One of the worst things, though, about having a "catch all" address on a domain, is that you receive all the bounces from forged spam that's using your domain.
I get tons of bounces from spam to things like: jsdjfqwnc@[mydomain.com].
Luckily these are relatively easy to filter, but are superbly annoying. Why do these spammers pick on my and my little, innocuous domain?
Worse, every once in a while because somepeople don't understand that from headers can be forged, I get on a blacklist, so my mail can't get to places like AOL, etc.
it uses rules based filtering to complement Mail.app's methods. And, as a bonus, you can have it mark what it finds as junk mail, which trains mail.app.
It requires some tweaking, but is great, updated often, and free!
MEAT YOUR MAKER
New Movie Takes Down Factory Farms
You know the scene: Life seems basically normal until, one day, a mysterious stranger contacts you and tells you your whole existence is a lie. You have two options: red pill or blue pill. Sound
familiar? That's right, it's the plot of "The Meatrix" (no, that's not a typo), in which moopheus the cow shows Leo, the pig protagonist (think Keanu Reeves with a curlier tail), that idyllic life on the family farm is a sham. The stark reality involves factory farms, massive pollution, high doses of antibiotics, and a few rebel farm animals in trench coats. Catch the latest short eco-flick by Free Range Graphics, on the Grist Magazine website.
Saying, "Give it a Chance. Of course it doesn't have the installed user base or applications yet.", isn't cutting it. Remember Symbian has been around for a long time. The platform has never had much software (enough to make the thing useful? Yes. Enough to get people to switch from Palm? No way).
I was a big fan of Symbian I had a Psion for many years and loved it. But what made me switch to Palm was the huge availability of software, the better design of apps, the synching, and increasing utility of the hardware (though this phone is a step in the right direction!).
It's all about choice, to me, if I go Symbian, I have to use the one datbase (for instance) that runs on it, with Palm I have the choice of a dozen, at least.
This phone does look great. But since it's not Palm compatible, I doubt it will take off.
For me, at least, the availability of software, the integration with desktop apps (on Windows), and the ubiquity (and maybe therefore compatibility) of the Palm platform makes this phone much less attractive.
Perhaps technical people can put this phone to great use through their own programming, integration, etc. But mainstream people just aren't going to do that.
I don't mean this to be flamebait, but why would anyone get on to a platform with so little software, compatibility, etc?
The problem is that most people won't leave negative feedback for fear of retaliation. When I see someone with 49 positive and 1 negative, I'm always under the impression that there are a bunch more negatives that didn't go reported.
There have been times that a seller hasn't sent the right thing, or packaged it wrong, but made up for it, and I haven't left any feedback, positive or negative.
It'd be interesting to see a number of ratings vs. number of transactions figure.
Donnie Darko is a great, underappreciated move.
It's a great psychological thriller.
It didn't last long in the theaters because it couldn't be easily classified.
Mainly because:
It's not a horror movie
It's not a teenage movie
It's not science fiction
It's not a mystery
It certainly has components of all of those genres, but it doesn't fit into the pigeon hole of any one of them.
I have always considered speeding a form of voting. If everyone goes 10 MPH over the speed limit in a certain spot, then they should raise the speed limit there.
This is why speed traps aren't legal in many places. Police know where people are going to speed (downhill, or where the speed limit is rediculously low, or where the speed limit sign is covered up) and nab them there. But many states see that as an abuse of police power.
Filesharing is similar. If everyone is doing it, then it shouldn't be illegal. It should be taken as the will of the people that it should be allowed.
Before you flame about "if everyone was a murder would it be OK to kill people?" I'm not saying that. Not everyone is a murderer, so thankfully we don't have to debate that.
Another example is trespassing. If private property gets traversed consistently by the public, such that a path gets created, and the private property owner doesn't do anything about it, that path becomes a right of way. This is, of course, why the recording industry is trying to enforce the current laws, so they can say "We tried to stop them."
So let's get the laws changed! Yes, the artists and the recording industry need to make some money. So they should figure out a way to incorporate file sharing into that scheme. And let us get on trading files, and them get on making money.
All this squabbling will get us nowhere (or should I post that in the Iraq war thread?)
Having done some hiring of technology folks, I've always thought it would have been a good idea to check out how neat/clean candidates are.
