No, I didn't miss that. "Warm calls," where there is a history of communications both ways, aren't covered by this. If the caller can make a connection between this call and the past it's a different ball game.
As far as spammers being stupid, no generalization like this can be completely correct. However, I've seen many spam trying to fool me into reading them by having seeminly reasonable subjects and most of them wouldn't fool a child. As an example, I've seen spam with a subject like, "You told me this on December 23" sent to me on December 1, or "Daniel, this doesn't make sense" where my name isn't Daniel. If the spammers sending these out think they're clever, that just shows how stupid they are.
Let's speak frankly here, shall we? Slashdot's moderation system is fundamentally broken. It doesn't merely permit the kind of groupthink the other guy complained about; it actively encourages it.
Not only that, the modeator's instructions encourage it. They tell you to find posts that other people have modded up and mod them up further if appropriate. If somebody mods up a groopthink post, the sheep will push it to +5 as fast as they can. Personally, when I mod, I never mod up a post that's been modded up before. I like to find a new article and mod up posts that haven't been noticed by the moderators yet. By the time I'm done, most of the ones I've modded up are at +4 or +5. Next time you have mod points, try to be a scout, not a sheep.
I've been lurking here a long time, and still wonder when exactly this fundamentalist turn happened. Suddenly everything is either black or white.
It's not just about computers, either. There were a few rabid anti-Reagen people and they were the same about Bush Sr. but most Democrats were willing to work with them to some extent. Few Republicans were that anti-Clinton, at least until the impeachment mess. That changed in 2000. Suddenly, if you weren't a very liberal Democrat, you were stupid and evil, and it was OK to insult you simply because you didn't agree with somebody. Where did that idea come from and why do so many out there think that their way is the One True Way in everything?
So, the difference between local apps and web apps still isn't understood. I think this is true of a lot of users.
I've seen that too. I have a friend with over 20 years computing experience. Her husband is a very senior programmer. The newsreader her ISP provides won't remember the logon info to connect to the news server from one session to another, so I suggested she try a different reader. She told me she didn't want to subscribe to a different newsreader.
How many people have I converted to Firefox? None.
I've converted one: my sister. She uses Win2K and runs as Adminstrator because when we set her up, she ended up with all her old 98SE desktop in that account and had trouble getting things set right with a user account. Her DSL modem has an internal firewall, she useses ZA, AdAware, etc., and keeps them current. She fell in love with Firefox as soon as she saw how it blocks all popups. She's no geek, but a good computer user and knows how to follow instructions and she'd rather be talked through fixing something than have me do it because she learns that way. Granted, that makes her unusual, but it is possible to convert people. Maybe you've just tried the wrong people.
Took me about half an hour just to kill that one, over the phone, and without a PC literate on the other end. Felt kinda proud of that one, which is wrong on so many levels.
I know that feeling. I did telephone tech support for over seven years. Talking a computer illiterate through reconfiguring their box feels good, and there's nothing wrong with doing it or feeling good about it.
Most people are computer illiterate and like it that way. They want their boxen to work, and they don't want to hafta know all the dirty details of keeping it that way. It's just like with cars. How many drivers have any real idea of what goes on under the hood or would want to know how to fix their car when it breaks down? If everybody had to know what we know about computers to have one, I'd be out of a job. Oh wait; I am out of a job because it was outsourced to India...
Don't be more of a fool than you have to be. He had enough email servers for his 5,000 customers, but he didn't have enough for the 10,000,000 emails per day they were receiving, and there's no reason he should have. He had no reason to expect that much incoming email, so he wasn't prepared for it. Not only that, the email wasn't just from those three companies. They were three of the offenders that he managed to identify and who didn't bother to contest his suit. Who knows how many other spammers were deluging him? For that matter, are there still suits open against other spammers that did show up? I don't know, and clearly, neither do you.
IANAL, but as far as I know, you can't get out from under a court judgement by declaring bankrupcy. Your other debts may go away, but you've still got to pay the damages or fine.
RTFA. The law provides for damages of $10 per email. That means that if the three companies sent 100,000,00 emails to that ISP, they have to pay ten times that many dollars, or $1 billion. This is actually a fairly common way of calculating damages or fines. When you can connect to an SMTP server one time and upload thousands of spams, being forced to pay up for every connection just encourages then to send more spams each time they connect. Making each message a seperate violation means that the more they upload each time they connect the more they pay. It's just like when Earthlink sued Spamford Wallace; if he'd sent spam through their servers after the judgement, he'd have had to pay them $1000 per message, not per connection.
Good, if there were any way of proving that you didn't request the email. It boils down to waiting until there's a complaint, followed by your trying to get a conviction when it's your word against theirs. Much better is a way of idendifying forbidden emails by their content only, as that's fixed at the time of sending. Granted, this definition has loopholes, but spammers are stupid. There will be ID01Ts sending out spam that can be caught this way, and they'll be sent to the slammer where they belong. This will scare off some of the more timid wanna-bees, lowering the quantity a little. And, once this is working, it can always be extended.
