Google is powerfull but far from the only search engines around. If you have a proper website with real content and real links tn it then most of the changes they make have a mild impact only. If you want a better guarantee I suggest asking about their advertisement program.
If you depend somewhat on people finding you on the web (like I do) it is also a very good idea to aim for more then google.
With regards to phone companies, I'd tend to agree but with the sidenote that despite much longer lasting monopolies for national telcos in Europe, there is little doubt about their networks being quite a bit more advanced.
So the idea here is to create your own crowd so you can hide in it.. I'm pretty confident that that is not going to work in this case. Generally spoken it does work if you also manage to hide the fact that it was you who created the crowd but that is kinda difficult in this case I'd think...
I generally don't want to use software that doesn't allow me to specify where it should be installed, regardless of that being during configure or when installing using some wiz tool or whatever.
DO I use the defaults most of the time? yes but not always.
Things like lfs exist for a reason, and while I don't like their layout, I do see why it is a good thing to have a layout that is agreed upon by most. (I just prefer/usr/local for locally installed apps instead of/opt, but first of all I want all my apps to go to a predicatble place, regardless of what the name of that place is.
> charging for the currency conversion when they can't charge for the international transfer.
Yep. besides, they are only required to charge the same fees for a transfer regardless to where it goes within the EU, not to make it free.
But agreed, Paypal would like to be a bank, and esp. would like people to treat them like one... Of course without really having to comply with the banking regulations and supervision.
I'm Dutch, not Brittish, but seeing how you are talking about EU rules that should make little difference.
Your average creditcard company is an Electronic Money Institute, but difinitely isn't a bank, and you can only get a card from them when you link it to an account on a 'real' bank.
Neither will this make Paypal a bank, it will amke them more comparable to a card company with regards to their liabilities and such.
And yes, they are trying to be like a bank, however, without officially becomming a bank (so far) and really, much of what they have been doing would not be possible when registering as a bank. (for example, they would simply not be allowed to charge different fees for non domestic transfers according to EU rules, somethign that makes that I can transfer money free of any fees to any place within the EU nowadays when using my bank for example)
For that matter, try getting an accoutn with Paypal without having a bank account at a regular bank.
Gotta love them trying that in Europe. EU privacy laws require them to remove it in the end, you can goto court over it if needed. Regardless, they do have some odd ideas about service and dealing with customers in general.
I do not know of many countries on this planet where you can operate an unregistered bank.
I also do not knw any country on this planet where PayPal registered as a bank. If they seriously try to give a different impression, wouldn't that be false advertisement?
> What does it cost to run the equipment necessary to produce 450 bottles of pills per month?
Depends on the pills, but I bet you can buy prepackaged sugar pills for a lot less. > Shouldn't it be easy enough to track the spammers by going to the source of the product?
Sometimes it is. I have had some 'fun' discussions with spammers and their product suppliers that way. Its not unusual that both are entirely different people, where the spammer runs an 'advertising' business, usually a one or 2 person affair, and they get 'deals' from 'businesses' that can't sell their products using normal channels. Similar but even more shady then those that you find on the backs of underground comics and such.
This also explains your next question..
> Shouldn't the product be regulated by the FDA or at least tracked through DOT mandated shipping manifests? I can't even order a box of castille bath soap without having a DOT shipping manifest taped to the side.
Should? yes.. see above.
> I feel that the other shady business has to do with the process of setting up the business and then crashing it, getting the taxpayer backed small business loan on the front end, collecting what little profit there is on the way, the business insurance on the way out, and the tax writeoff at the end of the year.
Well, you just need a few people to abuse such a system, no matter what 'business' you chose. If you can repeat that loop forever then something is seriously broken... I'd really like it if the spam problem was as easily solved as addressing that flawed system you seem to be describing.
Considering that spam is not a typical USA fenomenum (tho they score amazingly high in it) and the increased interest from dubious organisations from eastern Europe and asia, I'd bet that the other businesses such people might be involved in are of a slightly more substantial matter then a slimple bit of tax fraud;P
Shady? yes. Just not entirely in the way you are looking.
That however is a different kind of spammer then the man/woman using a bunch of computers to send out a few million spams each night from their trailerhome (with or without help of zombies/proxies/relays whatever), and I'm afraid a type that is gaining in relevance also. THe 'traditional' trailerhome spammer (sorry for the stereotype) however does seem to make his/her buck from commision on sales.
