I easily blow through my 5G data plan on my iPad just READING ARTICLES! Gonna have to start checking to see who's serving up 50M+ pages with all the ads and videos and remove them from my feeds. Except it's everyone now, isn't it. Blew through 150M yesterday in 30 minutes of reading articles. How do we fix this?
"Does EA sprinkle magic pixie dust on their serfs to get around this problem"
I'm guessing, but I'll bet they tell them that programmers are a dime-a-dozen, and there's 100 starving programmers ready to take their place if they don't toe the line. At least, that's what they told me at my last job.
"or are the PHB's so technically challenged they don't realize what is going on?"
Partly. For the most part, they don't understand what it takes to make good software. Mostly, they don't care what it takes to make good software. They don't think that far ahead. They're looking at the next quarter, or maybe the next 6 months. What happens when customers start complaining about buggy software doesn't enter into their decision. That's way too far in the future.
"This whole 'death march' mentality seems absolutely crazy to me as a programmer,"
Not when you realize what their priorities are. The goal is to get a product out as soon as possible. The ones that actually try to rationalize this mentality say that it is a choice between putting out garbage or going bankrupt. They always think there'll be time/money to fix it later.
There are good ones around, but they seem to be fewer and fewer in number.
Contemplate the fact that more and more software is being done like this, and be afraid, very afraid. The next time you get on a commercial airline flight, imagine that the software for their in-flight systems might have been produced that way. If you used an electronic voting machine, think about the fact that the software for the machine you used was probably produced that way.
Is this sustainable? Of course not. But the folks making these kinds of decisions figure they'll have their bonus and be long gone before anyone has to pay the consequences.
First, I haven't bought a CD or DVD from any big label for a couple of years.
Bear with me, this is just a theory:
Let's say that the folks who are boycotting tend to be somewhat more discriminating in their choice of music (I suspect that they are). The folks who buy Britney and similar garbage are probably never going to boycott.
Now, this means that the big record companies see the demand shifting towards garbage (okay, more garbage than usual). So they produce more garbage.
Maybe this has already been going on, and that's why record companies' profits have been reduced of late.
Unfortunately, I don't see this going far enough to threaten record companies' survival. There are plenty of folks who love the garbage.
"Problem is, eventually, some ISP is going to get it in thier head that they can squeeze a few more dollars out of the system by offering a "premium" spamming package."
Too late. Ever heard of a "pink contract". Some time ago, one of these got leaked from AT&T. They sold one of these contracts to a spammer. Spammer pays a premium and in return, AT&T won't boot them off. Pink contracts are common as weeds nowadays.
This is at the root of the spam problem these days. If large ISPs (UUNET, Comcast, etc) could be held responsible for the truckloads of spam spewing from their networks, the spam problem could be cut by orders of magnitude overnight. Sure spammers would move overseas, but that just makes them easier to block. Foreign spam havens (like China) will find themselves blocked into oblivion if they continue to assist spammers.
So, UUNET hosts lots of ROKSO spam gangs and charges them premium rates. They make money hand over fist while the rest of us are buried in their spam.
And, you guessed it, (You) CAN SPAM did nothing to address this problem.
No, you weren't paying attention. Nowadays, lots of spam comes from zombied machines. While these tend to be run by idiots, they're still an innocent third party.
OTOH, I can see sending this back to the corporate mail servers of some of the large ISPs hosting these zombied machines and refusing to cut them off from the 'net.
I've seen zombied machines left on the net for *months*. I'm still seeing my servers hit from machines that were infected *last year*. This is pure laziness on the part of the ISPs hosting these morons. Their accounts should have been yanked long ago. I won't mention names (**comcast** cough cough), but this smacks of gross negligence.
The problem with the CAN SPAM act is that it didn't make spam illegal.
I think most folks (except spammers) will agree with this definition: spam is unsolicited bulk email (UBE):
Unsolicited: I didn't ask for it. Bulk: They sent more than a few. Email: Duh.
CAN SPAM made "opt-out" spam *legal*. It preempted stronger state laws that demanded *opt-in*.
opt-in: You asked to receive it *before* receiving it. Opt-in means *confirmed* opt-in, meaning that you ask for it, then you get a confirmation email that you have to respond to. If you don't respond, you are dropped from the list. opt-out: You have to ask *not* to receive it *after* receiving it.
Spammers *love* this law. For them, it is the "YOU CAN SPAM!" act. They get one free chance to spam you before you opt out. Then they can change their name, and they get *another* chance to spam you. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. They can still send UBE with impunity.
Even if the government had any will to *enforce* CAN SPAM (and they don't - there's little funding for enforcement), they couldn't stop spammers from working around this law.
IOW, the law is worse than useless. The only reason it exists is so that congress could say "they did something about spam" before election season. I think the Direct Marketing Association actually *wrote* the damn thing. If not, they certainly had significant input, because the law is *exactly what they wanted*. I'm certain that the DMA has lots of nice fat campaign contributions for everyone who voted for it. Please find out whether your representative voted for this joke of a law. If they did, they were essentially *lying* to you, because the law doesn't do jack to prevent spam.
While I support the EFF in many of their causes, they are completely clueless when it comes to spam. They think it is a free speech issue. It isn't. It's a private property issue. It's a *theft* issue. Nobody but me has the right to use my equipment for advertising purposes. If you use my servers for advertising purposes without *paying* me for that privilege, you are *stealing* from me. I don't understand why these "frea speach" morons don't get that. Hey, I'm all for free speech. Hell, I even support the ACLU, which makes me a pariah in my home state (Utah), but your free speech rights stop at my front door and my border routers.
