If you want to get an idea of what information they have in their database, go see Michael Moore's movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11" - it details a lot of the information that these FOI requests would likely provide, and he documents some interesting cases of censorship specifically designed to hide Bush's dealings with lots of Arab benefactors.
It's likely been finished, courtesy of Diebold. There is the minor formality of making people think that it matters they're going to the polls in November, but other than that, Bush has probably already been promised he'll win by those with the power to make it happen.
The fact that half the posters here find more humor than horror in the realization that the American people can't get the information on their candidates they're entitled to is a testimony to how totally fucked up things are. We get what we deserve because we're a nation of apathetic self-absorbed, passive-aggressive weenies who live more in virtual worlds than real ones.
You can probably get a glimpse as to what they reveal by going to see Michael Moore's movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11" which documents a number of Bush's funding sources and lobbyist friends, not the least of which is the entire Bin Laden family. No doubt this BS the DoJ is feeding people is designed to hide that fact, but Moore's film exposes it. Go see the movie and tell your friends to go see it - it's obvious FOI will be useless while Bush is in office, and Moore's movie also documents changes in FOI policy that have begun to be implemented to further hide Bush's ties to foreign lobbyists. Even if you don't like Moore, you can't deny the evidence that is overwhelming in this movie that the mainstream media is conveniently ignoring.
I'm utterly ashamed that I am from a country that would so blatantly lie to their people like this. It's totally insulting to the intelligence of anyone who's evolved beyond a single-celled creature. Then again, this is a sad, poigniant testimonial to how ignorant and apathetic Americans have become. It's really a shame that people aren't outraged that their government would act so despicable.
I do have data. My RBL knocks out about 97% of all spam. And that's without much maintenance. When I get proactive and start monitoring worm-infected PCs, I can up this rate to 99.5%. This is with virtually no measureable legitimate mail being blocked.. something the content-based systems can't say without whitelisting.
Without RBLs, your content-based system wouldn't work nearly as well. It's like adding caviar to kool-aid. It might make the drink more paletable, but it's more efficent to cut out the kool-aid.
Stupid fools. Content-based spam filtering is a waste of time. Why is Slashdot covering this crap? It's a never-ending battle of updating filters and formulas. There are less permutations in isolating and blacklisting every IP on the Internet than there would be to analyze e-mail content, waste server resources and masturbate.
RBLs WORK. This is why spammers are forced to use worms to invade users' machines to create proxies. As soon as the authorities wake from their slumber and start prosecuting these scumbags who break into others' machines, the whole spam thing will essentially be over. But don't tell that to the little content-based-filtering-fools. They obviously have money to burn.
I am proud to say I don't have a single certification. No MCSE no Oracle DBA, or any of that crap even though I probably know more about Oracle than most DBAs and more about Microsoft than most MCSE's. OTOH, I have written software that's received the industry's highest honors and awards, and developed Internet-based systems that are used by millions of people each day.
I work for my own company these days, but I often wonder if I decided I wasn't subjected to enough sadism (I routinely watch "Office Space" to reaffirm my life choices) whether or not I'd be "marketable" in today's job market, whether or not having degrees and certifications would be more important than a lot of productive, world-class real-world experience.
Maybe I can afford to be more arrogant about this, but I really wouldn't want to work for any company that only cared about paper-based qualifications. I have faith in my experence, my track record and my ability to convince others that I am the right person for the job.
That notwithstanding, I do recognize that there is an absence of means by which "computer people" are qualified as being "certified". There are times when I almost wish there was the computer equivalent of a Bar or CPA exam, just so I could fly through it and distance myself from the large array of hacks that rip off people. But in the end, I think paper is worth little more than its weight... in paper.
Technically speaking the guy is right. The web is basically a stateless protocol. There are a number of hacks, but GET/POST variables are THE most kludgiest of them all. If some morons hadn't freaked out users unnecessarily over the whole cookie issue, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. The people who whine about cookies and security should have all been rounded up and dropped into a big hole so their fearmongering would not have created the ridiculous panic that it did awhile back.
The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.
Great. All our worst fears have been confirmed. The latest version of windows is exactly the hacked-up piece of shit operating system that it acts like that we've all secretly hoped wasn't really the case....
Who in their right mind would want to develop for a platform like this? Now we know why the OS is so bloated and slow. There's probably a zillion special little mods to the OS to make select, Microsoft-approved legacy apps run properly.