Considering such things I still believe there is money to be made with spamming directly.
Gee, among business peopel you'll find somewhat good and soemwhat bad, and occationally even a good or evil person.... almost like they are human.
I fail to follow your theory tho because it only makes sense to me when I go on believing that the majority of people is bad, a view I don't subscribe to.
Well, lets just look at the numbers. 225m americans approx, get 1 out of 500,000 to respond every month and get a $20 'product'.
That is a nice $4.5k/month. Nah, wont make you rich, but reportedly, response rates are upto a factor 10 better then this example still.
I somehow think that the few 'spam kings' are just also involved in other shady business and that this is just another easy avenue for an extra buck... and no doubt gets them some contacts that are also usefull for other businesses.
Spam of and in itself however is somewhat proffitable at least, that is not a statistical fallacy for the simple reason that the numbers do add up as I just showed.
The difference is that first fo all the company I worked for made a restart, and the bankrupcy was needed to enable it to do so without having an impossible to deal with debt. This resulted in me being able to work for them for another 9 months, and due to local laws me and my alwyer have been able to look very carefully at their books.
That you see things like Enron etc happen, yeah, have seen similar things overhere. The huge majority of.coms was never traded publicly, and the whole story becomes quite different in that case since basicly all the shareholders are known and do have far more direct relationships with the company.
At any rate, it is still no reason for believing the majority of cases is fraudulant.
The inflated values that were attributed to.coms in their top days is an entirely different matter. Seems like a typical case of mass hysteria to me that was cleverly played on by some scammers also.
THe problem here is that even when 99.9999% of the people do what is logical and that is what you suggest, it still leaves enough peopel who don't.
The thing that makes spam work is the fact that statistics become meaningless when you have an almost infinite audience. even 0.0001% of the people is good enough.
Yeah, a whole lot of other thigns might be going on, but sheer numbers make that you cannot ignore the whatever small part of the peopel that act unreasonable because that will be enough to feed the thing.
Oh, and to reply to the rest of your post. What you say happens, and a company just genuinely going bankrupt happens as well. Maybe laws in the USA work a bit differently from overhere, but here if there is some serious reason to believe thigns are fraudulant, managers, VCs and such peopel are personally and directly financially accountable for it, and that is actually also enforced in more then very incidental cases here.
Then something about tax deductions, if you can deduct more then you invested the system is very seriously broken. It should cover PART of the loss, not turn a proffit. I wasn't aware that the system in the USA is that badly broken really.
At any rate, I don't find your vc conspiracy very convincing. The idea that 1 client out of say 50k mails sent turns a proffit is a so much simpler explanation and I still did not just miss any proof for your idea, but also any convincing argument beyond that it might be and that all such scams have thigns in common.
Yes, and I am also pretty easy to find, yet receive a moderate amount of spam. That spam started a few days after I put it up there, and it was the only place at that moment where that address was published.
So yes, it has to do with spam. It is fairly easy to grab email addies from webpages also,a nd the software for it has been around for at least half a decade.
Now, I don't know if you ever happen to have such a need, and its really irrelevant. I do know people who did have such a need and for whom it was very nice to be able to find back someone through the net.
Really, that a situation didn't occur to you doesn't mean it never will or doesn't occur to others.
> Get it out of your head. It didn't fail for the.coms. People got rich off that scam.
Yes, some did, many did not. Many of the companies involved did not survive.
Yet, just like in spam, there were also manuy companies that were not much of a scam.
At any rate, I am not trying to work against you, but I am objectign to your painting everythign with the same brush, while not all spammers have the same business model, and not all.coms had either.
If your point is that the real scammers among those involved in the.com bibble and the scammers among the spammers (as opposed to those who are just majorly annoying) have very similar practises, sure they do.
Having worked for a '.com' company, and having seen it go down despite them having a real product and actual customers for it, and seeign what that meant for the people involved as well as for the investors in it, I can quite confidently say that it looks nowhere like a spam business and that the business plan wasn't remotely similar either.
Venture capitalists invested in.com companies because they promised new technology that would make a huge amount of money. Few people will be so stupid to believe any such thing about spam, there huge masses and a little return will make a decent income.
