If you're a baby boomer, no big deal. You'll die of cancer.
If you're a Gen-X'er, you're probably so distracted and ADD'd you don't care, so it won't make a difference.
In either case, nobody will have enough time to ruminate the implications of being apathetic while you allowed the installation of a ruler who has effectively pissed off the rest of the world, like you cared; like you thought, that having a president who alienated 90% of the rest of the planet mattered.
Ok, it's really scary when the article that gets the most replies on Slashdot has to do with methods to remove the smell of decaying flesh from computer components.
Who are you people? Nevermind. I don't want to know.
If you want to know what method works, look at what Spammers are doing. Look at which systems (i.e. osirisoft, spamcop, spamhaus) the spammers are attacking. They are almost exclusively launching attacks at the relay blacklists. This is because this is the one method by which they are SHUT DOWN. Forget legislation. Forget all the other efforts. RBLs work. The next generation is to go from relay blacklisting, to relay-whitelisting.
We need SMTP whitelisting. It is the ONLY way. The SPF scheme kinda-sorta-maybe promised this idea in a mellow way that didn't seem invasive, but like all the other ineffective anti-spam measures, it has proven to be useless.
We need a responsible central authority to maintain an authoized SMTP relay whitelist - "outbound mail server licenses" per se.
This is the ONLY way. Mark my words. No other solution will EVER work. Anything that comes close is basically a veiled attempt at SMTP whitelisting.
If you want to send e-mail on the Internet, you need to be "licensed". A central authority determines the standards by which you are allowed to be "whitelisted" - other systems on the net can choose to use or not use the RBL/RWL. I for one, would use such a system if it were responsibly maintained.
This is so easy to set up. Take all the DUL IP space and instantly blacklist it, then blacklist based on reports, and then start to require "relay licensing" before you can be whitelisted. It WILL HAPPEN eventually. The question is, how bad do things have to get before this is adopted. It's not a question of "if" but "when". There is NO OTHER WAY. Not a single method has proven more reliable than using relay blacklists. Right now, 95% of spam can be reliably blocked without wasting bandwidth by using RBLs. A whitelist would be even more efficient. I challenge anyone to show me any better way to control spam. There is none.
For those of you reading this that don't understand the mail system, you need to understand one important thing. The spam problem could have been solved years ago. There is a very simple technical/organizational solution. Lobby your ISPs to adopt relay whitelisting and this problem will be gone. The only other method involves getting law enforcement to enforce the laws that spammers break, but I think it's easier for the industry to implement whitelisting than to try to get politicians to enforce the laws.
Some guy at work showed me the jibjab video. Everyone was laughing outloud and stuff lik they thought it was hilarious or something. I don't know, I thought that it was kind of stupid. The same level of comedy that you see on any brainless half hour tv situation comedy. But I am glad that they won this case!
The video is "safe comedy" which isn't really comedy. True comedy writers aren't afraid to take chances. I saw the video. It was lame.
If you want to see real comedy, catch some of Bill Hicks' act. He was one of the best. The Jibjab thing was complete sell-out crap. If you want creative, innovative comedy, check out Bushgame. The Jibjab tripe should aspire to that.
The price will go up, insiders will dump their stock; the price will go down. Then in about six months there will be a half-dozen more ex-dot-com'ers on World Poker Tour. Six months after that, three new B&B's will be opened up in the New England area by some more ex-Google employees. Oh and Aerosmith will play at one of their birthday parties. A year from now, nobody will care and the stock will be at $11.
Being in New Orleans, I got wind of this about a week ago and was amused - there's a grass roots effort to oppose this bone-headed idea. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of how chaotic and irrational the government down here is. Everything you've heard is basically true.
We spawn politicians that have the dubious distinction of removing park benches as a means to stop homeless people, school board members that spend more money on lawsuits than they do schools, a monopoly daily newspaper that all throughout 1999 referred to the year 2000 as "the millennium" with a small blurb that said, "some purists believe the millennium begins in 2001", neo-nazi state representatives, indicted governors, etc. The former governor repealed the mandatory helmet law for motorcyclists... I could go on and on... This is one messed up area... This latest fiasco is more of the same.
I'd bet the activity was something un-pc like kiddie porn. They don't give a damn about fraud, spam or computer tampering, but if there's some naked people or bongs involved, they're quite attentive.
the blackmailers weren't located within the United States. They probably could have gotten away with it a lot longer, as US law enforcement authorities seem to have little or no interest in such criminals or activities.
If you take pride in your work and want the best end results, it's very hard to comply to a customer's recommendations when you know, from superior experience that this will not adequately meet the customers needs, but they're too hard-headed and arrogant to admit it.