Not that I'm a neat freak by any means, but when someone's cube is so filled with crap that you can't even see the "furniture", or the person apparently never bathes... it seems like it might be a good check to do.
This could easily be done by walking the candidate to his or her car, and peering in. Is the back or front seat filled with Mountain Dew cans? Is this person living out of his car? Is the car so smashed up that you can bet this person has no hand-eye coordination, or is seriously unlucky (either being not good for a technologist).
I'm not sure I know how to check for not bathing. Actually, I'm not even sure I want to know how to check for not bathing.
Ebay has fraud protection program. Why didn't this guy go through them. Sure they're not going to go arrest the guy, but they'll certainly close him down on ebay. Even now he can get some of his money back from them... if it was an ebay transaction
For that matter if Mr. Christmas had done this a lot, why didn't the seller look at the buyer's feedback? Certainly if Mr. Christmas has been ripping people off the sellers would leave negative feedback.
Looking on ebay for the transaction turned up nothing either.
From a more careful reading of the story, I infer that the seller took it off of ebay and sold it privately. This was a bad idea. Yeah, you have to pay ebay a commission, but that's their business, and you wouldn't have sold it without them. It's also against ebay's seller policies to do this.
So while I'm really very sympathetic about this guy getting ripped off, I think he could have been a little smarter about it.
Lesson to all of us: Don't circumvent ebay's safeguards.
My understanding of how this works in many cases is that a copy can also fall of a truck at the duplication houses.
Was that the studio's fault?
Maybe, but I'm not sure I'd want them to infringe the worker rights in those countries any more than they are already by ordering strip-searches to find DVDs that workers are taking out.
I don't think this is vigilantism at all. Vigilantism would be direct personal harm to Mr. Ralsky or to his property, etc. Vigilantism is getting a suitable punishment in the vigilante's mind and exacting that punishment.
This is not what those who are sending Mr. Ralsky unsolicited snail mail offers are doing. What they are, in fact, doing is really voting. They're showing Mr. Ralsky that a vast number of people think that what he does for a living and his cavalier attitude about it suck.
Why is this not vigilantism? Because if only one person did this, he'd get a few offers, and probably not be bothered. But because hundreds (more?) of people are doing it, he's getting lots and lots of offers, and is really bothered (yay!).
So I'm considering Mr. Ralsky's mailbox a popular opinion poll. If it's full of offers, and he doesn't like it, he's not in the right line of work. If it has only a few offers that he likes, he should continue on his current path.
The Psion 5mx meets all your criteria, and goes way beyond it. The Psion's touchtypable keyboard is built-in, and it's all in a smaller package than the Newton. I've got Perl and Java on it. It'll even run Linux, but you won't want to because the EPOC operating system is good. Desktop synchronization, and more.
I'm a big fan of the Newton, and would be if it had kept going, but the Psion is a darn good palmtop.
The Psion does have its failings, there isn't a lot of third party hardware available for it. I'm currently agitated that I can't wirelessly browse on its half-VGA sized screen. Palms are good for something.
Now I've used Napster (once or twice, but only for songs in the PD:) and the largest number of users I've seen on the same server that I was on at one time was 8000, and that was on a day when they were obviously having server troubles, so people were being directed to that server more than usual. The normal number is around 5,000 people logged in at any one time.
So I'm wondering if anyone has any idea of where they could have gotten such a high number. Perhaps there were 335,000 songs, but I just can't believe that there were 335,000 individual users.
My guess is that they used the song count, rather than the user count so that it would have more press impact, and that we'll find out later that it really was something more like 20,000 users (even that is high). Come to think of it, 335,000 songs is too high. They must be double counting.
Like if NetPD person A and NetPD person B were logged on to the same Napster server, they probably counted the songs they saw twice. And with "5000" NetPD people banging on it... Hmm, that would require only 67 Metallica (TM, Reg. US Pat. Off., Reg. Penna Dept. Agr) songs to be on Napster to get a count of 335,000, which is about how many I'd estimate are available on a server at any given time.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the worst things, though, about having a "catch all" address on a domain, is that you receive all the bounces from forged spam that's using your domain.
I get tons of bounces from spam to things like: jsdjfqwnc@[mydomain.com].
Luckily these are relatively easy to filter, but are superbly annoying. Why do these spammers pick on my and my little, innocuous domain?