This is a great topic. Not because of the subject matter, but the in-between psychology that comes into play here.
Let's face it, most of the greatest minds of all time withdrew into themselves; strived to be more than what was expected of them because of the adversity they faced and/or their own insecurities. It goes without saying that a lot of people will find your query narcissistic and arrogant and fire off appropriate retorts.
I haven't read the responses. This is such a cool thread that I feel compelled to offer my own commentary untainted by what others may have said.
First off, who gives a fuck what anybody else thinks. If you believe in yourself, fuck everyone else. 99.9% of the time people seek to label those as arrogant, anyone who might appear to be more self-confident than themselves. That's not your problem.
This whole argument isn't about intelligence and wit. It's about self-confidence. The reality is that you're not exceptionally gifted in the physical sense. You can't do anything any other humanoid can do. But you may be more aware than most that the limitations imposed by society are not insurmountable. That's what's special -- not you.
If you believe in yourself and have been able to demonstrate to those around you that you can excel beyond the mundane, then you don't need to prove anything to anybody other than yourself. What you do with your career is peripheral to what you want to do for yourself. All the great people of the world followed their own path, and they felt confident that whatever they were doing, be it investment banking or brick-laying, they were the best of their kind. That's the way to do things.
Figure out what makes you happy. If you really want to believe in yourself, fuck college. If it doesn't jive with your dreams, don't do it. College will only serve to make you conform to the roles that others on the assembly line think will guarantee them a career. If you truly are "special" then no matter what you do, you will succeed. The easy way out is to follow the path of everyone else.
The way things are going, we're going to see an unparalleled turnout of the voting population in the US November elections.
We're going to see massive hoards of people who have never participated in polls, who may likely have a radically different impression of how their country should be run, in sharp contrast with what is represented in the mainstream media.
What happens when polls say Bush has a 41% approval rating and he gets 21% of the vote? How is the media going to handle this?
This is what we need to think about. And this is exactly where this voting issue becomes a lynchpin in maintaining the status quo.
There's always a substantive percentage of the populace that is ignored. We may find these groups becoming more obvious in the upcoming elections. The question is, if the stats differ dramatically from the official result, how are both sides going to react, and re-react?
On behalf of all decent programmers on the planet, may I say..
DUH!
Imagine a mechanic who has built his own engine from scratch, or a painter who has made his own paint, or a musician who crafted his own instrument. Those seeking to exercise their art on the lowest possible level will always have superior insight into those that don't.
I agree with you. We'll probably come around. At some point most Americans will tire of paying $8/gallon for gas (and demand alternative fuels) or having toxins in all their food and environment.
We seem to live in a society now where the masses are only motivated by sensationalist propaganda, and yes my original missive fit in that category, but I trust those in this forum can appreciate that I'm not as demoralized as I might imply. It just seems to be the only way to get peoples' attention. Not that it isn't true. We're off course. Giving a shit about the future or other people is quite passe.
It's really amazing how loyalty is underrated in corporate society, but in the Unix realm, admins tend to get things done instead of make excuses. It's a great field to prove yourself.
I simply cannot imagine how I could offer my customers the same security and guarantee that things would get done using Microsoft products. I'm not meaning to be anti-Microsoft. I just don't see how I could do so when there's the ever-looming fear that the next service pack to solve one problem doesn't create three more.
Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming President Bush for all of this. I do believe that he is a good man trying to do what he believes is right for his country. But there are others in our government who, for whatever reasons, seem to have set up another of the worlds great evil empires and are weilding that power to go after people like Sami Omar Al-Hussayen.
In other words, you don't like the way things have gone down, but you don't want to give anyone credit for the problem?
With all due respect, you're part of the problem. Either you recognize that there is a hierarchy and a chain of command and a sense of responsibility or you dowt. This is a bunch of ambiguous, superfluous astro-turfing on your part. And a completely cowardly, counterproductive wheelbarrow full of horseshit.
You don't want to blame Bush, but does anyone think that if Gore were President half of this crap would have happened?
We know that you have looked to the United States over the years as a benchmark for progress. The innovation and passion of our infant society and government has made great strides in the progression of humankind.
However, please be advised that this progress has now ceased.
Don't waste your time being disappointed with the obvious lack of logic, consistency, lawfulness or compassion of our people. It has all but evaporated.
