[Please exuse me if this is what the article is about, I didn't feel up to sacrificing my first male child to the Times.]
I find it funny that many folks on/. will complain about the NYTimes requiring you to set up a free account, but those same folks who call it "sacrificing my first male child" are willing to set up a free account on SlashDot.
I've had a NYTimes account for a long time. I get emails from them with news summaries every day. The email address I gave them has never been given to anyone else, and it's never received a piece of spam - just like the email address I gave to/. hasn't received any spam.
Playing devil's advocate and being stupid are not the same thing.
What is so wrong about paying for a resource you are using?
The vast majority of us already pay for our internet access. Pretending we don't doesn't change that fact. Spam is caused by people who abuse the system, forcing their costs onto other people in hopes of making money from the people they are abusing.
It's clear that sender-pays is the only technological scheme that is effective and can be guaranteed effective in the long term.
Nonsense. In order for sender pays to work, you have to be able to verify who *really* sent the message. Otherwise, you can't bill them - you don't know who sent it. That isn't the only problem with sender-pays, but it's a killer.
Once you can verify who really sent the message, the spam problem gets much easier to deal with. If you know that they claim to be JohnDoe but they aren't really JohnDoe, then you can toss that mail - you already know it's not legitimate. If JohnDoe really did send the message, and it's spam, he'll end up blacklisted in no time. Sites that rarely, if ever, have complaints about spam will end up on whitelists, just as the sites who commonly abuse will end up on blacklists.
Having verification about who *really* sent the mail makes things relatively easy. And once that is done, forcing people to pay to send email is pointless.
don't even need to mod the protocol, if people just set up their mail servers to force authentication before outgoing mail can be sent, there wouldn't be any problems.
Nonsense. Spammers can run their own SMTP servers if they want. More commonly, they manage to infect other systems and let them send the mail. I agree that anyone running a mail server should do authentication - and most already do - but claiming that would solve the problem is pure nonsense.
best answer to spam, don't click on the links in it, don't read it, just delete it, if it wasn't profitable they wouldn't send it out
If *nobody* responded to it, the spam would probably stop - eventually. But >99% people ignoring it isn't going to stop the problem, because they still make money on the fraction stupid enough to buy from it.
Your post was modded insightful, but it certainly wasn't.
Re:Lets hope that the result is progress
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 1
No they don't. They can keep their portal and run pure a search engine on a seperate URL. The portal, of course, would include search boxes so that people using MSN can start their search there.
The Russ Nelson at http://russnelson.com is fairly well known. I would be seriously surprised if he were involved. I think it's much more likely that he's a target, just like the SCO (and in a less direct way, Kazaa.)
Email? I think there is. Email clients have made little progress in the last 5-10 years. Spam tools are designed as "add-ons" that don't really integrate - they stand aside and pre-filter and such.
But the fact that I believe there is a market for a better email client (and I do) doesn't mean that I think it is financially viable. Simply matching the basic functionality that already exists in todays email programs would take a lot of time. The features I would like to add would take more. And as soon as you made it public, if Microsoft or anyone else who sells email products decided that they liked some of the ideas you had implemented, they could throw 30 programmers (along with testers, documentation guys, and other various support personel) onto the job, and soon their program would do everything yours can do. In order to get any market, you would have to keep your product in the closet until you were ready to market, and then you would have to get that market fast. Once your open that window, it'll only be open for a short time before you would have to compete with the big boys.
So, I believe *could* build a better email program. But would it be worthwhile to spend that much time/effort/money developing it? I doubt it.
You do realise that the people that were on the plane were the low-level grunts, some of who probably didn't know what they were in for, and that the people who did the planning, handled financing, and gave the orders were not on the planes, don't you?
So, I see you're still getting your news from Baghdad Bob.
Why do people make up obvious lies? Do they think that by posting nonsense on Slashdot that everyone will believe them? (I guess someone did - it got modded up.)
But SPEWS is not about blocking Spam, it is about trying to get high-level service providers to violate their contracts
Those contracts normally have AUP's which say, amoung other things, that you are not allowed to send spam. SPEWS would like those rules enforced. Regardless of contracts, the people who use SPEWS don't want the spam. AGIS was a huge provider at one time, openly hosting major spammers such as Sanford Wallace. I don't know what kind of contracts they had with him - but people started blacklisting them due to the spam. They haven't fared very well in the long run - and I'll bet some of their old IP's are still sitting in blacklists.
SPEWS claims that they are innocent, because they don't block anyone. This is a lie.
No, it's 100% true. As you say, they publish lists which are used for that purpose. However, the blocking that is done is done by the admin who chooses to use their list. Think of Consumer Reports. If they publish that cellphone A has advantages over cellphone B, do you claim they "Blocked people from buying cellphone B?" No, of course not. They published their opinion, just like SPEWS does.
