Now all of these are likely to be rejected. Even plain text email sent with a large subscription SMTP server is now getting blocked by some friends and family members' service providers simply because the domain of the address (my personal web domain) is not whitelisted and this hits the SPAM score where it hurts.
What's even worse then that are the admins without a clue that silently drop e-mail. The sender has no idea that it was rejected and the recipient never received it. I know of at least one major university that was doing this for awhile. E-mails sent with attachments that they deemed 'dangerous' (zip files!) were silently dropped.
The proper solution isn't to filter more
I don't think there can be a long lasting technological solution to this problem.
What bothers me is that everybody on/. is pro network neutrality but also pro blocking port 25. Don't you see the contradiction there?
My ISP is supposed to give me an unfiltered connection. And last time I checked, getting Mom & Pop ISP to unblock ports for you might be possible. Getting Verizon DSL/Roadrunner/Comcast to do it is next to impossible, short of paying two or three times as much for a 'commercial' account.
Unfortunately, if you go after the product the spam offers, then it turns into a vehicle to damage a third party. Now when someone doesn't like a company/product, they will pay to have a few millions spam messages sent out, and destroy their competition. Or they will threaten to do the same if said company doesn't pay a large amount of money.
I didn't pretend it would be a perfect solution. But you can't deny that no technological measure is going to solve this problem. It's an arms race -- the proverbial mouse and mousetrap.
I would think that it would be harder to destroy your competition then just sending out a few million spams. It would stand to reason that a company accused of spamming would be investigated, records subpoenaed, executives made to testify under oath at grand juries, etc, etc, etc. Innocent until proven guilty would still apply. If the company did authorize spamming then there's bound to be a paper trail somewhere. If they didn't then they'd be cleared.
If you remove the incentive to spam then it will start to dry up. Corporate sabotage is still a concern but it's not a deal breaker and it could be addressed.
HTML in e-mail was never standard functionality anyway. E-mail is a text medium, which has grown in some ways without growing the infrastructure to go with it.
HTML e-mails annoy the hell out of me, mainly because for a long time I was quite content to use older e-mail clients that didn't support them. But that's not what I was lamenting.
I was lamenting how anti-spam measures have made e-mail less and less useful. It was drowned out by the righteous replies of "I'll do whatever I want with my mail server". You can do whatever you want with your own server. But I'm allowed to lament the fact that e-mail has become less and less useful.
It seems to me that there is no technological solution to this problem as long as it remains profitable to SPAM. Any technological solution is short lived (i.e: arms race) and will have at least some negative effect. Can't we take away the financial motivation to SPAM? Go after the companies whose products are being sold? The spammer may or may not be offshore or may or may not be using zombies but if that spam message is to be successful then it has to point me at a product. Go after that product!
That's probably naive of me and smarter people then I have attempted to solve this problem. Still, I miss the days when I could just put up an e-mail server and all it had to do was deliver messages to my users. It wasn't the servers job to care about what was in the message -- it was the clients.
The only way out is to exerce pressure on those network owners and the best way to do so is by simply blocking them left and right until they are left with nothing but their huge intranets.
It's funny that your subject is "it's the bottom line, stupid!" but the idea of going after the bottom line of the spammers products isn't mentioned. Why should we become even more restrictive with networks and e-mail? Why should my outgoing port 25 be blocked because others abuse it? Instead we should be going after the money. It doesn't matter if the source of the SPAM is offshore or not. The products they are selling have some sort of presence in the US -- otherwise, why spam Americans?
We keep looking for technological solutions but that's just an arms race. Neither side will win and useful features keep falling by the wayside.
Yeah, cuz it's not enough that I can no longer relay e-mail directly from my machine. It's not enough that I now have to have reverse DNS otherwise my e-mail gets rejected. It's not enough that e-mails that aren't SPAM get dropped/flagged. It's not enough that many e-mail providers drop useful attachments and scan so intrusively into them that I need to encrypt them if I want the e-mail delivered.
Let's take away yet more functionality due to spam! That's a great idea. Seriously, I hate SPAM but the zeal to stop it has ruined many useful features of SMTP.