Worse, every once in a while because somepeople don't understand that from headers can be forged, I get on a blacklist, so my mail can't get to places like AOL, etc.
Is there any cure for this?
Enter JunkMatcher Central.
it uses rules based filtering to complement Mail.app's methods. And, as a bonus, you can have it mark what it finds as junk mail, which trains mail.app.
It requires some tweaking, but is great, updated often, and free!
Oh, please, Mr. Simpson, 40 rods to the hogshead is only 0.0019840952 miles per gallon!
New Movie Takes Down Factory Farms
You know the scene: Life seems basically normal until, one day, a mysterious stranger contacts you and tells you your whole existence is a lie. You have two options: red pill or blue pill. Sound familiar? That's right, it's the plot of "The Meatrix" (no, that's not a typo), in which moopheus the cow shows Leo, the pig protagonist (think Keanu Reeves with a curlier tail), that idyllic life on the family farm is a sham. The stark reality involves factory farms, massive pollution, high doses of antibiotics, and a few rebel farm animals in trench coats. Catch the latest short eco-flick by Free Range Graphics, on the Grist Magazine website.
I was a big fan of Symbian I had a Psion for many years and loved it. But what made me switch to Palm was the huge availability of software, the better design of apps, the synching, and increasing utility of the hardware (though this phone is a step in the right direction!).
It's all about choice, to me, if I go Symbian, I have to use the one datbase (for instance) that runs on it, with Palm I have the choice of a dozen, at least.
It's actually Joker that I had problems with. It seems that they don't have anyone there who speaks English well enough to deal with customers.
Plus their web forms are a bit kludgy and hard to deal with.
This phone does look great. But since it's not Palm compatible, I doubt it will take off.
For me, at least, the availability of software, the integration with desktop apps (on Windows), and the ubiquity (and maybe therefore compatibility) of the Palm platform makes this phone much less attractive.
Perhaps technical people can put this phone to great use through their own programming, integration, etc. But mainstream people just aren't going to do that.
I don't mean this to be flamebait, but why would anyone get on to a platform with so little software, compatibility, etc?
Or, maybe the wait{er|ress} was just doing the "customer is always right" thing and giving your friend the benefit of the doubt?
Wine always taste different to me in restaurants than it does at home.
(Maybe they've been switching it on me all those times!)
Verizon is a CDMA network. Why isn't this phone going to be carried by them.
Anyone know?
Well, I don't know about making a house out of subway cars, but here's a guy who has made a nuclear fallout shelter out of busses.
The site has a lot of information, including pictures of the construction.
I can hardly stand it!
The problem is that most people won't leave negative feedback for fear of retaliation. When I see someone with 49 positive and 1 negative, I'm always under the impression that there are a bunch more negatives that didn't go reported.
There have been times that a seller hasn't sent the right thing, or packaged it wrong, but made up for it, and I haven't left any feedback, positive or negative.
It'd be interesting to see a number of ratings vs. number of transactions figure.
I had the same reaction to Episode I. I had bought the Episode II DVD and let it collect dust until it was the last DVD I had that I handn't watched.
So, I watched it.
And I liked it!
Certainly not as much as Episodes IV and V, but enough to be excited about a Episode II coming out.
I thought Episode II got back to the roots of the series, especially in the way they used the spirituality of the force, etc.
Watch Episode II, I think you'll be surprised.
Would all packets coming from Microsoft computers be flagged evil?
It didn't last long in the theaters because it couldn't be easily classified. Mainly because:
It certainly has components of all of those genres, but it doesn't fit into the pigeon hole of any one of them.
You actually have to think about the movie. And it's cheap at Amazon. Check it out.
This is why speed traps aren't legal in many places. Police know where people are going to speed (downhill, or where the speed limit is rediculously low, or where the speed limit sign is covered up) and nab them there. But many states see that as an abuse of police power.
Filesharing is similar. If everyone is doing it, then it shouldn't be illegal. It should be taken as the will of the people that it should be allowed.
Before you flame about "if everyone was a murder would it be OK to kill people?" I'm not saying that. Not everyone is a murderer, so thankfully we don't have to debate that.
Another example is trespassing. If private property gets traversed consistently by the public, such that a path gets created, and the private property owner doesn't do anything about it, that path becomes a right of way. This is, of course, why the recording industry is trying to enforce the current laws, so they can say "We tried to stop them."