I don't use SPEWS, but claiming that they block mail is an outright lie. They publish a list with IP's that, in their opinion, are abusive. Some admins choose to block based on that list. Others don't. No admin is forced to use their list.
It's free speech. Deal with it.
Remember when SPEWS blocked everybody, and many automated scripts did the same?
That's also untrue. Osirusoft distributed the SPEWS DNSBL for some time. That was one distribution point for the SPEWS list - but not the only one. They shut down (in a way that I don't like or understand) and started reporting that every IP was listed. Not just on the SPEWS list, but also on others they distributed.
Notice how it seems to be mostly innocent people complaining about SPEWS and the way it operates?
And spammers are far too honest to show up in NANAE saying "I hate SPEWS because I'm an innocent victim who got blocked", so all of those reports are entirely trustworthy.
Episode VI, I and II have all been mediocre, so why would anyone even bother seeing episode III much less VII, VIII, or IX?
If you feel that way, you can probably save time by not reading the/. discussion about it.
I see this quite often. People don't like X, so when they see/. talking about it, they rush right over to post "I don't like X." If you really don't care, as you say, then don't you have anything better to do with your time?
Spam often uses gargage such as that. I suspect it's to help avoid spam filters that look at lots of email and assume that anytime they find the same message sent to lots of addresses, it's spam. They may think that it somehow helps them get past bayesian filtering, though I doubt it does.
As I said, I think that in this case, the spammer was simply stupid enough that he forgot to add the "payload" part of the spam before he hit "send".
In that case, it leads us back to one of the rules. Rule # 3 is "Spammers are Stupid". He probably just forgot to put his payload in before hitting send. I know I've seen similar things before.
It probably means that you're only looking at the text version of the spam, not the HTML part. Many text only readers will hide the HTML, showing you only that garbage part.
The "red herring" words may even trigger as spam. After you've received the word "byzantine" a couple of times, always in spam, then that word will be more likely to raise the spam score.
However, the problem still remains, sometimes they get through the filters, and sometimes the filters block legitimate mail. And in the meantime, the spammers try to get around it by sending even more nonsense. (After all, if 98% of the mail you send is getting blocked, and you want to hit 5,000,000 inboxes, you've got to send a lot more mail than before...
America driven by fear now spys on/raids arabs living in America just incase they bomb someone.
If the arabs hadn't hijacked aircraft and used them to kill thousands of people, that wouldn't be the case. I've always been opposed to prejudice, but I've become prejudiced since 9/11. Muslims are not reasonable, and talking to them doesn't work. They started a war. Now they are whining about the results.
I'm also not in favor of invading other countries without good reason, which is what we did in Iraq. I'm more-or-less republican, and I'm from Texas, which would seem to indicate that I should like Bush - but he's done a horrible job.
It was previously illegal according to California law to send spam. Now Can Spam comes into effect, which overrides California law. And now spam is legal.
Tell me again how it doesn't legalize spam?
I won't reply to whatever nonsense you post - arguing with idiots is a waste of my time, and idiots like you can't be educated.
If you blacklist them, they have every legal right to sue you for everything you own.
Sure. After all, the people who create blacklists shouldn't have the right to say "Lots of spam comes from these IP ranges."
Similarly, ISP's and businesses who don't want lots of spam shouldn't be able to say "We don't accept mail from listed IP's" (whether the listing is Spews, Spamcop, Spamhaus, or their own local list.
You're an idiot. You should try suing SPEWS - it'll be good for you.
Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire/24s from which spam is originating.
Haven't you heard of spews.org? If you use the Spews DNSBL list then you've got the thing you just asked for.
It will cut down on the amount of spam by a huge amount. And it does it early - as soon as the spammer tries to send mail, your mail-server takes the sending systems IP and runs it through the DNS check. If it's listed as a spammer, then it doesn't allow them to deliver the mail at all, which saves bandwidth. That's the good news.
The bad news is that if you do this, you're trusting someone you don't know (SPEWS is an annonymous group) to decide who is spamming, who should be listed, who shouldn't, etc. And since SPEWS does do the "escalation" that you ask for, it's just a matter of time before you find out that someone you *want* to receive email from is sending from a SPEWS listed IP.
For some people, that's acceptable. For others, it isn't.
Similarly, whether you use SPEWS or not, it's quite possible that you'll find yourself listed at some point. Since they escalate, it's quite possible that one spammer on a cable-modem account can get lots of other cable modem users listed. It's similarly possible that one SWBell DSL user can get a large number of other DSL users listed. And if you happen to be using one of those listed IP's, that could be you.