Having known truckers, and driven big trucks myself, I'll tell you this, it's not manners, it's self-preservation.
I would also assume that when you drive for a living you'd tend to develop a certain amount of "road etiquette". Flashing your lights to tell somebody else when it's clear to merge (truckers seem to appreicate this a lot), slowing down or moving over to clear room for somebody to merge, not riding in peoples blind spots, etc, etc. These are all things that I try to do as a courtesy towards truckers (and others).
My local paper had an interesting article about this the other day. They came to the conclusion that the real assholes are those who expect an entire lane of traffic to move for them because they completely fail at driving.
Yes, the person getting on the highway is supposed to find the hole, but I think it's basic manners to get over to the center or left lane if you are able to do so and somebody is attempting to merge. I can't tell you how much it pisses me off when somebody matches my speed as I attempt to merge and hangs out in the right lane when the left lane is open for half a mile behind us.
Most truckers are polite enough to get in the left lane if they see you merging. If a trucker can move his 18 wheel/75 foot long rig over then I think you can manage to move your SUV without too much trouble.
If everybody drove with the manners of most professional truckers the roads would be a much nicer place.
Then you are endangering other people's lives. You do realize that in a doctor's office, noise isn't the only problem caused by an EM generating cell phone?
That must be why they don't have the signs anywhere except the exam rooms (where it's just me and the doctor), right? When I asked them about it they said it's because rude people answer calls while undergoing exams. I call bullshit on the whole EM thing. Especially when I see the nurses using Wi-Fi tablets and the Doctor on a cordless phone....
Actually the real weakness of such a detonator is weather. You're all set up, line of sight established, and when the time comes to detonate the bomb it's snowing or raining heavily, or it's foggy...
True enough but you can't deny that it was simple, cheap and pretty hard to detect.
Cell phone jammers won't solve this problem. If I wanted to detonate a remote bomb I'd configure it so that if it loses contact with me for whatever reason (chaff, cell phone jammer, somebody removes the sensor from it, blah, blah, blah) that it goes off.
If the people trying to kill you are halfway smart then you have at least as big of a chance of setting off their bombs by jamming cell phones as you do by doing nothing. Say what you will about terrorists but most of them aren't stupid.
But what you are describing is the reaction of a determined and intelligent enemy, and usually folks with that much determination and intelligence can make a living more easily by legal means.
Umm, say what you will about the 9/11 hijackers but I don't think you can say they weren't determined and intelligent.
Try it with breastfeeding and see how far it gets you. Try it with the niggers, spics, kikes and crackers (depending on who you hate) and see how far it gets you. Your property rights end when they violate my rights if you are operating a business for the consumption of the general public.
This is a stupid argument to be having anyway. Why do they need to ban cell phones? Ban the morons that abuse them and ruin it for everybody else.
Do you know of a way to jam these without being in the line of sight? And if you were in the line of sight then you could stop it with your tinfoil hat.... no jamming required.
How about your movie theater thoughts on a pepsi, snickers, and pack of milk duds in your jacket pocket when you walk in their doors?
And the movie theater can tell you that you can't bring those but they can't really enforce it. If I choose to wear a baggy jacket and bring in juiceboxes, what are they going to do? Search me? That'd go over well.
The bottom line to this little argument is that there's no compelling reason to ban or jam all cell phones because of a few assholes. Banning the few assholes would seem to be much more effective, much safer for all concerned and much less likely to piss off people.
Actually, if it's their private property, they CAN tell you what you can and cannot have on your person on their property. If you dislike the rules, take your movie ruining ass somewhere else.
I love it! I'm a "movie ruining ass" just because I have a cell phone. Despite the fact that it's on vibrate. Despite the fact that I never talk on it in the movie theater. I don't even text message because I realize that the glaring bright LCD is a distraction. All I ask is the ability to see who is calling me and go outside if I want to take it. How the hell is that bothering you? Why do I need to be jammed?