America has turned into a society of consumers who value materialism over everything else, and as a result, we interpret "truth" according to the tenets which most benefit our quest for validation within our society of consumption.
Not everyone in our country believes in these ideals, but you wouldn't know that from watching American media.
So the energy you would expend to call attention to the numerous double standards of the ideals that we supposedly espouse might be best served, if they were recycled into a campaign to overthrow the political parties that are employing the misguided notion that large corporations and media conglamorates have the masses best interests in mind.
Sweet fscking Jesus! This is seriously scary stuff. You Americans are always on about Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights. But it seems to me that what this illustrates more than anything is that the average American simply doesn't know and/or care, when it can come as a surprise, that your constitution gives you these rights. No wonder that the GWB can get away with anything!
You want a VERY rude awakening?
Serve on jury duty in America. Then you'll get the shit scared out of you.
It's interesting that this has come about because I had a long discussion with a friend today who was ruminating over whether to pursue a career in IS related to Unix or Microsoft.
A cursory glance of the job opportunities seemed to indicate to him that getting MCSE certification was a wiser move than going into the Unix arena. He asked me, "If unix is so much better, why are there more Microsoft-related jobs?" And is Unix the future or is this just a fad?
I couldn't help but think that in my mind, Microsoft-based corporate IT setups are often more political than practical. Yes, you'll find more jobs with MCSE but it's not because there are necessarily more opportunities. It's because Microsoft-based tech people burn out more quickly, and often the companies they work for make politically-oriented tech decisions over what is practical and economical. It's almost like a litmus test for good corporate management these days. If a big company is using Unix, that's a sign they give their IT department substantive authority to pick the best tools for the job.
It's nice to know more recognized companies are obviously asking the tech people what are the best tools available to accomplish the objective.
So Microsoft or Unix? He continued to ask me.
After some thought my resonse was, "If you want job security and choices, MCSE will give you that, but don't expect to ever get to a point where you have things under control. That's something Unix people encounter a lot more often. But one look at the stats, such as the fact that Microsoft has only 21% of the Internet web server market and shows no sign of de-throning Apache, reveals that Unix is anything but a fad. Why less Unix-based jobs? Probably because Unix admins are a happier lot and turnover in their area is nowhere near the massive burnout rate of MCSEs."
So Micky-Ds in Germany is going Unix? This is less a sign of the corporation legitimizing Unix as it is likely that a number of key executives in that region have recognized that it might be a smart move to ask the IT people what are the best tools for the job.
This is perhaps the most significant issue in the anti-spam battle.
People need to petition their local DAs to start prosecuting these cases.
I know, from personal experience of taking a case to the DA, where I identified a guy who compromised my system to send out spam, and in cooperation with the Feds, we presented a case to the DA to prosecute and it was turned down. I even had the guy's mobile phone number and home address and evidence of him hacking AOL accounts to host landing pages for the spam. That makes computer tampering, fraud and several other felonies, and the DA rejected the case for prosecution.
I spoke with Julian at Spamcop when I was pursuing this case. He told me the chances of me getting enforcement to pursue the case was slim at best. He was right. This is unfortunate.
I have found after more than ten years of administering Internet mail systems, nothing works as well as a finely-tuned IP-based blacklist.
I've also noticed that the ISPs are becoming much more focused on isolating DUL/Broadband (that shouldn't be running SMTP services) IP space, so large scale IP blocking is becoming even more effective. Ironically, they've probably isolated the non-SMTP-authorized IP space so they can do their own anti-spam control, but the added benefit is those of us who have been fine-tuning IP blacklists have ended up with very good blacklist data as well.
Yes, the occasional Linux user running SMTP from his cablemodem will get caught, but like others, rejected e-mail from my system is accompanied with a URL they can go to in order to be whitelisted, so it all works out.
All ISPs should be adopting this strategy. It's nothing short of amazing how effective IP blacklisting has now become. 95% of all spam is now being filtered by my system. No content-based filter system comes close.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to get an idea of what information they have in their database, go see Michael Moore's movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11" - it details a lot of the information that these FOI requests would likely provide, and he documents some interesting cases of censorship specifically designed to hide Bush's dealings with lots of Arab benefactors.
When is the election in the US finished?
It's likely been finished, courtesy of Diebold. There is the minor formality of making people think that it matters they're going to the polls in November, but other than that, Bush has probably already been promised he'll win by those with the power to make it happen.