Too come back to your argument, from all I have seen from venture capitalists they are noit interested in the kind of thign that spam offers, so I simply fail to see any reasomn why they'd consider putting money into it.
I've personally always found the amounts of money that went to.coms insane and unrealistic. And yeah, I bet quite a few people filled their pockets with it, but quite a few did try to create a valid tho very likely misguided business.
At any rate, 2 spammers and.coms may already turn otu havign 4 different business plans (not just ind etails either) and yeah, where it involves scams, those will have things in common, but I bet you'll find similar thigns in many a scam.
You may happen to live in a small town where most peopel know eachother and where peopel seldom move..
Let me tell you, NONE of my schoolmates lives anywhere close to where they were living durign their school days. In quite a few cases their parents no longer live, or moved as well. The school I went to no longer tracks its pupils after some 15 years. That my friend is THE NORM in the country where I live, not some weirdo fringe situation.
Being able to locate peopel on the internet has made a huge change to beign able to restore such contacts. Maybe you don't need them, but I strongly suspect your life just hasn't been logn enough to come in the situation where you'd want or need such things.
A very usefull idea when discussing is tryign to imagine what it is to NOT be in your own position, and to try to understand the point someoen else is making. I udnerstand your point, you don't need it, and I hope you will not ever need it. It would be very usefull if you would have the little bit of clue to come out of your little corner and look at what other situations then yours might exist.
Or to put it a bit more clear maybe: People who do on purpose not care to see beyond their own little bit of experience are extremely stupid
Your statement implies it has the same flawed business model as the.com bubble, while it does not. In fact the spam business model is way more succesfull also seeing how peopel actually amke money with it.
The.com business model made some peopel rich but put a lot of investors out of their money. The spam business model is not fed by such investors but is 'properly fed' from the bottom by its customers.
Yes. both use a business model, NOT THE SAME ONE.
Let me tell you a small secret, virtually every business, even very legitimate ones use business models.
ANd no, I am not trolling, I am trying to tell you that you really should get it out of your mind that they have the same business model somehow, or come with some actual proof of it and tell us why it failed for the.coms and whom their customers were or alternatively, where the venture capitalists are that are invest8ing hugely in that spam business hype.
Hmm, there is a bit of truth in what you say but a large part of it is also that where it concerns orthodox jews, they are very recognizable as a group, and one that did not seem to be suffering much during the time of depression.
People in the USA talk about the great depression, and while things were bad there, it doesn't compare to how things were in Germany at the same time due to in part the consequences of the previous war.
At any rate, lots of misinformation, suspicion, and playing on long standing prejudices while picking the 'right' examples to 'prove' them was mostly what seems to have happened. Why? because an easy to indentify, common enemy makes people unite and follow the leader blindly (sounds familiar?)
Spam was there before the.com bubble began, is still there after the.com bubble is logn gone..
I really don't see how you think it is similar in any way.
Also, can you please use a more readable way of quoting so it is actually somewhat possible to see what part is quoted and where your comments on it are?
Someone who is lookign for you after having lost contatc is extremely unlikely to call you to get your e-mail addy you know......
For the rest your reasoning sounds oh so logical, but is extremely impractical for most people who actually have to communicate outside their small circle of friends and family.
If it works for you, fine, but get it out of you mind that it will work for most or even some others because it will not work at all for most people.
And KaZaA is not trying to hide it either (tho they don't call it spyware, but they are pretty clear in their explanation of what their ad supported software means)
Don't forget stuff like the lovely divx advertisement supported player, and a host of other free programs.
What users don't seem to realize is what this all really does, but most do seem soemwhat aware where the advertisements they are getting come from.
In quite a few cases the actual use of such spywae is no better or worse then what doubleclick and similar tried or try to do, its just better at the job.
Any medium that gets delivered from some centralized place provides 'valuable advertisement space'. That is a business model as old as newspapers at least, and targetting the user has always been soemwhat important.
That is also what sets such software apart from spammers. Neither are what I'd call a welcome addition to the net, but where the spyware + adware combination tries to provide targetted advertisement (and usually fails misserably), spammers seldom care about targetting.
At any rate.. 2 things we could do without, but their only relations are that both deal with advertisement and both are annoying.