Oh and the ability of private businesses to regulate otherwise legal activities is sharply limited. Don't believe that? Ask anybody that has ever tried to ban breastfeeding at their establishment.
You go into a doctors office and they ask that you turn off your cell phone.
And I refuse. That's what vibrate is for.
You come in my house, I may ask the same. It's my property.
Then I won't be going to your house.
The 911 cell call crap is exactly that, crap. A cell phone user isn't going to get a call faster than the management of the of the theatre and seconds do not count minutes maybe, seconds, no. Ask any first responder. They're not there in seconds anyway.
The 911 call is just the easiest example to make. What about the babysitter at home with the kids? What if your wife has an accident? Blah, blah, blah. There's no reason to give up a tool of modern convenience just because of a few assholes. Ask them to leave!
You come to my property, I sure as hell have a right to disrupt your communications. It has always been that way.
No, actually, you don't. You have the right to make sure that I'm not disrupting your other customers or you. You don't have the right to interfere with my communications if I'm not bothering you. And a vibrating incoming call that results in me leaving the theater to take doesn't bother anybody.
Just because it exists today doesn't mean you should be able to use it anywhere.
It means I have the right to use it as long as it's not bothering other people. Looking down at my hip to see who is calling me and sending them to voicemail or going outside to take the call is not bothering anybody. You are basically trying to legislate manners and that's never going to work.
What would have been your excuse 30 years ago?
Why is that relevant? This is a new technology. It's a blessing. A few assholes aren't enough reason to punish everybody. Kick them out! I'll be the first to cheer. Jam my cell phone and kiss my business goodbye. And I will do everything in my power to lobby my elected officials to prevent you from doing that.
So how do you feel about basements, wilderness, malfunctions, low battery and being retarded? Those all interfere with the god-given right to talk on a cellphone.
It's not about the 'god-given right'. There is no reason that you need to jam my cell phone to enjoy your movie experience. The problem could be solved by ushers politely asking offenders to desist -- and asking them to leave if they refuse. If they can afford to put people in movie theaters to look for camcorders they can afford to put them in theaters to look for people disrupting the experience for others -- be it with cell phones, loud conversations, getting-it-on, or what have you.
I have a cell phone because I've decided that I want to be in contact most of the time. If I don't want to be in contact I'll turn it off. You don't have the right to make me turn it off just because I might bother you. I'd bet that least half of the people at a movie have cell phones turned on for whatever reason. Given that there's generally only a few assholes ruining it for others it seems like you could solve the problem with a scapal and not an axe.
If you're waiting for that important call, then maybe you could to what they did years ago by alerting management to find you for messages. It works really well.
Or you can alert management to the cell phone offender that's bothering you so much.
Yes, they can be abused, but so can a firearm or a broomstick.
My problem is tasers is that they lower the officers reluctance to use force. An officer can't shoot you unless you pose a threat to him or others.... but now he can tase you for almost anything.
I love it when five cops have a guy surrounded and one of them feels that they need to tase him.
Considering signal reliability I can just imagine (when in transit) the bomber accidentally blowing themselves up when they don't realize that they have lost their signal.
That's why you wouldn't arm it until you were at your destination:P
Or even likelier explanation is to prevent bystanders from sending off snapshots/videos of the next Rodney King. Or that lady they shot up in Atlanta. Or the black bridegroom shot 22 times last weekend.
You mean I have to walk a few blocks before I can upload my video?;)
Doesn't seem very effective at stoping that either if that's their goal:P
Bring on the jammers, and bring the ushers back. Remember when all it took was a flashlight to keep order?
I don't have a problem with ushers kicking people out who are ruining the experience for others. But why do you need to cut me off from the world to do this? If I receive a phone call that needs to be answered then I step out and answer it. How is this a problem?
By all means bring back the ushers. Problem solved -- without tramping on anybodies rights or placing anybody in undue danger.
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Now all of these are likely to be rejected. Even plain text email sent with a large subscription SMTP server is now getting blocked by some friends and family members' service providers simply because the domain of the address (my personal web domain) is not whitelisted and this hits the SPAM score where it hurts.