The fact that half the posters here find more humor than horror in the realization that the American people can't get the information on their candidates they're entitled to is a testimony to how totally fucked up things are. We get what we deserve because we're a nation of apathetic self-absorbed, passive-aggressive weenies who live more in virtual worlds than real ones.
You can probably get a glimpse as to what they reveal by going to see Michael Moore's movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11" which documents a number of Bush's funding sources and lobbyist friends, not the least of which is the entire Bin Laden family. No doubt this BS the DoJ is feeding people is designed to hide that fact, but Moore's film exposes it. Go see the movie and tell your friends to go see it - it's obvious FOI will be useless while Bush is in office, and Moore's movie also documents changes in FOI policy that have begun to be implemented to further hide Bush's ties to foreign lobbyists. Even if you don't like Moore, you can't deny the evidence that is overwhelming in this movie that the mainstream media is conveniently ignoring.
I'm utterly ashamed that I am from a country that would so blatantly lie to their people like this. It's totally insulting to the intelligence of anyone who's evolved beyond a single-celled creature. Then again, this is a sad, poigniant testimonial to how ignorant and apathetic Americans have become. It's really a shame that people aren't outraged that their government would act so despicable.
I do have data. My RBL knocks out about 97% of all spam. And that's without much maintenance. When I get proactive and start monitoring worm-infected PCs, I can up this rate to 99.5%. This is with virtually no measureable legitimate mail being blocked.. something the content-based systems can't say without whitelisting.
Without RBLs, your content-based system wouldn't work nearly as well. It's like adding caviar to kool-aid. It might make the drink more paletable, but it's more efficent to cut out the kool-aid.
Rusty Wallace beats Earnhardt in a tricycle race.
Stupid fools. Content-based spam filtering is a waste of time. Why is Slashdot covering this crap? It's a never-ending battle of updating filters and formulas. There are less permutations in isolating and blacklisting every IP on the Internet than there would be to analyze e-mail content, waste server resources and masturbate.
RBLs WORK. This is why spammers are forced to use worms to invade users' machines to create proxies. As soon as the authorities wake from their slumber and start prosecuting these scumbags who break into others' machines, the whole spam thing will essentially be over. But don't tell that to the little content-based-filtering-fools. They obviously have money to burn.
I am proud to say I don't have a single certification. No MCSE no Oracle DBA, or any of that crap even though I probably know more about Oracle than most DBAs and more about Microsoft than most MCSE's. OTOH, I have written software that's received the industry's highest honors and awards, and developed Internet-based systems that are used by millions of people each day.
I work for my own company these days, but I often wonder if I decided I wasn't subjected to enough sadism (I routinely watch "Office Space" to reaffirm my life choices) whether or not I'd be "marketable" in today's job market, whether or not having degrees and certifications would be more important than a lot of productive, world-class real-world experience.
Maybe I can afford to be more arrogant about this, but I really wouldn't want to work for any company that only cared about paper-based qualifications. I have faith in my experence, my track record and my ability to convince others that I am the right person for the job.
That notwithstanding, I do recognize that there is an absence of means by which "computer people" are qualified as being "certified". There are times when I almost wish there was the computer equivalent of a Bar or CPA exam, just so I could fly through it and distance myself from the large array of hacks that rip off people. But in the end, I think paper is worth little more than its weight... in paper.
The formula for "successful" pop music is pretty simple:
a) Whatever crappy song Clear Channel puts in heavy rotation to foist upon their radio-listening hostages
Technically speaking the guy is right. The web is basically a stateless protocol. There are a number of hacks, but GET/POST variables are THE most kludgiest of them all. If some morons hadn't freaked out users unnecessarily over the whole cookie issue, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. The people who whine about cookies and security should have all been rounded up and dropped into a big hole so their fearmongering would not have created the ridiculous panic that it did awhile back.
The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.
Great. All our worst fears have been confirmed. The latest version of windows is exactly the hacked-up piece of shit operating system that it acts like that we've all secretly hoped wasn't really the case....
Who in their right mind would want to develop for a platform like this? Now we know why the OS is so bloated and slow. There's probably a zillion special little mods to the OS to make select, Microsoft-approved legacy apps run properly.
php for real-time multiuser applications on the high level, C for real performance
perl for non-real-time application (unless you're slashdot and have oodles of resources at your disposal, even then, it's still inefficient)
Everything else: you work for Intel, Dell or Kingston
Imagine a world where all engines are built from scratch...
