Most of the posts also miss the business model. The government collects the raw data, and that is made freely available. What Accuweather and the like do is turn that raw data into value-added products like maps with pretty colors, icons, etc. They translate the science into a form that average people understand.
And I can see where that is a useful service - but if the data the government collects is made available to whoever wants it, instead of one company, then those value-added products can be done by any company that chooses to do them.
I fail to see why Accuweather should be given any kind of monopoly on that data - they didn't collect it, and taxes paid for the collection, not Accuweather.
How much did it cost NASA to put the first American in space versus how much it costs the Rutan group to put the first private human in space?
Technology has advanced quite a bit since then. The Spaceship One guys had advantages gained by having new technology, and years of space exploration and development. Comparing the two as if they did the same thing at the same time is unreasonable.
This proposal would make spam profitable to ISPs.
You seem to believe that the "payment" is based on money. It's not. There is no money involved in the payment in any way - just CPU time.
The ISP's don't profit from it.
I don't want to sound like I'm in favor of it - I'm not at all convinced this is an effective solution. But saying that ISP's will stand to profit from spam shows that you haven't read much about the system at all.
Spammers use hotmail as drop boxes - places for suckers to respond.
Spammers *don't* send the mail through hotmail, as you said. And spammers drop boxes don't receive all of the bounced replies, because spammers usually forge the "From" and "reply-to" fields so that those go to some innocent account.
But no black-lists will list you for being jo-jobed (the anti-spammer term for whats happening to you).
Chances are, whats happening to him isn't a joe-job, just a regular forgery, as occurs a million times a day. A forgery just forges his info in the header - a joe job tries to make it look like his site *is* the spamming site, by advertising things on his site, putting URL's back to his site, etc.
Many people use their email accounts for very critical information or personal correspondence.
Anyone that uses a free email service for "critical information" is a fool. If it's important for you, business wise or personally, then you should have a real account instead of a freebie web based kludge.
Spammers who use hotmail accounts are not usually sending the spam via hotmail. They don't manually enter one email at a time, and I'm sure hotmail has checks so that if their accounts are used to send millions of emails a day from one account, it gets checked into.
Most spammers using hotmail accounts are using them as drop-boxes, places for people to reply when they want to invest in the spammers "wonderful business opportunity" or who have decided to buy "The Only Verified Opt In CD of every email address on the planet". They send the spam via other sources, using faked headers so the bounces go to John and Jane Doe who had nothing to do with it, with info in the email telling the suckers that to purchase, contact them, be removed (or whatever) that they should email "whateverBSaccount@hotmail.com".
So I suspect that there *are* lots of spammers accounts that have never sent mail, and that Hotmail has deleted some spammers accounts that never received mail, simply because someone complained about the dropbox listed in the spam before anyone stupid enough to buy from spam got happened to reply.
I would also point out that with a very large, free service, Hotmail isn't going to want to spend a lot of money hire abuse-desk people to watch over this.
I'm not defending Hotmail, but I can see that there are no easy solutions.
In order to qualify, they have to have 3 people (or a pilot, seating for two people, and "equivilant weight" to make up for the passengers.) But they *also* have to make an official "We are going after the prize and our test flight will be at this place and time" annoucement, which they never did.
In other words, quit trying to correct information which is already correct.
Bulk email is perfectly acceptable as long as the recipients are willing. No question about that. That isn't spam - it's sent to people that requested it.
Bingo. Those are the people I've been talking about. People who send bulk email in complete accordance with the perfectly reasonable opt-in laws.
Email sent to people who opted in is, by definition, not spam. Regardless, there are no opt in laws in the US.
The US does have a very unreasonable opt-out law that lets people spam legally. That doesn't change the fact that they are spamming. It doesn't make it morally right. The people they send to still don't want their crap.
I'm not arguing that email can't be used to market. There are a lot of legitimate email lists used just for that purpose - but those lists are opt in lists, not spam. (Hint - I run two opt in lists myself, and one is used to market to a very small niche group.) I'll stand by my statement - legitimate businesses, and legitimate entrepreneurs, do not send spam.