What's even worse then that are the admins without a clue that silently drop e-mail. The sender has no idea that it was rejected and the recipient never received it. I know of at least one major university that was doing this for awhile. E-mails sent with attachments that they deemed 'dangerous' (zip files!) were silently dropped.
The proper solution isn't to filter more
I don't think there can be a long lasting technological solution to this problem.
What bothers me is that everybody on /. is pro network neutrality but also pro blocking port 25. Don't you see the contradiction there?
My ISP is supposed to give me an unfiltered connection. And last time I checked, getting Mom & Pop ISP to unblock ports for you might be possible. Getting Verizon DSL/Roadrunner/Comcast to do it is next to impossible, short of paying two or three times as much for a 'commercial' account.
Unfortunately, if you go after the product the spam offers, then it turns into a vehicle to damage a third party. Now when someone doesn't like a company/product, they will pay to have a few millions spam messages sent out, and destroy their competition. Or they will threaten to do the same if said company doesn't pay a large amount of money.
I didn't pretend it would be a perfect solution. But you can't deny that no technological measure is going to solve this problem. It's an arms race -- the proverbial mouse and mousetrap.
I would think that it would be harder to destroy your competition then just sending out a few million spams. It would stand to reason that a company accused of spamming would be investigated, records subpoenaed, executives made to testify under oath at grand juries, etc, etc, etc. Innocent until proven guilty would still apply. If the company did authorize spamming then there's bound to be a paper trail somewhere. If they didn't then they'd be cleared.
If you remove the incentive to spam then it will start to dry up. Corporate sabotage is still a concern but it's not a deal breaker and it could be addressed.
HTML in e-mail was never standard functionality anyway. E-mail is a text medium, which has grown in some ways without growing the infrastructure to go with it.
HTML e-mails annoy the hell out of me, mainly because for a long time I was quite content to use older e-mail clients that didn't support them. But that's not what I was lamenting.
I was lamenting how anti-spam measures have made e-mail less and less useful. It was drowned out by the righteous replies of "I'll do whatever I want with my mail server". You can do whatever you want with your own server. But I'm allowed to lament the fact that e-mail has become less and less useful.
It seems to me that there is no technological solution to this problem as long as it remains profitable to SPAM. Any technological solution is short lived (i.e: arms race) and will have at least some negative effect. Can't we take away the financial motivation to SPAM? Go after the companies whose products are being sold? The spammer may or may not be offshore or may or may not be using zombies but if that spam message is to be successful then it has to point me at a product. Go after that product!
That's probably naive of me and smarter people then I have attempted to solve this problem. Still, I miss the days when I could just put up an e-mail server and all it had to do was deliver messages to my users. It wasn't the servers job to care about what was in the message -- it was the clients.
The only way out is to exerce pressure on those network owners and the best way to do so is by simply blocking them left and right until they are left with nothing but their huge intranets.
It's funny that your subject is "it's the bottom line, stupid!" but the idea of going after the bottom line of the spammers products isn't mentioned. Why should we become even more restrictive with networks and e-mail? Why should my outgoing port 25 be blocked because others abuse it? Instead we should be going after the money. It doesn't matter if the source of the SPAM is offshore or not. The products they are selling have some sort of presence in the US -- otherwise, why spam Americans?
We keep looking for technological solutions but that's just an arms race. Neither side will win and useful features keep falling by the wayside.
Yeah, cuz it's not enough that I can no longer relay e-mail directly from my machine. It's not enough that I now have to have reverse DNS otherwise my e-mail gets rejected. It's not enough that e-mails that aren't SPAM get dropped/flagged. It's not enough that many e-mail providers drop useful attachments and scan so intrusively into them that I need to encrypt them if I want the e-mail delivered.
Let's take away yet more functionality due to spam! That's a great idea. Seriously, I hate SPAM but the zeal to stop it has ruined many useful features of SMTP.
Having known truckers, and driven big trucks myself, I'll tell you this, it's not manners, it's self-preservation.