> Obviously, since this technology hadn't existed before, Microsoft hadn't anticipated that some folks would hijack the API and use it to get people to install software that will spy on them.
If htat were the case, they'd be insanely naive. You may just recall that by the time ActiveX came to the web, Java had been around for a little while, Javascript in all its variations had been around for a while.. both not perfect, but both would have provided a lot of reason to assume peopel would definitely try to use it in such nasty ways. (Java due to it takign it into account to quite soem extent, and javascript due to the isnane pile of security issues it has had, esp. at that time).
> You can't plug holes in a bucket you haven't made yet!
No, but you can easily predict that when making it out of a material with holes in it, that it is not goign to work.. might even manage that one without having seen a bucket before.
> instead of immediately following network device startup is sloppy and wrong.
That is still wrong.
You enable the firewall, set a default deny all rule, enable the interfaces, and start loading your rules.
You can't load them beforehand if they depend on characteristics of the interface (address etc) but that means you will still have to be extremely carefull in which order you load them.
A safe way of acomplishing this is to insert the deny all rule as the first rule that your firewall will occur and only remove it once all has been setup properly.
Leaving a window bewteen bringing up your interfaces and having a workign firewall always brings the risk of compromise, and it just takes a slightly determined hacker/work/virus/whatever to get through.
> Why would you put *any* unpatched box online, whatever the OS?
Because I am pretty sure I can still get a Linux 2.0 or freebsd 2.x box online securely for downloading the patches I need for example?
I'm also pretty sure that I can take any release of OpenBSD, possibly turn off sshd where appropriate and do the same and be quite secure while doing so.
Actually using any platform online without the latest security fixes is another thing, and yes, you are less secure without them, but if and how that matters depends a lot on what you do.
For most 'free' Unix variations from anywhee recent times you can say that compromise at the source of your patches should be a way bigger concern then going online to retrieve them, given a somewhat proper configuration (something in which not all distributions do what they should be doing, but even in those cases, that is quite easily verified and fixed before going online)
Slashdot Mirror
A few comments on that...
Google is powerfull but far from the only search engines around.
If you have a proper website with real content and real links tn it then most of the changes they make have a mild impact only.
If you want a better guarantee I suggest asking about their advertisement program.
If you depend somewhat on people finding you on the web (like I do) it is also a very good idea to aim for more then google.
With regards to phone companies, I'd tend to agree but with the sidenote that despite much longer lasting monopolies for national telcos in Europe, there is little doubt about their networks being quite a bit more advanced.
So the idea here is to create your own crowd so you can hide in it.. I'm pretty confident that that is not going to work in this case. Generally spoken it does work if you also manage to hide the fact that it was you who created the crowd but that is kinda difficult in this case I'd think...
I generally don't want to use software that doesn't allow me to specify where it should be installed, regardless of that being during configure or when installing using some wiz tool or whatever.
/usr/local for locally installed apps instead of /opt, but first of all I want all my apps to go to a predicatble place, regardless of what the name of that place is.
DO I use the defaults most of the time? yes but not always.
Things like lfs exist for a reason, and while I don't like their layout, I do see why it is a good thing to have a layout that is agreed upon by most. (I just prefer
> charging for the currency conversion when they can't charge for the international transfer.
Yep. besides, they are only required to charge the same fees for a transfer regardless to where it goes within the EU, not to make it free.
But agreed, Paypal would like to be a bank, and esp. would like people to treat them like one...
Of course without really having to comply with the banking regulations and supervision.
I'm Dutch, not Brittish, but seeing how you are talking about EU rules that should make little difference.
Your average creditcard company is an Electronic Money Institute, but difinitely isn't a bank, and you can only get a card from them when you link it to an account on a 'real' bank.
Neither will this make Paypal a bank, it will amke them more comparable to a card company with regards to their liabilities and such.
And yes, they are trying to be like a bank, however, without officially becomming a bank (so far) and really, much of what they have been doing would not be possible when registering as a bank.
(for example, they would simply not be allowed to charge different fees for non domestic transfers according to EU rules, somethign that makes that I can transfer money free of any fees to any place within the EU nowadays when using my bank for example)
For that matter, try getting an accoutn with Paypal without having a bank account at a regular bank.
Gotta love them trying that in Europe. EU privacy laws require them to remove it in the end, you can goto court over it if needed. Regardless, they do have some odd ideas about service and dealing with customers in general.