I'm not pro-SPEWS or anti-SPEWS. I think it's a good solution for some people. For others, there is too high a risk of legitimate mail being refused due to being listed. I personally don't use them - but I'm glad they exist, as I believe they do put additional pressure on spam-friendly ISP's.
Did you read the law? It does not say it's OK to spam.
It damn sure does! Sure, it tells them to "spam honestly", not to forge headers, not to use faked up subject lines and such - but as long as they do that, the law makes it quite clear that it's legal, and the law overrules state laws that required "ADV" warnings or, in California's case, made spam illegal.
It sounds like you haven't read the law. It also sounds like you are a spammer, else you wouldn't be so thrilled with a law that does nothing useful.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it funny that many folks on /. will complain about the NYTimes requiring you to set up a free account, but those same folks who call it "sacrificing my first male child" are willing to set up a free account on SlashDot.
I've had a NYTimes account for a long time. I get emails from them with news summaries every day. The email address I gave them has never been given to anyone else, and it's never received a piece of spam - just like the email address I gave to /. hasn't received any spam.
You're just bitching without any rhyme or reason.
playing devil's advocate
Playing devil's advocate and being stupid are not the same thing.
What is so wrong about paying for a resource you are using?
The vast majority of us already pay for our internet access. Pretending we don't doesn't change that fact. Spam is caused by people who abuse the system, forcing their costs onto other people in hopes of making money from the people they are abusing.
Nonsense. In order for sender pays to work, you have to be able to verify who *really* sent the message. Otherwise, you can't bill them - you don't know who sent it. That isn't the only problem with sender-pays, but it's a killer.
Once you can verify who really sent the message, the spam problem gets much easier to deal with. If you know that they claim to be JohnDoe but they aren't really JohnDoe, then you can toss that mail - you already know it's not legitimate. If JohnDoe really did send the message, and it's spam, he'll end up blacklisted in no time. Sites that rarely, if ever, have complaints about spam will end up on whitelists, just as the sites who commonly abuse will end up on blacklists.
Having verification about who *really* sent the mail makes things relatively easy. And once that is done, forcing people to pay to send email is pointless.
Nonsense. Spammers can run their own SMTP servers if they want. More commonly, they manage to infect other systems and let them send the mail. I agree that anyone running a mail server should do authentication - and most already do - but claiming that would solve the problem is pure nonsense.
best answer to spam, don't click on the links in it, don't read it, just delete it, if it wasn't profitable they wouldn't send it out
If *nobody* responded to it, the spam would probably stop - eventually. But >99% people ignoring it isn't going to stop the problem, because they still make money on the fraction stupid enough to buy from it.
Your post was modded insightful, but it certainly wasn't.
Your claim that all of the terrorists died on the planes seems very far fetched, to me.
The Russ Nelson at http://russnelson.com is fairly well known. I would be seriously surprised if he were involved. I think it's much more likely that he's a target, just like the SCO (and in a less direct way, Kazaa.)
But the fact that I believe there is a market for a better email client (and I do) doesn't mean that I think it is financially viable. Simply matching the basic functionality that already exists in todays email programs would take a lot of time. The features I would like to add would take more. And as soon as you made it public, if Microsoft or anyone else who sells email products decided that they liked some of the ideas you had implemented, they could throw 30 programmers (along with testers, documentation guys, and other various support personel) onto the job, and soon their program would do everything yours can do. In order to get any market, you would have to keep your product in the closet until you were ready to market, and then you would have to get that market fast. Once your open that window, it'll only be open for a short time before you would have to compete with the big boys.
So, I believe *could* build a better email program. But would it be worthwhile to spend that much time/effort/money developing it? I doubt it.
You do realise that the people that were on the plane were the low-level grunts, some of who probably didn't know what they were in for, and that the people who did the planning, handled financing, and gave the orders were not on the planes, don't you?
And that plan is working out so very well for him....
Apparently I need to go someplace with fewer idiots.
So, I see you're still getting your news from Baghdad Bob.
Why do people make up obvious lies? Do they think that by posting nonsense on Slashdot that everyone will believe them? (I guess someone did - it got modded up.)
Those contracts normally have AUP's which say, amoung other things, that you are not allowed to send spam. SPEWS would like those rules enforced. Regardless of contracts, the people who use SPEWS don't want the spam. AGIS was a huge provider at one time, openly hosting major spammers such as Sanford Wallace. I don't know what kind of contracts they had with him - but people started blacklisting them due to the spam. They haven't fared very well in the long run - and I'll bet some of their old IP's are still sitting in blacklists.
SPEWS claims that they are innocent, because they don't block anyone. This is a lie.