NO!
Don't fight abuse with abuse.
Chances are you'll just hit some poor schmuck's open relay or proxy and cause more problems than the initial spam.
Report them to blacklists.
Use the blacklists.
*Don't* add to the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I easily blow through my 5G data plan on my iPad just READING ARTICLES! Gonna have to start checking to see who's serving up 50M+ pages with all the ads and videos and remove them from my feeds. Except it's everyone now, isn't it. Blew through 150M yesterday in 30 minutes of reading articles. How do we fix this?
Stop accepting unsigned firmware updates over insecure channels. This isn't 1980 any more.
There are good ones around, but they seem to be fewer and fewer in number.
Contemplate the fact that more and more software is being done like this, and be afraid, very afraid. The next time you get on a commercial airline flight, imagine that the software for their in-flight systems might have been produced that way. If you used an electronic voting machine, think about the fact that the software for the machine you used was probably produced that way.
Is this sustainable? Of course not. But the folks making these kinds of decisions figure they'll have their bonus and be long gone before anyone has to pay the consequences.
First, I haven't bought a CD or DVD from any big label for a couple of years. Bear with me, this is just a theory: Let's say that the folks who are boycotting tend to be somewhat more discriminating in their choice of music (I suspect that they are). The folks who buy Britney and similar garbage are probably never going to boycott. Now, this means that the big record companies see the demand shifting towards garbage (okay, more garbage than usual). So they produce more garbage. Maybe this has already been going on, and that's why record companies' profits have been reduced of late. Unfortunately, I don't see this going far enough to threaten record companies' survival. There are plenty of folks who love the garbage.
"Problem is, eventually, some ISP is going to get it in thier head that they can squeeze a few more dollars out of the system by offering a "premium" spamming package." Too late. Ever heard of a "pink contract". Some time ago, one of these got leaked from AT&T. They sold one of these contracts to a spammer. Spammer pays a premium and in return, AT&T won't boot them off. Pink contracts are common as weeds nowadays. This is at the root of the spam problem these days. If large ISPs (UUNET, Comcast, etc) could be held responsible for the truckloads of spam spewing from their networks, the spam problem could be cut by orders of magnitude overnight. Sure spammers would move overseas, but that just makes them easier to block. Foreign spam havens (like China) will find themselves blocked into oblivion if they continue to assist spammers. So, UUNET hosts lots of ROKSO spam gangs and charges them premium rates. They make money hand over fist while the rest of us are buried in their spam. And, you guessed it, (You) CAN SPAM did nothing to address this problem.
!THWACK!
No, you weren't paying attention. Nowadays, lots of spam comes from zombied machines. While these tend to be run by idiots, they're still an innocent third party.
OTOH, I can see sending this back to the corporate mail servers of some of the large ISPs hosting these zombied machines and refusing to cut them off from the 'net.
I've seen zombied machines left on the net for *months*. I'm still seeing my servers hit from machines that were infected *last year*. This is pure laziness on the part of the ISPs hosting these morons. Their accounts should have been yanked long ago. I won't mention names (**comcast** cough cough), but this smacks of gross negligence.
The problem with the CAN SPAM act is that it didn't make spam illegal.
I think most folks (except spammers) will agree with this definition: spam is unsolicited bulk email (UBE):
Unsolicited: I didn't ask for it.
Bulk: They sent more than a few.
Email: Duh.
CAN SPAM made "opt-out" spam *legal*. It preempted stronger state laws that demanded *opt-in*.
opt-in: You asked to receive it *before* receiving it. Opt-in means *confirmed* opt-in, meaning that you ask for it, then you get a confirmation email that you have to respond to. If you don't respond, you are dropped from the list.
opt-out: You have to ask *not* to receive it *after* receiving it.
Spammers *love* this law. For them, it is the "YOU CAN SPAM!" act. They get one free chance to spam you before you opt out. Then they can change their name, and they get *another* chance to spam you. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. They can still send UBE with impunity.
Even if the government had any will to *enforce* CAN SPAM (and they don't - there's little funding for enforcement), they couldn't stop spammers from working around this law.
IOW, the law is worse than useless. The only reason it exists is so that congress could say "they did something about spam" before election season. I think the Direct Marketing Association actually *wrote* the damn thing. If not, they certainly had significant input, because the law is *exactly what they wanted*. I'm certain that the DMA has lots of nice fat campaign contributions for everyone who voted for it. Please find out whether your representative voted for this joke of a law. If they did, they were essentially *lying* to you, because the law doesn't do jack to prevent spam.
While I support the EFF in many of their causes, they are completely clueless when it comes to spam. They think it is a free speech issue. It isn't. It's a private property issue. It's a *theft* issue. Nobody but me has the right to use my equipment for advertising purposes. If you use my servers for advertising purposes without *paying* me for that privilege, you are *stealing* from me. I don't understand why these "frea speach" morons don't get that. Hey, I'm all for free speech. Hell, I even support the ACLU, which makes me a pariah in my home state (Utah), but your free speech rights stop at my front door and my border routers.
NO! Don't fight abuse with abuse. Chances are you'll just hit some poor schmuck's open relay or proxy and cause more problems than the initial spam. Report them to blacklists. Use the blacklists. *Don't* add to the problem.
I doubt you'll get any action by emailing abuse@yahoo.com. They're famous for ignoring abuse complaints.