So let's get the laws changed! Yes, the artists and the recording industry need to make some money. So they should figure out a way to incorporate file sharing into that scheme. And let us get on trading files, and them get on making money.
All this squabbling will get us nowhere (or should I post that in the Iraq war thread?)
Don't worry about admitting that you voted for Al Gore, most people did.
This actually happened/happens. The scam that I heard about is the Slavery reparations tax refund, where descendents of slaves get a $5000 tax refund.
This was, of course, false, but a lot of people signed up for it.
It turns out that the IRS has a page on Tax Fraud Alerts.
I'm actually surprised there aren't more of these.
Having done some hiring of technology folks, I've always thought it would have been a good idea to check out how neat/clean candidates are.
... it seems like it might be a good check to do.
Not that I'm a neat freak by any means, but when someone's cube is so filled with crap that you can't even see the "furniture", or the person apparently never bathes
This could easily be done by walking the candidate to his or her car, and peering in. Is the back or front seat filled with Mountain Dew cans? Is this person living out of his car? Is the car so smashed up that you can bet this person has no hand-eye coordination, or is seriously unlucky (either being not good for a technologist).
I'm not sure I know how to check for not bathing. Actually, I'm not even sure I want to know how to check for not bathing.
Double transistors every 18 months! It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
For that matter if Mr. Christmas had done this a lot, why didn't the seller look at the buyer's feedback? Certainly if Mr. Christmas has been ripping people off the sellers would leave negative feedback.
Well, it turns out that videopro55 has no feedback!
Looking on ebay for the transaction turned up nothing either.
From a more careful reading of the story, I infer that the seller took it off of ebay and sold it privately. This was a bad idea. Yeah, you have to pay ebay a commission, but that's their business, and you wouldn't have sold it without them. It's also against ebay's seller policies to do this.
So while I'm really very sympathetic about this guy getting ripped off, I think he could have been a little smarter about it.
Lesson to all of us: Don't circumvent ebay's safeguards.
My understanding of how this works in many cases is that a copy can also fall of a truck at the duplication houses.
Was that the studio's fault?
Maybe, but I'm not sure I'd want them to infringe the worker rights in those countries any more than they are already by ordering strip-searches to find DVDs that workers are taking out.
I don't think this is vigilantism at all. Vigilantism would be direct personal harm to Mr. Ralsky or to his property, etc. Vigilantism is getting a suitable punishment in the vigilante's mind and exacting that punishment.
This is not what those who are sending Mr. Ralsky unsolicited snail mail offers are doing. What they are, in fact, doing is really voting. They're showing Mr. Ralsky that a vast number of people think that what he does for a living and his cavalier attitude about it suck.
Why is this not vigilantism? Because if only one person did this, he'd get a few offers, and probably not be bothered. But because hundreds (more?) of people are doing it, he's getting lots and lots of offers, and is really bothered (yay!).
So I'm considering Mr. Ralsky's mailbox a popular opinion poll. If it's full of offers, and he doesn't like it, he's not in the right line of work. If it has only a few offers that he likes, he should continue on his current path.
Which will he chose?
The Psion 5mx meets all your criteria, and goes way beyond it. The Psion's touchtypable keyboard is built-in, and it's all in a smaller package than the Newton. I've got Perl and Java on it. It'll even run Linux, but you won't want to because the EPOC operating system is good. Desktop synchronization, and more.
I'm a big fan of the Newton, and would be if it had kept going, but the Psion is a darn good palmtop.
The Psion does have its failings, there isn't a lot of third party hardware available for it. I'm currently agitated that I can't wirelessly browse on its half-VGA sized screen. Palms are good for something.
So I'm wondering if anyone has any idea of where they could have gotten such a high number. Perhaps there were 335,000 songs, but I just can't believe that there were 335,000 individual users.
My guess is that they used the song count, rather than the user count so that it would have more press impact, and that we'll find out later that it really was something more like 20,000 users (even that is high). Come to think of it, 335,000 songs is too high. They must be double counting.
Like if NetPD person A and NetPD person B were logged on to the same Napster server, they probably counted the songs they saw twice. And with "5000" NetPD people banging on it... Hmm, that would require only 67 Metallica (TM, Reg. US Pat. Off., Reg. Penna Dept. Agr) songs to be on Napster to get a count of 335,000, which is about how many I'd estimate are available on a server at any given time.