I do not know of many countries on this planet where you can operate an unregistered bank.
I also do not knw any country on this planet where PayPal registered as a bank. If they seriously try to give a different impression, wouldn't that be false advertisement?
> What does it cost to run the equipment necessary to produce 450 bottles of pills per month?
;P
Depends on the pills, but I bet you can buy prepackaged sugar pills for a lot less.
> Shouldn't it be easy enough to track the spammers by going to the source of the product?
Sometimes it is. I have had some 'fun' discussions with spammers and their product suppliers that way. Its not unusual that both are entirely different people, where the spammer runs an 'advertising' business, usually a one or 2 person affair, and they get 'deals' from 'businesses' that can't sell their products using normal channels. Similar but even more shady then those that you find on the backs of underground comics and such.
This also explains your next question..
> Shouldn't the product be regulated by the FDA or at least tracked through DOT mandated shipping manifests? I can't even order a box of castille bath soap without having a DOT shipping manifest taped to the side.
Should? yes.. see above.
> I feel that the other shady business has to do with the process of setting up the business and then crashing it, getting the taxpayer backed small business loan on the front end, collecting what little profit there is on the way, the business insurance on the way out, and the tax writeoff at the end of the year.
Well, you just need a few people to abuse such a system, no matter what 'business' you chose. If you can repeat that loop forever then something is seriously broken... I'd really like it if the spam problem was as easily solved as addressing that flawed system you seem to be describing.
Considering that spam is not a typical USA fenomenum (tho they score amazingly high in it) and the increased interest from dubious organisations from eastern Europe and asia, I'd bet that the other businesses such people might be involved in are of a slightly more substantial matter then a slimple bit of tax fraud
Shady? yes. Just not entirely in the way you are looking.
That however is a different kind of spammer then the man/woman using a bunch of computers to send out a few million spams each night from their trailerhome (with or without help of zombies/proxies/relays whatever), and I'm afraid a type that is gaining in relevance also.
THe 'traditional' trailerhome spammer (sorry for the stereotype) however does seem to make his/her buck from commision on sales.
Considering such things I still believe there is money to be made with spamming directly.
Gee, among business peopel you'll find somewhat good and soemwhat bad, and occationally even a good or evil person.... almost like they are human.
I fail to follow your theory tho because it only makes sense to me when I go on believing that the majority of people is bad, a view I don't subscribe to.
Well, lets just look at the numbers. 225m americans approx, get 1 out of 500,000 to respond every month and get a $20 'product'.
That is a nice $4.5k/month. Nah, wont make you rich, but reportedly, response rates are upto a factor 10 better then this example still.
I somehow think that the few 'spam kings' are just also involved in other shady business and that this is just another easy avenue for an extra buck... and no doubt gets them some contacts that are also usefull for other businesses.
Spam of and in itself however is somewhat proffitable at least, that is not a statistical fallacy for the simple reason that the numbers do add up as I just showed.
The difference is that first fo all the company I worked for made a restart, and the bankrupcy was needed to enable it to do so without having an impossible to deal with debt. This resulted in me being able to work for them for another 9 months, and due to local laws me and my alwyer have been able to look very carefully at their books.
.coms was never traded publicly, and the whole story becomes quite different in that case since basicly all the shareholders are known and do have far more direct relationships with the company.
.coms in their top days is an entirely different matter. Seems like a typical case of mass hysteria to me that was cleverly played on by some scammers also.
That you see things like Enron etc happen, yeah, have seen similar things overhere. The huge majority of
At any rate, it is still no reason for believing the majority of cases is fraudulant.
The inflated values that were attributed to
THe problem here is that even when 99.9999% of the people do what is logical and that is what you suggest, it still leaves enough peopel who don't.
The thing that makes spam work is the fact that statistics become meaningless when you have an almost infinite audience. even 0.0001% of the people is good enough.
Yeah, a whole lot of other thigns might be going on, but sheer numbers make that you cannot ignore the whatever small part of the peopel that act unreasonable because that will be enough to feed the thing.
Oh, and to reply to the rest of your post. What you say happens, and a company just genuinely going bankrupt happens as well. Maybe laws in the USA work a bit differently from overhere, but here if there is some serious reason to believe thigns are fraudulant, managers, VCs and such peopel are personally and directly financially accountable for it, and that is actually also enforced in more then very incidental cases here.