I would also assume that when you drive for a living you'd tend to develop a certain amount of "road etiquette". Flashing your lights to tell somebody else when it's clear to merge (truckers seem to appreicate this a lot), slowing down or moving over to clear room for somebody to merge, not riding in peoples blind spots, etc, etc. These are all things that I try to do as a courtesy towards truckers (and others).
Glad we could get acquainted, now excuse me I need to get back to hiding from politicians.
Too late, we found you.
My local paper had an interesting article about this the other day. They came to the conclusion that the real assholes are those who expect an entire lane of traffic to move for them because they completely fail at driving.
Yes, the person getting on the highway is supposed to find the hole, but I think it's basic manners to get over to the center or left lane if you are able to do so and somebody is attempting to merge. I can't tell you how much it pisses me off when somebody matches my speed as I attempt to merge and hangs out in the right lane when the left lane is open for half a mile behind us.
Most truckers are polite enough to get in the left lane if they see you merging. If a trucker can move his 18 wheel/75 foot long rig over then I think you can manage to move your SUV without too much trouble.
If everybody drove with the manners of most professional truckers the roads would be a much nicer place.
Then you are endangering other people's lives. You do realize that in a doctor's office, noise isn't the only problem caused by an EM generating cell phone?
That must be why they don't have the signs anywhere except the exam rooms (where it's just me and the doctor), right? When I asked them about it they said it's because rude people answer calls while undergoing exams. I call bullshit on the whole EM thing. Especially when I see the nurses using Wi-Fi tablets and the Doctor on a cordless phone....
Actually the real weakness of such a detonator is weather. You're all set up, line of sight established, and when the time comes to detonate the bomb it's snowing or raining heavily, or it's foggy...
True enough but you can't deny that it was simple, cheap and pretty hard to detect.
Cell phone jammers won't solve this problem. If I wanted to detonate a remote bomb I'd configure it so that if it loses contact with me for whatever reason (chaff, cell phone jammer, somebody removes the sensor from it, blah, blah, blah) that it goes off.
If the people trying to kill you are halfway smart then you have at least as big of a chance of setting off their bombs by jamming cell phones as you do by doing nothing. Say what you will about terrorists but most of them aren't stupid.
But what you are describing is the reaction of a determined and intelligent enemy, and usually folks with that much determination and intelligence can make a living more easily by legal means.
Umm, say what you will about the 9/11 hijackers but I don't think you can say they weren't determined and intelligent.
Try it with breastfeeding and see how far it gets you. Try it with the niggers, spics, kikes and crackers (depending on who you hate) and see how far it gets you. Your property rights end when they violate my rights if you are operating a business for the consumption of the general public.
This is a stupid argument to be having anyway. Why do they need to ban cell phones? Ban the morons that abuse them and ruin it for everybody else.
Do you know of a way to jam these without being in the line of sight? And if you were in the line of sight then you could stop it with your tinfoil hat.... no jamming required.
How about your movie theater thoughts on a pepsi, snickers, and pack of milk duds in your jacket pocket when you walk in their doors?
And the movie theater can tell you that you can't bring those but they can't really enforce it. If I choose to wear a baggy jacket and bring in juiceboxes, what are they going to do? Search me? That'd go over well.
The bottom line to this little argument is that there's no compelling reason to ban or jam all cell phones because of a few assholes. Banning the few assholes would seem to be much more effective, much safer for all concerned and much less likely to piss off people.
Actually, if it's their private property, they CAN tell you what you can and cannot have on your person on their property. If you dislike the rules, take your movie ruining ass somewhere else.
I love it! I'm a "movie ruining ass" just because I have a cell phone. Despite the fact that it's on vibrate. Despite the fact that I never talk on it in the movie theater. I don't even text message because I realize that the glaring bright LCD is a distraction. All I ask is the ability to see who is calling me and go outside if I want to take it. How the hell is that bothering you? Why do I need to be jammed?
Oh and the ability of private businesses to regulate otherwise legal activities is sharply limited. Don't believe that? Ask anybody that has ever tried to ban breastfeeding at their establishment.