However, having a definition that makes part of the spam forbidden is better than no definition at all. And, once it's in place, it can be adjusted. Given time, it can get better and more restrictive. If you insist on refusing to accept any definition that isn't perfect, you'll never get one and nothing will ever be done. Is that what you want?
Re:Pretty vague definition- Better than nothing ?
on
FTC Defines Spam
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· Score: 1
What you're advocating is that something is better than nothing. Are you sure about that ?
That depends, of course. A step in the right direction is better than no step at all and that's what I think we have here.
Re:Advice for how to
on
FTC Defines Spam
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There is no way. If they're planning to hop servers to avoid blacklisting, they already know the possible consequences and don't care. My advice is to start looking for a job right now, and get out of there ASAP. Don't do anything to sabotage the project, either now or after you leave; you don't want to descend to their level. Of course, making sure the spam hunters know exactly where it came from isn't sabotage...
"It isn't perfect, therefore it's no good." That's basically what you're saying. This is a first effort at banning spam, so it isn't going to catch everything. Let's see how it works, and expect it to be extended as time goes on.
RTFA. If it *either* contains advertising *or* starts off as though it does, it's spam. Just putting a quotation in front of an ad doesn't make it no less of an ad and it's still spam.
An immagrant goes to a new country and makes it their home. They plan to stay there the rest of their lives and hope to improve themselves. They may also plan to send money back to their old home to help their family. Somebody working here on H1-B is a guest, here for a short term. They're not expecting to make a new life here, but to grab the money while the getting is good, then go back home and have a better life there. A worthy ambition, but not one to make them well liked by their hosts. I think this is why people resent H1-B workers. They're working for less than a local would and the idea that they're not even planning to stick around just makes it easier to resent them.
Re:how about "creationism" crap?
on
Bad Science Awards
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Just to make the argument - all of the above apply to "big bang" theory as well.
The Big Bang, as I understand it, started out not as a theory, but as the result of extrapolation. Start out with the Universe as we observe it now, including expansion and run time backwards. Everything will end up in the same place at the same time. From that, you can deduce that everything started out there, resulting in the Big Bang.
One of my friends had a theory that held true (up until Windows XP) that Windows (and MacOS at the time, this was 1995) was harmonically tuned to boot up just as long as it would take you to get up and take a piss and come back.
My theory is that somebody at NanoLimp did a study and found out how long the average user was willing to wait for their computer to boot back in the old DOS days. Then, they tuned DOS to take no longer than that. As computers get faster, they can add more to the boot sequence without taking longer.
That's part of why computers seem to take so long to boot: they're faster, so we expect the boot to take less time even though it's doing more now. If the box is twice as fast as your old one, but does three times the work during boot, it's not going to boot faster.
One neat way to do this would be to take a Bach fugue and give each box one voice. Not only would you get some fine background music during boot, you'd know if a machine hung during boot and which one.
That would be an issue only if I ever played with people at work. In my case, I not only didn't, I'd stopped playing because my various gaming groups had broken up. It worked well for me, but might not be right for everybody.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as spammers being stupid, no generalization like this can be completely correct. However, I've seen many spam trying to fool me into reading them by having seeminly reasonable subjects and most of them wouldn't fool a child. As an example, I've seen spam with a subject like, "You told me this on December 23" sent to me on December 1, or "Daniel, this doesn't make sense" where my name isn't Daniel. If the spammers sending these out think they're clever, that just shows how stupid they are.
Not only that, the modeator's instructions encourage it. They tell you to find posts that other people have modded up and mod them up further if appropriate. If somebody mods up a groopthink post, the sheep will push it to +5 as fast as they can. Personally, when I mod, I never mod up a post that's been modded up before. I like to find a new article and mod up posts that haven't been noticed by the moderators yet. By the time I'm done, most of the ones I've modded up are at +4 or +5. Next time you have mod points, try to be a scout, not a sheep.
That's "WWII," not "Korean war." You can tell because there aren't any jungles in Korea.
It's not just about computers, either. There were a few rabid anti-Reagen people and they were the same about Bush Sr. but most Democrats were willing to work with them to some extent. Few Republicans were that anti-Clinton, at least until the impeachment mess. That changed in 2000. Suddenly, if you weren't a very liberal Democrat, you were stupid and evil, and it was OK to insult you simply because you didn't agree with somebody. Where did that idea come from and why do so many out there think that their way is the One True Way in everything?
I've seen that too. I have a friend with over 20 years computing experience. Her husband is a very senior programmer. The newsreader her ISP provides won't remember the logon info to connect to the news server from one session to another, so I suggested she try a different reader. She told me she didn't want to subscribe to a different newsreader.
I've converted one: my sister. She uses Win2K and runs as Adminstrator because when we set her up, she ended up with all her old 98SE desktop in that account and had trouble getting things set right with a user account. Her DSL modem has an internal firewall, she useses ZA, AdAware, etc., and keeps them current. She fell in love with Firefox as soon as she saw how it blocks all popups. She's no geek, but a good computer user and knows how to follow instructions and she'd rather be talked through fixing something than have me do it because she learns that way. Granted, that makes her unusual, but it is possible to convert people. Maybe you've just tried the wrong people.