Then you have to decide if the biting your tongue to accommodate their stupid desires and the subsequent loss of time and money to fix the problem you knew was going to happen all the while not telling them you told them so, is worth it.
You obviously aren't in a primary position within the company you work for. If you were, or you were self-employed with a lot of experience you would know that the secret to success lies more in maintaining high standards coupled with being selective about the customers that you choose to service.
In service-oriented businesses, that is the hard rule. In product-oriented businesses it gets more complicated. You're focused on moving product, and you'll run into undesireable customers, and that's when you have to have your tech people develop creative ways for making the moron customer aware that the problems they have are their own doing, and have nothing to do with you and they should be sorry they ever troubled you.
I've been spending my hard earned dollar at Best Buy for years, but no more. I (foolishly) purchased one of their "extended warranty" plans for an after-market car stereo.
Dude.. dude... duuuude
Everybody knows those extended warrantly plans are the biggest sham on the planet. They are absolutely useless. They're a principal money-maker for these companies and a total liability for the consumer. They're like insurance policies for ignorance.
I have NEVER found a store with such clueless employees. If they get screwed over, it's not the customers' fault IMO.
I purchased a DirecTV/Tivo system from BestBuy. I take it home and find out there's no card in the system. I can't make it work. The salesperson told me DirecTV would supply me with a card; DirecTV told me they wouldn't and I should get one from BestBuy. End result, I take the unit back to Best Buy and only then am I informed that they do have the cards, but they don't keep them in the boxes with the units. I tell them to piss off and I get a better deal doing business directly with DirecTV. I have NEVER found one thing in BestBuy that wasn't higher-priced than CompUSA, broken, incomplete or misleading. I'm glad this article came out, because for some perverse reason, Best Buy is on the way to CompUSA and I always stop there, but I'm now reminded that while I waste time poking my head in this store, I don't think I've ever gotten a better deal, or found less-clueless salespeople anywhere.
Can we all look forward to the time when these stores will be converted into Chuck-E-Cheeses? I could probably get superior tech support and an order of cheesy bread!
Maybe in the world of mindless retail, "the customer is always right" but this is absolutely NOT the case in other industries. As a developer and technology consultant, one of the most significant responsibilities I have is translating the customer's needs into something real and functional. In almost every case this involves at some point, me telling the customer what he wants may not be practical, economical, or even viable.
I vehemently believe that behind EVERY botched tech job, there was at least one greedy, obsequious player that was too afraid of telling the customer he is WRONG.
A few years back my company turned down a job for one of Stephen Spielburg's companies because what they wanted to do was ridiculous. We knew from the beginning that a bunch of detached executives had an idea for a net-based solution that would backfire on them, and we choose to not be the sacrificial lamb when the whole thing imploded. I lost some potential money in that deal, but I'm certain I would have been much worse off trying to patch the fatally flawed system they suggested we develop. Not a month goes by where I don't have to have one of these types of conversations with customers who want the earth, sun, moon and Jesus Christ piled on top of a rich creme filling that will rot in a few months time.
In the area of technology and application development, it's almost imperative for the customer to defer to the wisdom and superior working experience of the IT professional.
Back to the world of retail, how many of us have been in a store and saw some mindless consumer drool over a product that we knew was crap. Every day the goofballs in places like Best Buy have to nod and accommodate these people, even when, among the few employees that have a clue, are fully-aware the customer might as well toss their money down a drain.
Life is too short to go through that. I am so thankful I'm in a position where I have clients who respect the wisdom of my recommendations. If you're not there, you might want to strive to get there and not be a slave to the all the goofy, destructive, superficial mantras corporate america tries to brainwash consumers with.
Rebates are a tax on laziness created by greedy, unethical corporations. I refuse to buy any product that has an advertised price that is based on a rebate. What a bunch of crap.
As far as Best Buy, it's to high tech what McDonald's is to cuisine. I've never met anyone in that store that couldn't be more intellectually-challenged by delivering pizza. The store is crap; the selection is crap; the layout is crap, and nobody in the place has a clue.
I'm sorry for those that are caught in the Class A and B blocks of scammer/spammers. Your best bet is to appeal to the powers that be to get some IP space in the US that you can use for SMTP.
It's best for us to wholesale blacklist IP space to shut down the Korean, Chinese and Russian scumbags. Sorry, but it has to be done. It's easier for you to negotiate separate IP space for SMTP servers, so don't whine about being blacklisted... it's an easily solveable problem.