You go into a doctors office and they ask that you turn off your cell phone.
And I refuse. That's what vibrate is for.
You come in my house, I may ask the same. It's my property.
Then I won't be going to your house.
The 911 cell call crap is exactly that, crap. A cell phone user isn't going to get a call faster than the management of the of the theatre and seconds do not count minutes maybe, seconds, no. Ask any first responder. They're not there in seconds anyway.
The 911 call is just the easiest example to make. What about the babysitter at home with the kids? What if your wife has an accident? Blah, blah, blah. There's no reason to give up a tool of modern convenience just because of a few assholes. Ask them to leave!
You come to my property, I sure as hell have a right to disrupt your communications. It has always been that way.
No, actually, you don't. You have the right to make sure that I'm not disrupting your other customers or you. You don't have the right to interfere with my communications if I'm not bothering you. And a vibrating incoming call that results in me leaving the theater to take doesn't bother anybody.
Just because it exists today doesn't mean you should be able to use it anywhere.
It means I have the right to use it as long as it's not bothering other people. Looking down at my hip to see who is calling me and sending them to voicemail or going outside to take the call is not bothering anybody. You are basically trying to legislate manners and that's never going to work.
What would have been your excuse 30 years ago?
Why is that relevant? This is a new technology. It's a blessing. A few assholes aren't enough reason to punish everybody. Kick them out! I'll be the first to cheer. Jam my cell phone and kiss my business goodbye. And I will do everything in my power to lobby my elected officials to prevent you from doing that.
Well, you were supposed to turn off your ringer in a movie theater or concert performance or whatever.
Your assuming I don't? My phone is on vibrate at all times except when I'm sleeping.
A private company can ban you from having certain things on your person when you enter their property.
And unless they know I have it on me then how are they going to enforce it? Strip search?
Bottom line: You can solve this problem at the movies without jammers.
So how do you feel about basements, wilderness, malfunctions, low battery and being retarded? Those all interfere with the god-given right to talk on a cellphone.
It's not about the 'god-given right'. There is no reason that you need to jam my cell phone to enjoy your movie experience. The problem could be solved by ushers politely asking offenders to desist -- and asking them to leave if they refuse. If they can afford to put people in movie theaters to look for camcorders they can afford to put them in theaters to look for people disrupting the experience for others -- be it with cell phones, loud conversations, getting-it-on, or what have you.
I have a cell phone because I've decided that I want to be in contact most of the time. If I don't want to be in contact I'll turn it off. You don't have the right to make me turn it off just because I might bother you. I'd bet that least half of the people at a movie have cell phones turned on for whatever reason. Given that there's generally only a few assholes ruining it for others it seems like you could solve the problem with a scapal and not an axe.
If you're waiting for that important call, then maybe you could to what they did years ago by alerting management to find you for messages. It works really well.
Or you can alert management to the cell phone offender that's bothering you so much.
Yes, they can be abused, but so can a firearm or a broomstick.
My problem is tasers is that they lower the officers reluctance to use force. An officer can't shoot you unless you pose a threat to him or others.... but now he can tase you for almost anything.
I love it when five cops have a guy surrounded and one of them feels that they need to tase him.
Considering signal reliability I can just imagine (when in transit) the bomber accidentally blowing themselves up when they don't realize that they have lost their signal.
That's why you wouldn't arm it until you were at your destination :P
Or even likelier explanation is to prevent bystanders from sending off snapshots/videos of the next Rodney King. Or that lady they shot up in Atlanta. Or the black bridegroom shot 22 times last weekend.
You mean I have to walk a few blocks before I can upload my video? ;)
Doesn't seem very effective at stoping that either if that's their goal :P
Bring on the jammers, and bring the ushers back. Remember when all it took was a flashlight to keep order?
I don't have a problem with ushers kicking people out who are ruining the experience for others. But why do you need to cut me off from the world to do this? If I receive a phone call that needs to be answered then I step out and answer it. How is this a problem?
By all means bring back the ushers. Problem solved -- without tramping on anybodies rights or placing anybody in undue danger.