I'm not a spammer. I just know some well enough to be an aplogist for those particular ones.
I believe you are a spammer. You sure sound like one. Even if you are telling the truth, the fact that you defend spammers for doing what they do means that you are a slimeball, just like them.
In fact, here's something that everybody forgets: spammers don't want to spam you
Yes, they do. For awhile, I sent spam complaints from an address used for no other purposes - spamcomplaint@ (my domain). That address now receives spam. They havested the address that I used to send complaints about spam, and they use it to send more spam.
What we really need is a registry of spam-unfriendly email addresses.
Spammers have been known to trade lists of known anti-spammers, known spam-trap addresses, and such. Some of my addresses have (correctly) been on those lists. It doesn't seem to lower the spam, though.
Your basic idea is to create a one-stop "do not spam" list. That's been tried by spammers, by anti-spammers, and even the FTC can see that it won't be effective. You, of course, believe this to be a new concept - but that doesn't change facts.
They're not evil.
Yes, they are. That's why I get bounces because they forge my addresses. Almost all spam is sent using forged addresses because these people are dishonest, unwilling to admit who they are, unwilling to deal with the bounces they cause, unwilling to pay their own bandwidth costs. They don't give a shit if they ruin email for everyone else. They'll do anything they can if they think it *might* get them what they want. Just like a rapists decides that he doesn't care if the woman doesn't want to have sex, he does it anyway to get what he wants. Just like a thief doesn't care that he's screwing some honest citizen when he robs them - as long as he gets what he wants. And just like the rapist and the thief, the spammers are evil, out to get what they want, regardless of the damage it does to others.
spam costs nothing more than time just like telemarketers.
Not true. If your ISP is charging 19.95 a month, and $5-$6 of that is going to pay for an abuse-desk person and extra bandwidth to help deal with the spam, then while your monthly charge may not go up and down depending on spam levels, it's still cash money out of your pocket. ISP's have to have the bandwidth, server processing, and storage space to handle the spam - and they pass on those costs to their users.
You *might* be able to make that argument about Netzero or some version of completely free ISP - but even there, the fact that the end user doesn't pay the money to cover the extra costs associated by spam doesn't change the fact that the cost is still there, it just changes the argument about who the spammer is stealing from.
And if Telemarketers are bothering you, then you're doing something wrong. Join the DNC list, get a cell phone - something. I practically never get telemarketing calls. It's been so long since the last one, I can't give a close guess how long ago it was - 9-12 months, probably.
anything that requires to coordinate a time of play with other people is kind of difficult.
You might want to try http://battlemaster.org. You RP a medieval noble, recruiting men, fighting for your kingdom. It doesn't take a lot of time to play, if you just stick with the basics. If, however, you really get into the game, then you can end up as a battlegroup leader, general, duke, king, etc, and reading messages, answering questions, and giving orders can get much more involved.
There are two turns a day, one every 12 hours. You can only do a small amount on any given turn - and then you have to wait for the next turn before you can do anything else (other than read/send messages.) You have to play regularly for weeks/months in order to really be successful.
It's free to play, and the developer is still working to make it better.
Taking the difference between the two lists would provide you with a list of the valid addresses.
And law enforcement could/should set up some addresses that are published nowhere except to the Do Not Email list. If the Do Not Email list were used to find valid addresses, it would end up including some of those.
And any mail coming to those would signal "Here is a spammer who is not just ignoring the laws, but who is actively trying to use the Do Not Email list to harvest new addresses." That would make them a primary, and fairly easy to prosecute, target.
"I urge everyone who is involved in the commercial bulk e-mail business to cease all operations unless and until they are completely compliant with the requirements of the new United States anti-spam laws. There is no substitute for complete compliance," he said.
"It is critical that every person be given an opportunity to opt-out of receiving e-mail correspondence promoting commercial products."