TMBG is a band that has worked their asses off for years and years. While not "commercially viable" according to what corporate overlords dictate, they've managed to garner a cult following and become a success. I remember being in Manhattan more than a decade ago and I couldn't walk a few blocks anywhere in the city without seeing their flyers all over the place. If any group deserves success and attention, it's these guys.
I heard them on Air America Radio the other day and they were great... I especially loved the bit where they "accidently" gave out the 1-800-AFAMILY telephone number of the right wing religious nutjob organization that apparently sent out a missive to people with Michael Moore's personal contact information and suggested he be harassed for releasing the "un-american" movie Fahrenheit 911.
My question is, since (currently) IE is the dominant browser, the value of this service is going to depend upon whether or not this new CA can be designated as "trusted" by Microsoft.
We know this ultimately comes down to how much Microsoft would charge for this certification. Does anyone have any idea what the costs are? I imagine it would be some sort of subscription arrangement where you have to pay in perpetuity to Microsoft in order to not have your trusted status revoked. But how much? And would Microsoft let an open CA even exist in the first place?
The bottom line is that ALL responsible ISP's should be filtering port 25 traffic. This also stops the propagation of the majority of worms. It's a lot easier for those who want to run SMTP servers to request permission to have port 25 allowed, and otherwise block everyone else.
You can bet that Comcast has only done this in response to lots of responsible ISPs starting to wholesale-block all port 25 traffic from their IP space. RBLs continue to be not only the most effective method of stopping spam, but also the only effective method of forcing ISPs to control the rogue behavior of their users.
Now that said...I bet that right after I got off the phone he closed Mozilla and openned up another session of IE. Hey, what can you do?
You can ask them to remove any reference to your or your personal information from their insecure machine.
This is what really bothers me. Other people can screw up their own computers, but if they have any notes, account numbers or personal contact info relating to you on their machine, your privacy and security is compromised as well as a result of their extreme incompetence.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're a baby boomer, no big deal. You'll die of cancer.
If you're a Gen-X'er, you're probably so distracted and ADD'd you don't care, so it won't make a difference.
In either case, nobody will have enough time to ruminate the implications of being apathetic while you allowed the installation of a ruler who has effectively pissed off the rest of the world, like you cared; like you thought, that having a president who alienated 90% of the rest of the planet mattered.
We get what we deserve. Survival of the fittest.
Ok, it's really scary when the article that gets the most replies on Slashdot has to do with methods to remove the smell of decaying flesh from computer components.
Who are you people? Nevermind. I don't want to know.
If you want to know what method works, look at what Spammers are doing. Look at which systems (i.e. osirisoft, spamcop, spamhaus) the spammers are attacking. They are almost exclusively launching attacks at the relay blacklists. This is because this is the one method by which they are SHUT DOWN. Forget legislation. Forget all the other efforts. RBLs work. The next generation is to go from relay blacklisting, to relay-whitelisting.
We need SMTP whitelisting. It is the ONLY way. The SPF scheme kinda-sorta-maybe promised this idea in a mellow way that didn't seem invasive, but like all the other ineffective anti-spam measures, it has proven to be useless.
We need a responsible central authority to maintain an authoized SMTP relay whitelist - "outbound mail server licenses" per se.
This is the ONLY way. Mark my words. No other solution will EVER work. Anything that comes close is basically a veiled attempt at SMTP whitelisting.
If you want to send e-mail on the Internet, you need to be "licensed". A central authority determines the standards by which you are allowed to be "whitelisted" - other systems on the net can choose to use or not use the RBL/RWL. I for one, would use such a system if it were responsibly maintained.
This is so easy to set up. Take all the DUL IP space and instantly blacklist it, then blacklist based on reports, and then start to require "relay licensing" before you can be whitelisted. It WILL HAPPEN eventually. The question is, how bad do things have to get before this is adopted. It's not a question of "if" but "when". There is NO OTHER WAY. Not a single method has proven more reliable than using relay blacklists. Right now, 95% of spam can be reliably blocked without wasting bandwidth by using RBLs. A whitelist would be even more efficient. I challenge anyone to show me any better way to control spam. There is none.
For those of you reading this that don't understand the mail system, you need to understand one important thing. The spam problem could have been solved years ago. There is a very simple technical/organizational solution. Lobby your ISPs to adopt relay whitelisting and this problem will be gone. The only other method involves getting law enforcement to enforce the laws that spammers break, but I think it's easier for the industry to implement whitelisting than to try to get politicians to enforce the laws.
I just watched that Searchspy for a few moments and saw:
mature men in bikinis
There's obviously a reason Google doesn't have a service like this... I think it would be very, very scary.