No, it's 100% true. As you say, they publish lists which are used for that purpose. However, the blocking that is done is done by the admin who chooses to use their list. Think of Consumer Reports. If they publish that cellphone A has advantages over cellphone B, do you claim they "Blocked people from buying cellphone B?" No, of course not. They published their opinion, just like SPEWS does.
I don't use SPEWS, but claiming that they block mail is an outright lie. They publish a list with IP's that, in their opinion, are abusive. Some admins choose to block based on that list. Others don't. No admin is forced to use their list.
It's free speech. Deal with it.
Remember when SPEWS blocked everybody, and many automated scripts did the same?
That's also untrue. Osirusoft distributed the SPEWS DNSBL for some time. That was one distribution point for the SPEWS list - but not the only one. They shut down (in a way that I don't like or understand) and started reporting that every IP was listed. Not just on the SPEWS list, but also on others they distributed.
In the meantime, SPEWS continued on.
You're blaming SPEWS for something Osirusoft did.
Terry Gilsenan knows a lot about spam, so that means he's SPEWS? He's right. You're an idiot.
And spammers are far too honest to show up in NANAE saying "I hate SPEWS because I'm an innocent victim who got blocked", so all of those reports are entirely trustworthy.
If you feel that way, you can probably save time by not reading the /. discussion about it.
I see this quite often. People don't like X, so when they see /. talking about it, they rush right over to post "I don't like X." If you really don't care, as you say, then don't you have anything better to do with your time?
As I said, I think that in this case, the spammer was simply stupid enough that he forgot to add the "payload" part of the spam before he hit "send".
All the rules can be found here.
It probably means that you're only looking at the text version of the spam, not the HTML part. Many text only readers will hide the HTML, showing you only that garbage part.
However, the problem still remains, sometimes they get through the filters, and sometimes the filters block legitimate mail. And in the meantime, the spammers try to get around it by sending even more nonsense. (After all, if 98% of the mail you send is getting blocked, and you want to hit 5,000,000 inboxes, you've got to send a lot more mail than before...
If the arabs hadn't hijacked aircraft and used them to kill thousands of people, that wouldn't be the case. I've always been opposed to prejudice, but I've become prejudiced since 9/11. Muslims are not reasonable, and talking to them doesn't work. They started a war. Now they are whining about the results.
I'm also not in favor of invading other countries without good reason, which is what we did in Iraq. I'm more-or-less republican, and I'm from Texas, which would seem to indicate that I should like Bush - but he's done a horrible job.
Tell me again how it doesn't legalize spam?
I won't reply to whatever nonsense you post - arguing with idiots is a waste of my time, and idiots like you can't be educated.
Sure. After all, the people who create blacklists shouldn't have the right to say "Lots of spam comes from these IP ranges."
Similarly, ISP's and businesses who don't want lots of spam shouldn't be able to say "We don't accept mail from listed IP's" (whether the listing is Spews, Spamcop, Spamhaus, or their own local list.
You're an idiot. You should try suing SPEWS - it'll be good for you.
Haven't you heard of spews.org? If you use the Spews DNSBL list then you've got the thing you just asked for.
It will cut down on the amount of spam by a huge amount. And it does it early - as soon as the spammer tries to send mail, your mail-server takes the sending systems IP and runs it through the DNS check. If it's listed as a spammer, then it doesn't allow them to deliver the mail at all, which saves bandwidth. That's the good news.
The bad news is that if you do this, you're trusting someone you don't know (SPEWS is an annonymous group) to decide who is spamming, who should be listed, who shouldn't, etc. And since SPEWS does do the "escalation" that you ask for, it's just a matter of time before you find out that someone you *want* to receive email from is sending from a SPEWS listed IP.
For some people, that's acceptable. For others, it isn't.
Similarly, whether you use SPEWS or not, it's quite possible that you'll find yourself listed at some point. Since they escalate, it's quite possible that one spammer on a cable-modem account can get lots of other cable modem users listed. It's similarly possible that one SWBell DSL user can get a large number of other DSL users listed. And if you happen to be using one of those listed IP's, that could be you.
I'm not pro-SPEWS or anti-SPEWS. I think it's a good solution for some people. For others, there is too high a risk of legitimate mail being refused due to being listed. I personally don't use them - but I'm glad they exist, as I believe they do put additional pressure on spam-friendly ISP's.
It damn sure does! Sure, it tells them to "spam honestly", not to forge headers, not to use faked up subject lines and such - but as long as they do that, the law makes it quite clear that it's legal, and the law overrules state laws that required "ADV" warnings or, in California's case, made spam illegal.
It sounds like you haven't read the law. It also sounds like you are a spammer, else you wouldn't be so thrilled with a law that does nothing useful.