Those would be some great engines... much better than what we have now.
Imagine a world where children are built from scratch.
Definitely not true of musicians who think in radically different terms from insturment builders.
Speaking as a musician, who has built his own instruments and played in front of crowds as large as 50,000 people, I respectfully disagree.
This is a great topic. Not because of the subject matter, but the in-between psychology that comes into play here.
Let's face it, most of the greatest minds of all time withdrew into themselves; strived to be more than what was expected of them because of the adversity they faced and/or their own insecurities. It goes without saying that a lot of people will find your query narcissistic and arrogant and fire off appropriate retorts.
I haven't read the responses. This is such a cool thread that I feel compelled to offer my own commentary untainted by what others may have said.
First off, who gives a fuck what anybody else thinks. If you believe in yourself, fuck everyone else. 99.9% of the time people seek to label those as arrogant, anyone who might appear to be more self-confident than themselves. That's not your problem.
This whole argument isn't about intelligence and wit. It's about self-confidence. The reality is that you're not exceptionally gifted in the physical sense. You can't do anything any other humanoid can do. But you may be more aware than most that the limitations imposed by society are not insurmountable. That's what's special -- not you.
If you believe in yourself and have been able to demonstrate to those around you that you can excel beyond the mundane, then you don't need to prove anything to anybody other than yourself. What you do with your career is peripheral to what you want to do for yourself. All the great people of the world followed their own path, and they felt confident that whatever they were doing, be it investment banking or brick-laying, they were the best of their kind. That's the way to do things.
Figure out what makes you happy. If you really want to believe in yourself, fuck college. If it doesn't jive with your dreams, don't do it. College will only serve to make you conform to the roles that others on the assembly line think will guarantee them a career. If you truly are "special" then no matter what you do, you will succeed. The easy way out is to follow the path of everyone else.
The way things are going, we're going to see an unparalleled turnout of the voting population in the US November elections.
We're going to see massive hoards of people who have never participated in polls, who may likely have a radically different impression of how their country should be run, in sharp contrast with what is represented in the mainstream media.
What happens when polls say Bush has a 41% approval rating and he gets 21% of the vote? How is the media going to handle this?
This is what we need to think about. And this is exactly where this voting issue becomes a lynchpin in maintaining the status quo.
There's always a substantive percentage of the populace that is ignored. We may find these groups becoming more obvious in the upcoming elections. The question is, if the stats differ dramatically from the official result, how are both sides going to react, and re-react?
On behalf of all decent programmers on the planet, may I say..
DUH!
Imagine a mechanic who has built his own engine from scratch, or a painter who has made his own paint, or a musician who crafted his own instrument. Those seeking to exercise their art on the lowest possible level will always have superior insight into those that don't.
I agree with you. We'll probably come around. At some point most Americans will tire of paying $8/gallon for gas (and demand alternative fuels) or having toxins in all their food and environment.
We seem to live in a society now where the masses are only motivated by sensationalist propaganda, and yes my original missive fit in that category, but I trust those in this forum can appreciate that I'm not as demoralized as I might imply. It just seems to be the only way to get peoples' attention. Not that it isn't true. We're off course. Giving a shit about the future or other people is quite passe.
I completely agree with you.
It's really amazing how loyalty is underrated in corporate society, but in the Unix realm, admins tend to get things done instead of make excuses. It's a great field to prove yourself.
I simply cannot imagine how I could offer my customers the same security and guarantee that things would get done using Microsoft products. I'm not meaning to be anti-Microsoft. I just don't see how I could do so when there's the ever-looming fear that the next service pack to solve one problem doesn't create three more.
Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming President Bush for all of this. I do believe that he is a good man trying to do what he believes is right for his country. But there are others in our government who, for whatever reasons, seem to have set up another of the worlds great evil empires and are weilding that power to go after people like Sami Omar Al-Hussayen.
In other words, you don't like the way things have gone down, but you don't want to give anyone credit for the problem?
With all due respect, you're part of the problem. Either you recognize that there is a hierarchy and a chain of command and a sense of responsibility or you dowt. This is a bunch of ambiguous, superfluous astro-turfing on your part. And a completely cowardly, counterproductive wheelbarrow full of horseshit.
You don't want to blame Bush, but does anyone think that if Gore were President half of this crap would have happened?