Though when you think of it... chances are Google is compiling a database of search queries by IP. Talk about profiling!
Some guy at work showed me the jibjab video. Everyone was laughing outloud and stuff lik they thought it was hilarious or something. I don't know, I thought that it was kind of stupid. The same level of comedy that you see on any brainless half hour tv situation comedy. But I am glad that they won this case!
The video is "safe comedy" which isn't really comedy. True comedy writers aren't afraid to take chances. I saw the video. It was lame.
If you want to see real comedy, catch some of Bill Hicks' act. He was one of the best. The Jibjab thing was complete sell-out crap.
If you want creative, innovative comedy, check out Bushgame. The Jibjab tripe should aspire to that.
Does Google have an area where real-time search queries are displayed?
I guess if you have no other reason to get women to stare at you crotch, this will work.
These guys have set up an interesting combo NOC/wine cellar and have the temperature and humidity monitored and graphed using MRTG.
ROFL... you bought the warranty... fool
Don't ever buy that extended warranty crap. The product's standard warranty would have covered these things.
The price will go up, insiders will dump their stock; the price will go down. Then in about six months there will be a half-dozen more ex-dot-com'ers on World Poker Tour. Six months after that, three new B&B's will be opened up in the New England area by some more ex-Google employees. Oh and Aerosmith will play at one of their birthday parties. A year from now, nobody will care and the stock will be at $11.
Being in New Orleans, I got wind of this about a week ago and was amused - there's a grass roots effort to oppose this bone-headed idea. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of how chaotic and irrational the government down here is. Everything you've heard is basically true.
We spawn politicians that have the dubious distinction of removing park benches as a means to stop homeless people, school board members that spend more money on lawsuits than they do schools, a monopoly daily newspaper that all throughout 1999 referred to the year 2000 as "the millennium" with a small blurb that said, "some purists believe the millennium begins in 2001", neo-nazi state representatives, indicted governors, etc. The former governor repealed the mandatory helmet law for motorcyclists... I could go on and on... This is one messed up area... This latest fiasco is more of the same.
I'd bet the activity was something un-pc like kiddie porn. They don't give a damn about fraud, spam or computer tampering, but if there's some naked people or bongs involved, they're quite attentive.
the blackmailers weren't located within the United States. They probably could have gotten away with it a lot longer, as US law enforcement authorities seem to have little or no interest in such criminals or activities.
You sir, are wrong.
Not every company is right for every customer.
If you take pride in your work and want the best end results, it's very hard to comply to a customer's recommendations when you know, from superior experience that this will not adequately meet the customers needs, but they're too hard-headed and arrogant to admit it.
Then you have to decide if the biting your tongue to accommodate their stupid desires and the subsequent loss of time and money to fix the problem you knew was going to happen all the while not telling them you told them so, is worth it.
You obviously aren't in a primary position within the company you work for. If you were, or you were self-employed with a lot of experience you would know that the secret to success lies more in maintaining high standards coupled with being selective about the customers that you choose to service.
In service-oriented businesses, that is the hard rule. In product-oriented businesses it gets more complicated. You're focused on moving product, and you'll run into undesireable customers, and that's when you have to have your tech people develop creative ways for making the moron customer aware that the problems they have are their own doing, and have nothing to do with you and they should be sorry they ever troubled you.
I've been spending my hard earned dollar at Best Buy for years, but no more. I (foolishly) purchased one of their "extended warranty" plans for an after-market car stereo.
Dude.. dude... duuuude
Everybody knows those extended warrantly plans are the biggest sham on the planet. They are absolutely useless. They're a principal money-maker for these companies and a total liability for the consumer. They're like insurance policies for ignorance.
I have NEVER found a store with such clueless employees. If they get screwed over, it's not the customers' fault IMO.
I purchased a DirecTV/Tivo system from BestBuy. I take it home and find out there's no card in the system. I can't make it work. The salesperson told me DirecTV would supply me with a card; DirecTV told me they wouldn't and I should get one from BestBuy. End result, I take the unit back to Best Buy and only then am I informed that they do have the cards, but they don't keep them in the boxes with the units. I tell them to piss off and I get a better deal doing business directly with DirecTV. I have NEVER found one thing in BestBuy that wasn't higher-priced than CompUSA, broken, incomplete or misleading. I'm glad this article came out, because for some perverse reason, Best Buy is on the way to CompUSA and I always stop there, but I'm now reminded that while I waste time poking my head in this store, I don't think I've ever gotten a better deal, or found less-clueless salespeople anywhere.
