Thanks a lot. You people have just ruined my career. I have no idea what this goatse thing is about, and being naturally curious tried to go take a look (for purposes of sociological research, natch). I got a message that access to this site was denied because it is "deemed unproductive" by the IT staff of my employer. (I did mention that I am at work, right?) AND my attempt to access it has been logged. Sheesh. Now I'm going to get fired for trying to look at something, and I don't even know what it is.
On a strictly moral basis, I don't have a problem with sending spammers to jail. Spammers steal the resources used to transmit their messages, and they steal the time of those who must deal with those messages (system admins and recipients). They're thieves, so I won't cry if they get stuck in jail.
But--it makes me sad that laws like this have become necessary. Remember how smart we thought we were in 1990? We had a new way of communicating that was a wonderful world-wide medium for the uncensored exchange of ideas. Better yet, it was free, and you could do it from work! The stupid people (the ones who paid you, for example) didn't even know that the net existed!
There were ways of dealing with those who broke the rules--the died by the mailbomb, or were slain by more subtle weapons. (I remember dealing with one spammer by asking him via email whether he had found his asian bride, lost weight, and scored his drugs yet. He had expressed an interest in all these things via public fora--using his true name.)
Then came the Eternal Fall: behold, the masses came to the net, and found it good. The etiquette and civility (ok, even flamewars had their rules) of the old net was defenestrated. Meaning drowned in noise. Chaos rules.
If we were half as smart as we thought, none of this should have happened. To address the point at issue, we would have thought of a technological way to authenticate email addresses, and prevent the forging of "From" headers to disguise the domain of origin. So what's the deal--is it maybe that we weren't as smart as we thought, or is it that there are just so many more of them than there is of us?
But it seems to me that it does contain one significant provision: it forces spammers (those who operate in the US anyway) to use real return email addresses. That mans we can mailbomb 'em, right? I always thought that was the real reason spammers hid behind forged headers. And since mailbombs are non-commercial they are not spam, so it's ok to forge your headers, right?
Let's consider the really significant results of an EMP attack: all you guys who have got those fancy schmancy transparent cases that show the colorful blinkenlights in your PCs will be looking at smoke curling lazily from your slagged mobos, while I will still have a running PC, since it was encased in a conservative traditional all-steel box (a.k.a. a Faraday Cage). So I'll be able to...um...play Breakout or something after the Internet is fried. Until my UPS is drained, anyway.
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Thanks a lot. You people have just ruined my career. I have no idea what this goatse thing is about, and being naturally curious tried to go take a look (for purposes of sociological research, natch). I got a message that access to this site was denied because it is "deemed unproductive" by the IT staff of my employer. (I did mention that I am at work, right?) AND my attempt to access it has been logged. Sheesh. Now I'm going to get fired for trying to look at something, and I don't even know what it is.
On a strictly moral basis, I don't have a problem with sending spammers to jail. Spammers steal the resources used to transmit their messages, and they steal the time of those who must deal with those messages (system admins and recipients). They're thieves, so I won't cry if they get stuck in jail.
But--it makes me sad that laws like this have become necessary. Remember how smart we thought we were in 1990? We had a new way of communicating that was a wonderful world-wide medium for the uncensored exchange of ideas. Better yet, it was free, and you could do it from work! The stupid people (the ones who paid you, for example) didn't even know that the net existed!
There were ways of dealing with those who broke the rules--the died by the mailbomb, or were slain by more subtle weapons. (I remember dealing with one spammer by asking him via email whether he had found his asian bride, lost weight, and scored his drugs yet. He had expressed an interest in all these things via public fora--using his true name.)
Then came the Eternal Fall: behold, the masses came to the net, and found it good. The etiquette and civility (ok, even flamewars had their rules) of the old net was defenestrated. Meaning drowned in noise. Chaos rules.
If we were half as smart as we thought, none of this should have happened. To address the point at issue, we would have thought of a technological way to authenticate email addresses, and prevent the forging of "From" headers to disguise the domain of origin. So what's the deal--is it maybe that we weren't as smart as we thought, or is it that there are just so many more of them than there is of us?
But it seems to me that it does contain one significant provision: it forces spammers (those who operate in the US anyway) to use real return email addresses. That mans we can mailbomb 'em, right? I always thought that was the real reason spammers hid behind forged headers. And since mailbombs are non-commercial they are not spam, so it's ok to forge your headers, right?
Let's consider the really significant results of an EMP attack: all you guys who have got those fancy schmancy transparent cases that show the colorful blinkenlights in your PCs will be looking at smoke curling lazily from your slagged mobos, while I will still have a running PC, since it was encased in a conservative traditional all-steel box (a.k.a. a Faraday Cage). So I'll be able to...um...play Breakout or something after the Internet is fried. Until my UPS is drained, anyway.