Then something about tax deductions, if you can deduct more then you invested the system is very seriously broken. It should cover PART of the loss, not turn a proffit. I wasn't aware that the system in the USA is that badly broken really.
At any rate, I don't find your vc conspiracy very convincing. The idea that 1 client out of say 50k mails sent turns a proffit is a so much simpler explanation and I still did not just miss any proof for your idea, but also any convincing argument beyond that it might be and that all such scams have thigns in common.
You are jumping to a conclusion here.
I did not say wether I cared or not, I said they had a real rpoduct and real customers and were generally not a scam.
I did care for as far as I care for my own work. I could take it with me, so nothing lost there for me personally.
Yes, and I am also pretty easy to find, yet receive a moderate amount of spam. That spam started a few days after I put it up there, and it was the only place at that moment where that address was published.
So yes, it has to do with spam. It is fairly easy to grab email addies from webpages also,a nd the software for it has been around for at least half a decade.
Now, I don't know if you ever happen to have such a need, and its really irrelevant. I do know people who did have such a need and for whom it was very nice to be able to find back someone through the net.
Really, that a situation didn't occur to you doesn't mean it never will or doesn't occur to others.
> Get it out of your head. It didn't fail for the .coms. People got rich off that scam.
.coms had either.
.com bibble and the scammers among the spammers (as opposed to those who are just majorly annoying) have very similar practises, sure they do.
.com companies because they promised new technology that would make a huge amount of money. Few people will be so stupid to believe any such thing about spam, there huge masses and a little return will make a decent income.
.coms insane and unrealistic. And yeah, I bet quite a few people filled their pockets with it, but quite a few did try to create a valid tho very likely misguided business.
.coms may already turn otu havign 4 different business plans (not just ind etails either) and yeah, where it involves scams, those will have things in common, but I bet you'll find similar thigns in many a scam.
Yes, some did, many did not. Many of the companies involved did not survive.
Yet, just like in spam, there were also manuy companies that were not much of a scam.
At any rate, I am not trying to work against you, but I am objectign to your painting everythign with the same brush, while not all spammers have the same business model, and not all
If your point is that the real scammers among those involved in the
Having worked for a '.com' company, and having seen it go down despite them having a real product and actual customers for it, and seeign what that meant for the people involved as well as for the investors in it, I can quite confidently say that it looks nowhere like a spam business and that the business plan wasn't remotely similar either.
Venture capitalists invested in
Too come back to your argument, from all I have seen from venture capitalists they are noit interested in the kind of thign that spam offers, so I simply fail to see any reasomn why they'd consider putting money into it.
I've personally always found the amounts of money that went to
At any rate, 2 spammers and
You may happen to live in a small town where most peopel know eachother and where peopel seldom move..
Let me tell you, NONE of my schoolmates lives anywhere close to where they were living durign their school days. In quite a few cases their parents no longer live, or moved as well. The school I went to no longer tracks its pupils after some 15 years. That my friend is THE NORM in the country where I live, not some weirdo fringe situation.
Being able to locate peopel on the internet has made a huge change to beign able to restore such contacts. Maybe you don't need them, but I strongly suspect your life just hasn't been logn enough to come in the situation where you'd want or need such things.
A very usefull idea when discussing is tryign to imagine what it is to NOT be in your own position, and to try to understand the point someoen else is making. I udnerstand your point, you don't need it, and I hope you will not ever need it. It would be very usefull if you would have the little bit of clue to come out of your little corner and look at what other situations then yours might exist.
Or to put it a bit more clear maybe:
People who do on purpose not care to see beyond their own little bit of experience are extremely stupid
> Which doesn't negate anything I've said.
.com bubble, while it does not. In fact the spam business model is way more succesfull also seeing how peopel actually amke money with it.
.com business model made some peopel rich but put a lot of investors out of their money. The spam business model is not fed by such investors but is 'properly fed' from the bottom by its customers.
.coms and whom their customers were or alternatively, where the venture capitalists are that are invest8ing hugely in that spam business hype.
Your statement implies it has the same flawed business model as the
The
Yes. both use a business model, NOT THE SAME ONE.
Let me tell you a small secret, virtually every business, even very legitimate ones use business models.