Official Public Notice...
Attention non-US-citizens
We know that you have looked to the United States over the years as a benchmark for progress. The innovation and passion of our infant society and government has made great strides in the progression of humankind.
However, please be advised that this progress has now ceased.
Don't waste your time being disappointed with the obvious lack of logic, consistency, lawfulness or compassion of our people. It has all but evaporated.
America has turned into a society of consumers who value materialism over everything else, and as a result, we interpret "truth" according to the tenets which most benefit our quest for validation within our society of consumption.
Not everyone in our country believes in these ideals, but you wouldn't know that from watching American media.
So the energy you would expend to call attention to the numerous double standards of the ideals that we supposedly espouse might be best served, if they were recycled into a campaign to overthrow the political parties that are employing the misguided notion that large corporations and media conglamorates have the masses best interests in mind.
Sweet fscking Jesus! This is seriously scary stuff. You Americans are always on about Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights. But it seems to me that what this illustrates more than anything is that the average American simply doesn't know and/or care, when it can come as a surprise, that your constitution gives you these rights. No wonder that the GWB can get away with anything!
You want a VERY rude awakening?
Serve on jury duty in America. Then you'll get the shit scared out of you.
It's interesting that this has come about because I had a long discussion with a friend today who was ruminating over whether to pursue a career in IS related to Unix or Microsoft.
A cursory glance of the job opportunities seemed to indicate to him that getting MCSE certification was a wiser move than going into the Unix arena. He asked me, "If unix is so much better, why are there more Microsoft-related jobs?" And is Unix the future or is this just a fad?
I couldn't help but think that in my mind, Microsoft-based corporate IT setups are often more political than practical. Yes, you'll find more jobs with MCSE but it's not because there are necessarily more opportunities. It's because Microsoft-based tech people burn out more quickly, and often the companies they work for make politically-oriented tech decisions over what is practical and economical. It's almost like a litmus test for good corporate management these days. If a big company is using Unix, that's a sign they give their IT department substantive authority to pick the best tools for the job.
It's nice to know more recognized companies are obviously asking the tech people what are the best tools available to accomplish the objective.
So Microsoft or Unix? He continued to ask me.
After some thought my resonse was, "If you want job security and choices, MCSE will give you that, but don't expect to ever get to a point where you have things under control. That's something Unix people encounter a lot more often. But one look at the stats, such as the fact that Microsoft has only 21% of the Internet web server market and shows no sign of de-throning Apache, reveals that Unix is anything but a fad. Why less Unix-based jobs? Probably because Unix admins are a happier lot and turnover in their area is nowhere near the massive burnout rate of MCSEs."
So Micky-Ds in Germany is going Unix? This is less a sign of the corporation legitimizing Unix as it is likely that a number of key executives in that region have recognized that it might be a smart move to ask the IT people what are the best tools for the job.
This is perhaps the most significant issue in the anti-spam battle.
People need to petition their local DAs to start prosecuting these cases.
I know, from personal experience of taking a case to the DA, where I identified a guy who compromised my system to send out spam, and in cooperation with the Feds, we presented a case to the DA to prosecute and it was turned down. I even had the guy's mobile phone number and home address and evidence of him hacking AOL accounts to host landing pages for the spam. That makes computer tampering, fraud and several other felonies, and the DA rejected the case for prosecution.
I spoke with Julian at Spamcop when I was pursuing this case. He told me the chances of me getting enforcement to pursue the case was slim at best. He was right. This is unfortunate.
I am totally with you on this.
I have found after more than ten years of administering Internet mail systems, nothing works as well as a finely-tuned IP-based blacklist.
I've also noticed that the ISPs are becoming much more focused on isolating DUL/Broadband (that shouldn't be running SMTP services) IP space, so large scale IP blocking is becoming even more effective. Ironically, they've probably isolated the non-SMTP-authorized IP space so they can do their own anti-spam control, but the added benefit is those of us who have been fine-tuning IP blacklists have ended up with very good blacklist data as well.
Yes, the occasional Linux user running SMTP from his cablemodem will get caught, but like others, rejected e-mail from my system is accompanied with a URL they can go to in order to be whitelisted, so it all works out.
All ISPs should be adopting this strategy. It's nothing short of amazing how effective IP blacklisting has now become. 95% of all spam is now being filtered by my system. No content-based filter system comes close.