Can we all look forward to the time when these stores will be converted into Chuck-E-Cheeses? I could probably get superior tech support and an order of cheesy bread!
Maybe in the world of mindless retail, "the customer is always right" but this is absolutely NOT the case in other industries. As a developer and technology consultant, one of the most significant responsibilities I have is translating the customer's needs into something real and functional. In almost every case this involves at some point, me telling the customer what he wants may not be practical, economical, or even viable.
I vehemently believe that behind EVERY botched tech job, there was at least one greedy, obsequious player that was too afraid of telling the customer he is WRONG.
A few years back my company turned down a job for one of Stephen Spielburg's companies because what they wanted to do was ridiculous. We knew from the beginning that a bunch of detached executives had an idea for a net-based solution that would backfire on them, and we choose to not be the sacrificial lamb when the whole thing imploded. I lost some potential money in that deal, but I'm certain I would have been much worse off trying to patch the fatally flawed system they suggested we develop. Not a month goes by where I don't have to have one of these types of conversations with customers who want the earth, sun, moon and Jesus Christ piled on top of a rich creme filling that will rot in a few months time.
In the area of technology and application development, it's almost imperative for the customer to defer to the wisdom and superior working experience of the IT professional.
Back to the world of retail, how many of us have been in a store and saw some mindless consumer drool over a product that we knew was crap. Every day the goofballs in places like Best Buy have to nod and accommodate these people, even when, among the few employees that have a clue, are fully-aware the customer might as well toss their money down a drain.
Life is too short to go through that. I am so thankful I'm in a position where I have clients who respect the wisdom of my recommendations. If you're not there, you might want to strive to get there and not be a slave to the all the goofy, destructive, superficial mantras corporate america tries to brainwash consumers with.
Rebates are a tax on laziness created by greedy, unethical corporations. I refuse to buy any product that has an advertised price that is based on a rebate. What a bunch of crap.
As far as Best Buy, it's to high tech what McDonald's is to cuisine. I've never met anyone in that store that couldn't be more intellectually-challenged by delivering pizza. The store is crap; the selection is crap; the layout is crap, and nobody in the place has a clue.
I'm sorry for those that are caught in the Class A and B blocks of scammer/spammers. Your best bet is to appeal to the powers that be to get some IP space in the US that you can use for SMTP.
It's best for us to wholesale blacklist IP space to shut down the Korean, Chinese and Russian scumbags. Sorry, but it has to be done. It's easier for you to negotiate separate IP space for SMTP servers, so don't whine about being blacklisted... it's an easily solveable problem.
TMBG is a band that has worked their asses off for years and years. While not "commercially viable" according to what corporate overlords dictate, they've managed to garner a cult following and become a success. I remember being in Manhattan more than a decade ago and I couldn't walk a few blocks anywhere in the city without seeing their flyers all over the place. If any group deserves success and attention, it's these guys.
I heard them on Air America Radio the other day and they were great... I especially loved the bit where they "accidently" gave out the 1-800-AFAMILY telephone number of the right wing religious nutjob organization that apparently sent out a missive to people with Michael Moore's personal contact information and suggested he be harassed for releasing the "un-american" movie Fahrenheit 911.
My question is, since (currently) IE is the dominant browser, the value of this service is going to depend upon whether or not this new CA can be designated as "trusted" by Microsoft.
We know this ultimately comes down to how much Microsoft would charge for this certification. Does anyone have any idea what the costs are? I imagine it would be some sort of subscription arrangement where you have to pay in perpetuity to Microsoft in order to not have your trusted status revoked. But how much? And would Microsoft let an open CA even exist in the first place?
The bottom line is that ALL responsible ISP's should be filtering port 25 traffic. This also stops the propagation of the majority of worms. It's a lot easier for those who want to run SMTP servers to request permission to have port 25 allowed, and otherwise block everyone else.
You can bet that Comcast has only done this in response to lots of responsible ISPs starting to wholesale-block all port 25 traffic from their IP space. RBLs continue to be not only the most effective method of stopping spam, but also the only effective method of forcing ISPs to control the rogue behavior of their users.
I didn't get the joke-don't get Comedy Central here. Can you explain?
He's referencing Comedy Central's promo for Reno 911 which is actually a parody of Public Enemy's song "911 is a joke".
Now that said...I bet that right after I got off the phone he closed Mozilla and openned up another session of IE. Hey, what can you do?
You can ask them to remove any reference to your or your personal information from their insecure machine.
This is what really bothers me. Other people can screw up their own computers, but if they have any notes, account numbers or personal contact info relating to you on their machine, your privacy and security is compromised as well as a result of their extreme incompetence.