ANd no, I am not trolling, I am trying to tell you that you really should get it out of your mind that they have the same business model somehow, or come with some actual proof of it and tell us why it failed for the
Hmm, there is a bit of truth in what you say but a large part of it is also that where it concerns orthodox jews, they are very recognizable as a group, and one that did not seem to be suffering much during the time of depression.
People in the USA talk about the great depression, and while things were bad there, it doesn't compare to how things were in Germany at the same time due to in part the consequences of the previous war.
At any rate, lots of misinformation, suspicion, and playing on long standing prejudices while picking the 'right' examples to 'prove' them was mostly what seems to have happened. Why? because an easy to indentify, common enemy makes people unite and follow the leader blindly (sounds familiar?)
> You need to learn from the .com boom-bust cycle
.com bubble began, is still there after the .com bubble is logn gone..
Spam was there before the
I really don't see how you think it is similar in any way.
Also, can you please use a more readable way of quoting so it is actually somewhat possible to see what part is quoted and where your comments on it are?
Small hint maybe..
Someone who is lookign for you after having lost contatc is extremely unlikely to call you to get your e-mail addy you know......
For the rest your reasoning sounds oh so logical, but is extremely impractical for most people who actually have to communicate outside their small circle of friends and family.
If it works for you, fine, but get it out of you mind that it will work for most or even some others because it will not work at all for most people.
And KaZaA is not trying to hide it either (tho they don't call it spyware, but they are pretty clear in their explanation of what their ad supported software means)
Don't forget stuff like the lovely divx advertisement supported player, and a host of other free programs.
What users don't seem to realize is what this all really does, but most do seem soemwhat aware where the advertisements they are getting come from.
In quite a few cases the actual use of such spywae is no better or worse then what doubleclick and similar tried or try to do, its just better at the job.
Any medium that gets delivered from some centralized place provides 'valuable advertisement space'. That is a business model as old as newspapers at least, and targetting the user has always been soemwhat important.
That is also what sets such software apart from spammers. Neither are what I'd call a welcome addition to the net, but where the spyware + adware combination tries to provide targetted advertisement (and usually fails misserably), spammers seldom care about targetting.
At any rate.. 2 things we could do without, but their only relations are that both deal with advertisement and both are annoying.
> Obviously, since this technology hadn't existed before, Microsoft hadn't anticipated that some folks would hijack the API and use it to get people to install software that will spy on them.
If htat were the case, they'd be insanely naive.
You may just recall that by the time ActiveX came to the web, Java had been around for a little while, Javascript in all its variations had been around for a while.. both not perfect, but both would have provided a lot of reason to assume peopel would definitely try to use it in such nasty ways. (Java due to it takign it into account to quite soem extent, and javascript due to the isnane pile of security issues it has had, esp. at that time).
> You can't plug holes in a bucket you haven't made yet!
No, but you can easily predict that when making it out of a material with holes in it, that it is not goign to work.. might even manage that one without having seen a bucket before.
> instead of immediately following network device startup is sloppy and wrong.
That is still wrong.
You enable the firewall, set a default deny all rule, enable the interfaces, and start loading your rules.
You can't load them beforehand if they depend on characteristics of the interface (address etc) but that means you will still have to be extremely carefull in which order you load them.
A safe way of acomplishing this is to insert the deny all rule as the first rule that your firewall will occur and only remove it once all has been setup properly.
Leaving a window bewteen bringing up your interfaces and having a workign firewall always brings the risk of compromise, and it just takes a slightly determined hacker/work/virus/whatever to get through.
> Why would you put *any* unpatched box online, whatever the OS?
Because I am pretty sure I can still get a Linux 2.0 or freebsd 2.x box online securely for downloading the patches I need for example?
I'm also pretty sure that I can take any release of OpenBSD, possibly turn off sshd where appropriate and do the same and be quite secure while doing so.
Actually using any platform online without the latest security fixes is another thing, and yes, you are less secure without them, but if and how that matters depends a lot on what you do.
For most 'free' Unix variations from anywhee recent times you can say that compromise at the source of your patches should be a way bigger concern then going online to retrieve them, given a somewhat proper configuration (something in which not all distributions do what they should be doing, but even in those cases, that is quite easily verified and fixed before going online)