I know that feeling. I did telephone tech support for over seven years. Talking a computer illiterate through reconfiguring their box feels good, and there's nothing wrong with doing it or feeling good about it.
Most people are computer illiterate and like it that way. They want their boxen to work, and they don't want to hafta know all the dirty details of keeping it that way. It's just like with cars. How many drivers have any real idea of what goes on under the hood or would want to know how to fix their car when it breaks down? If everybody had to know what we know about computers to have one, I'd be out of a job. Oh wait; I am out of a job because it was outsourced to India...
Don't be more of a fool than you have to be. He had enough email servers for his 5,000 customers, but he didn't have enough for the 10,000,000 emails per day they were receiving, and there's no reason he should have. He had no reason to expect that much incoming email, so he wasn't prepared for it. Not only that, the email wasn't just from those three companies. They were three of the offenders that he managed to identify and who didn't bother to contest his suit. Who knows how many other spammers were deluging him? For that matter, are there still suits open against other spammers that did show up? I don't know, and clearly, neither do you.
IANAL, but as far as I know, you can't get out from under a court judgement by declaring bankrupcy. Your other debts may go away, but you've still got to pay the damages or fine.
RTFA. The law provides for damages of $10 per email. That means that if the three companies sent 100,000,00 emails to that ISP, they have to pay ten times that many dollars, or $1 billion. This is actually a fairly common way of calculating damages or fines. When you can connect to an SMTP server one time and upload thousands of spams, being forced to pay up for every connection just encourages then to send more spams each time they connect. Making each message a seperate violation means that the more they upload each time they connect the more they pay. It's just like when Earthlink sued Spamford Wallace; if he'd sent spam through their servers after the judgement, he'd have had to pay them $1000 per message, not per connection.
Good, if there were any way of proving that you didn't request the email. It boils down to waiting until there's a complaint, followed by your trying to get a conviction when it's your word against theirs. Much better is a way of idendifying forbidden emails by their content only, as that's fixed at the time of sending. Granted, this definition has loopholes, but spammers are stupid. There will be ID01Ts sending out spam that can be caught this way, and they'll be sent to the slammer where they belong. This will scare off some of the more timid wanna-bees, lowering the quantity a little. And, once this is working, it can always be extended.
However, having a definition that makes part of the spam forbidden is better than no definition at all. And, once it's in place, it can be adjusted. Given time, it can get better and more restrictive. If you insist on refusing to accept any definition that isn't perfect, you'll never get one and nothing will ever be done. Is that what you want?
That depends, of course. A step in the right direction is better than no step at all and that's what I think we have here.
There is no way. If they're planning to hop servers to avoid blacklisting, they already know the possible consequences and don't care. My advice is to start looking for a job right now, and get out of there ASAP. Don't do anything to sabotage the project, either now or after you leave; you don't want to descend to their level. Of course, making sure the spam hunters know exactly where it came from isn't sabotage...
Correction: it doesn't make it any less of an add. That'll teach me not to poorfraed my posts.
"It isn't perfect, therefore it's no good." That's basically what you're saying. This is a first effort at banning spam, so it isn't going to catch everything. Let's see how it works, and expect it to be extended as time goes on.
RTFA. If it *either* contains advertising *or* starts off as though it does, it's spam. Just putting a quotation in front of an ad doesn't make it no less of an ad and it's still spam.
Thank you. I sit corrected.
An immagrant goes to a new country and makes it their home. They plan to stay there the rest of their lives and hope to improve themselves. They may also plan to send money back to their old home to help their family. Somebody working here on H1-B is a guest, here for a short term. They're not expecting to make a new life here, but to grab the money while the getting is good, then go back home and have a better life there. A worthy ambition, but not one to make them well liked by their hosts. I think this is why people resent H1-B workers. They're working for less than a local would and the idea that they're not even planning to stick around just makes it easier to resent them.
The Big Bang, as I understand it, started out not as a theory, but as the result of extrapolation. Start out with the Universe as we observe it now, including expansion and run time backwards. Everything will end up in the same place at the same time. From that, you can deduce that everything started out there, resulting in the Big Bang.
My theory is that somebody at NanoLimp did a study and found out how long the average user was willing to wait for their computer to boot back in the old DOS days. Then, they tuned DOS to take no longer than that. As computers get faster, they can add more to the boot sequence without taking longer.
That's part of why computers seem to take so long to boot: they're faster, so we expect the boot to take less time even though it's doing more now. If the box is twice as fast as your old one, but does three times the work during boot, it's not going to boot faster.
One neat way to do this would be to take a Bach fugue and give each box one voice. Not only would you get some fine background music during boot, you'd know if a machine hung during boot and which one.
Well, not the buyer's real name, but the name used in the game: Syndrome!
You took the word right out of my mouth. Don't you realize that's unsanitary?
That would be an issue only if I ever played with people at work. In my case, I not only didn't, I'd stopped playing because my various gaming groups had broken up. It worked well for me, but might not be right for everybody.