Basically, even in his apology, he still states that spam is OK, and that everyone should "just opt out". Screw that - my filter can delete 400 emails in short time, but if I have to read them and try to jump through their opt-out hoops for the 400 spams I receive every day, it'll take all day. And in the meantime, the vast majority aren't going to take me off their list even after I start begging them.
Begging spammers to leave you alone, while saying they are allowed to spam you until you do beg, just isn't an effective solution.
And his apology isn't an apology. The only thing he is sorry for is that he got caught and sued.
Well, if I ever got an e-mail from someone at hotmail that wasn't an odd neumonic of their common name, or with random numbers at the end, I'd be impressed!:)
But since you hide your email address ("guard it as if it were more valuable than gold", in your words) you aren't likely to get legitimate email from many people, regardless of their email address.
Slashdot Mirror
So, once you have no taxes and no government, how does that differ from anarchy?
Anything? No police, no roads, no garbage pickup. I'm sure everyone will do a good job of hauling their own garbage to an appropriate spot...
Sorry, but I don't see this as a good thing.
And I can see where that is a useful service - but if the data the government collects is made available to whoever wants it, instead of one company, then those value-added products can be done by any company that chooses to do them.
I fail to see why Accuweather should be given any kind of monopoly on that data - they didn't collect it, and taxes paid for the collection, not Accuweather.
Technology has advanced quite a bit since then. The Spaceship One guys had advantages gained by having new technology, and years of space exploration and development. Comparing the two as if they did the same thing at the same time is unreasonable.
The guys an idiot who did something stupid and now he expects everyone else to give him money so he can do it again.
If you buy from X10, you are supporting email spammers.
The ISP's don't profit from it.
I don't want to sound like I'm in favor of it - I'm not at all convinced this is an effective solution. But saying that ISP's will stand to profit from spam shows that you haven't read much about the system at all.
That would seem to be untrue. Evidence : microsoftsucks.com
Spammers *don't* send the mail through hotmail, as you said. And spammers drop boxes don't receive all of the bounced replies, because spammers usually forge the "From" and "reply-to" fields so that those go to some innocent account.
Chances are, whats happening to him isn't a joe-job, just a regular forgery, as occurs a million times a day. A forgery just forges his info in the header - a joe job tries to make it look like his site *is* the spamming site, by advertising things on his site, putting URL's back to his site, etc.
His ISP sounds clueless, regardless.
Anyone that uses a free email service for "critical information" is a fool. If it's important for you, business wise or personally, then you should have a real account instead of a freebie web based kludge.
Most spammers using hotmail accounts are using them as drop-boxes, places for people to reply when they want to invest in the spammers "wonderful business opportunity" or who have decided to buy "The Only Verified Opt In CD of every email address on the planet". They send the spam via other sources, using faked headers so the bounces go to John and Jane Doe who had nothing to do with it, with info in the email telling the suckers that to purchase, contact them, be removed (or whatever) that they should email "whateverBSaccount@hotmail.com".
So I suspect that there *are* lots of spammers accounts that have never sent mail, and that Hotmail has deleted some spammers accounts that never received mail, simply because someone complained about the dropbox listed in the spam before anyone stupid enough to buy from spam got happened to reply.
I would also point out that with a very large, free service, Hotmail isn't going to want to spend a lot of money hire abuse-desk people to watch over this.
I'm not defending Hotmail, but I can see that there are no easy solutions.
In other words, quit trying to correct information which is already correct.
Bingo. Those are the people I've been talking about. People who send bulk email in complete accordance with the perfectly reasonable opt-in laws. Email sent to people who opted in is, by definition, not spam. Regardless, there are no opt in laws in the US.
The US does have a very unreasonable opt-out law that lets people spam legally. That doesn't change the fact that they are spamming. It doesn't make it morally right. The people they send to still don't want their crap.
