero regular television. Just about the only regular show I'll make a note to watch is "Faking It" My news comes from online sources and my entertainment from online gaming. Compared to gaming I find television is simply far too passive. Even if that wasn't the case the content is hardly filled with quality and innovation. I do have a small library of DVDs which includes movies and British TV Comedy (are you local?) but again that's what I want, when I want rather than what the TV company chooses to push into my house.
Visual Studio only costs that much for the Enterprise version. I have the standard edition (Version 6) and it was under 100 sterling. Sure that's 100 more than downloading a Linux distro and getting everything for free, but it's not half as bad as you're trying to make out.
I doubt the injunction will stop the inevitable availability of this software on just about any file-sharing service you care to name. What it might stop though is legitimate companies developing software like this so that you, I and anyone else can exercise our right to make working backups of the software, movies or anything else that we've purchased.
After all why would anyone want to spend time, effort and money developing software that allows people to do sensible, legal things with their property if the MPAA, RIAA or anyone else with a big enough cheque book is going to shut them down before they get going? Chalk up another victory for big corporations in their seemingly unstoppable war against the rights of the law abiding majority in their pursuit of the lawless minority.
I forgot to add that it's the fact that everybody's outer ear has a uniquely different physical structure that apparently makes it so difficult to simulate surround sound in a way that works for everybody. Everybody's outer ear distorts the sound in a different way, so modulating the sound in a way that would make placement perfect for me wouldn't work for someone else at all.
I can't decide whether in posting this question I've learned more about hearing or about the mentality of people who didn't see that there's an interesting question here, even even though Zalman is obviously not selling hi-tech snake oil. It's widely known that human hearing uses the delay between hearing a sound in each ear and the relative volume at each ear to do some placement, but these headphones take all that away. I wonder if you could sort the responses to my question into geek and non-geek based on who saw that left the question "how the heck does it work then?", and those who just couldn't resist telling me I was dumb for even asking.
I found out the actual answer to my question, and no it isn't on Zalman's site or in the reviews, and yes I expect that they did think about this before putting a product out. The answer is that the pinna (the outer part of the ear) catches the sound and funnels it down to the ear-drum. The folds and curves of the pinna alter the waveform of the sound as its funneled, and this happens in different ways depending on the direction in which the sound enters the pinna. The brain picks up those differences and is able to tell whether a sound originated in front, behind, above, below etc. So that's how you're able to spatially place a sound you can only hear in one ear. Neat.
A guilty system recognizes no innocents. Can't remember who said that.
It's false to suggest that the spammer would have "no idea" that the relay wouldn't be passing on his spam. All he has to do is include a throw-away email address he has access to in the mail shot, if it arrives the relay was good.
Spamhole would have no way of knowing which of the millions of addresses being spammed was the relay test address, so it would be very hard to cirumvent.
Granted you may still cost the spammer some wasted time, but each relay is only going to trick one spammer one time, if they're smart.
You pay a monthly sub for your TV, but you still have to watch ads every ten minutes AND pay extra for special events, not to mention the way they continually group and regroup channels into packages to force you to take the maximum number possible.
Somehow I think the TV companies have enough experience in screwing money out of people to make ends meet.
Since I started using POPFile I simply don't see my spam anymore. It's a naive bayesian classifier and after a few months useage I have about 98.5% accuracy with it, and only 1 or 2 false positives. I highly recommend it. Hey, that sounds like a spam :D
...or Russia, or Eastern Europe, or anywhere else these deadbeats have to move their operations to in order to operate without getting pinched.
Surely the money would be better sent educating users as to the benefits of a good Bayesian filter, or even subsidising their inclusion into commercial software. Imagine if all those millions of copies of Outlook Express came with a well advertised, easy to use Bayesian filter pre-installed and ready to go.
Sadly I've had nothing but trouble with dealing with Intuit. I use their Quicken software and a couple of years ago found a bug that was double-counting the items in my budgets (ouch!). I checked their (UK) site, no contact email for support. Just a premium rate telephone number for support and a free number for sales.
Thinking it was ludicrous to pay them money to report a bug in their own software I called the sales number and asked them very nicely if they would pass on the details or put me through to someone who could deal with it. Oh no. Did not compute. I had to call the support number if I was having trouble. Sorry, but I don't pay companies to report bugs in their software.
This is the first generation that allows the kind of personal use that we have deemed appropriate Excuse me? Who gave the record labels authority to decide what is the appropriate personal use of the music I or anybody else buys? Don't we have a legal system anymore or did I go to sleep and wake up in a world we've given up and handed complete control to big corporations?
It's still a bait-and-switch. Broadband ISPs signed up virtually their entire customer base by promising "always on, unlimited access", but are now looking to renege on this. I remain utterly unconvinced that any major ISP has enough customers utilising so much bandwidth that they are significantly slowing the service for everyone else. You're trying telling me that NTL can push hundreds of channels of broadcast television to its entire customer base simultaneously but a handful of Joe-Downloaders are causing the cable internet system to slow to a crawl? I don't think so. P2P users are the excuse that broadband ISPs have been looking for to switch everyone from flat fee to more profitable metered/tiered/limited access. The bottom line is the driving force here.
Contest organisers insist that clock C travels with mouse A in Space Ship B. Space Ship B returns and organiser's declare mouse to be only 5 minutes older than when it left.
Just a random thought, but if someone holds a trademark for which they haven't yet registered the domain, the new Verisign system will display a verisign page when someone types in www.insert-trademark-here.com.
Isn't that still cybersquatting, and what's more isn't it squatting on a whole heap of registered trademarks with no registered domain?