I'm not arguing that email can't be used to market. There are a lot of legitimate email lists used just for that purpose - but those lists are opt in lists, not spam. (Hint - I run two opt in lists myself, and one is used to market to a very small niche group.) I'll stand by my statement - legitimate businesses, and legitimate entrepreneurs, do not send spam.
I believe you are a spammer. You sure sound like one. Even if you are telling the truth, the fact that you defend spammers for doing what they do means that you are a slimeball, just like them.
Wrong again. Legitimate businesses, and legitimate entrepreneurs, do not send spam.
Yes, they do. For awhile, I sent spam complaints from an address used for no other purposes - spamcomplaint@ (my domain). That address now receives spam. They havested the address that I used to send complaints about spam, and they use it to send more spam.
What we really need is a registry of spam-unfriendly email addresses.
Spammers have been known to trade lists of known anti-spammers, known spam-trap addresses, and such. Some of my addresses have (correctly) been on those lists. It doesn't seem to lower the spam, though.
Your basic idea is to create a one-stop "do not spam" list. That's been tried by spammers, by anti-spammers, and even the FTC can see that it won't be effective. You, of course, believe this to be a new concept - but that doesn't change facts.
They're not evil.
Yes, they are. That's why I get bounces because they forge my addresses. Almost all spam is sent using forged addresses because these people are dishonest, unwilling to admit who they are, unwilling to deal with the bounces they cause, unwilling to pay their own bandwidth costs. They don't give a shit if they ruin email for everyone else. They'll do anything they can if they think it *might* get them what they want. Just like a rapists decides that he doesn't care if the woman doesn't want to have sex, he does it anyway to get what he wants. Just like a thief doesn't care that he's screwing some honest citizen when he robs them - as long as he gets what he wants. And just like the rapist and the thief, the spammers are evil, out to get what they want, regardless of the damage it does to others.
Not true. If your ISP is charging 19.95 a month, and $5-$6 of that is going to pay for an abuse-desk person and extra bandwidth to help deal with the spam, then while your monthly charge may not go up and down depending on spam levels, it's still cash money out of your pocket. ISP's have to have the bandwidth, server processing, and storage space to handle the spam - and they pass on those costs to their users.
You *might* be able to make that argument about Netzero or some version of completely free ISP - but even there, the fact that the end user doesn't pay the money to cover the extra costs associated by spam doesn't change the fact that the cost is still there, it just changes the argument about who the spammer is stealing from.
And if Telemarketers are bothering you, then you're doing something wrong. Join the DNC list, get a cell phone - something. I practically never get telemarketing calls. It's been so long since the last one, I can't give a close guess how long ago it was - 9-12 months, probably.
Rule # 1 seems to apply to your post - spammers lie.
And you ended up with a lousy boss. What did you expect, when you base your choice on a stupid question like that?
You might want to try http://battlemaster.org. You RP a medieval noble, recruiting men, fighting for your kingdom. It doesn't take a lot of time to play, if you just stick with the basics. If, however, you really get into the game, then you can end up as a battlegroup leader, general, duke, king, etc, and reading messages, answering questions, and giving orders can get much more involved.
There are two turns a day, one every 12 hours. You can only do a small amount on any given turn - and then you have to wait for the next turn before you can do anything else (other than read/send messages.) You have to play regularly for weeks/months in order to really be successful.
It's free to play, and the developer is still working to make it better.
SpyWiper, for instance.
And law enforcement could/should set up some addresses that are published nowhere except to the Do Not Email list. If the Do Not Email list were used to find valid addresses, it would end up including some of those.
And any mail coming to those would signal "Here is a spammer who is not just ignoring the laws, but who is actively trying to use the Do Not Email list to harvest new addresses." That would make them a primary, and fairly easy to prosecute, target.
Begging spammers to leave you alone, while saying they are allowed to spam you until you do beg, just isn't an effective solution.
And his apology isn't an apology. The only thing he is sorry for is that he got caught and sued.
But since you hide your email address ("guard it as if it were more valuable than gold", in your words) you aren't likely to get legitimate email from many people, regardless of their email address.