The people at gitmo are so unlikely to be innocent it's not even a question. Oh, really?
Google for "Kurnaz", please. You'll find the guy is the #1 news item in Germany right now. He was held in "Gitmo" for over 5 years, and has recently been released, with no charges and a very clear "oops, he was perfectly innocent" statement by the US administration.
There are other cases as well, but I'd have to research the names. This one is current and very obvious. So obvious that journalists in Germany are talking about lawsuits against our former government because they didn't help him get out.
However there are still a lot of people out there that think that every piece of marketing material whether its legitimate or not should be treated as spam and the person sending it should be hung out on a noose. Here's one of them.
Doesn't anyone notice anymore that spam isn't an Internet-only phenomenon? I do. When I go to work, or virtually anywhere, I'm being spammed by ads. Try finding a place in the inner city where you can turn 360 without being flooded by more ads than you could recall after the spin.
Advertisement is intrusive, and on purpose. I wouldn't mind the entire marketing sector being made illegal on penalty of death. I don't advocate the idea, because it will probably be impossible to draw a sharp enough line, but to sum it up: There is no legitimate advertisement, end of story. Some isn't illegal, the way that until the middle of the 20th century raping your wife wasn't illegal in most western countries.
There are very, very few "legitimate marketing e-mails". If it's advertisement and I didn't explicitly ask for it, it's spam. It really is that simple.
So, instead of "7 ways to be a spammer", they should have written an article "3 ways to make sure you are not a spammer":
1. Send advertisement only to people who have explicitly asked for it (opt-in), and that means without the "please spam me" clause being hidden in 1-pixel sized text on page 34 of your obscure ordering guidelines nobody reads anyways. 2. Honour each and every "stop sending me this stuff" request immediately and with no hassle. 3. Provide clear and easy to spot essential information in each mail, including: Who you are and how I can get rid of the stuff.
Bonus points if a domain holder can tell you to stop sending to any mails in his domain, even if they asked for it. Extra special bonus points if your advertisement is small and to the point, instead of a 500k flash animated webpage sent by mail.
The law does have quite a bit of humour, you just have to be a lawyer or someone with legal training to appreciate it.
For example, a workers law here in Germany requires the top boss to talk to the elected workers' council at least once a month. Let me skip the why and boring details. One company persistently rejected to even acknowledge that elected body even existed, much less deal with them.
So one court case later, the judgement was to take the offenders into custody. It's called "Beugehaft" in Germany, the idea being that for minor crimes where fines aren't the proper punishment because what you want is someone to do something, you take him into custody until he says "ok, ok". Now here's the joke: The judgement called for this punishment to be levied on the entire board of directors, and immediately due to the danger of them fleeing. The people who thought they were above it all were in immediate danger of being put behind bars within the hour. And sure, they could call for revision, but they'd still be taken from their office by police and spend at least one night in jail. A bunch of frentic phonecalls later, the CEO had binding instructions to cooperate fully with the workers council.
Lawyers laugh as much as anyone. It's just that most of their jokes are as puzzling to us as C++ jokes are to your grandmother.
You really believe Starforce et al will have any trouble whatsoever to get their "drivers" signed? You dramatically misunderstand what this tax-on-hardware system is all about.
DRM will fail on its own, because it is anti-consumer, and impossible (cryptographically speaking) to implement securely. If it is unavoidable (see next point), then it won't matter that it's anti-consumer. And why do you think these people are even trying for cryptographic security? "Good enough" is a major measuring line in all industries involved.
We live in a (mostly) free market society. Not in the industry sectors involved. The OS market is a monopoly (don't argue this, even the courts agree) and the entertainment market is an oligopoly.
No area where the market is mostly free is even talking about DRM. I wonder if that's coincidence, but one way or the other, in these areas, we are not living in a free market society.
Ok, let me get this straight: The remedy for beating my wife is jail. The remedy for violating the privacy of millions of citizen is "please stop"?
I understand what you're getting at, and in a strictly technical sense, you are correct. That doesn't mean it's proper. Frankly, I would like to know why the ACLU didn't ask for damages. How about $100 per illegally monitored call, payable in half to each participant in the call.
I mean, it's not as if you could bancrupt the government, not anymore than they already are.
Riiiight.... and the rest of the world is perfect. I said that where?
Look, your leader is a psychopath. The fact that others aren't much better doesn't change it, doesn't make it any less horrible, and should not take attention away from the fact that yes, there might be 50 criminally insane heads of state around the world, but you can do something about this one.
Hey Bill, you also promised that the spam problem would be solved by the end of 2006. How about you live up to your old promises first, before making new ones? Or is this just a cheap stunt to draw attention away from the fact that quite contrary to your "prediction", spam is worse then ever before?
So, how about the end of spam? How about living up to your words, just this once?
Even the mainstream doesn't buy the "Visionary" crap anymore, so why persist? Let's check: He's failed with every major prediction he made. His books had to be revised several times to catch up with the facts, and that's in addition to being almost certainly being written by ghostwriters.
MS is the WalMart of computing: Zero innovation, but they sell to the mainstream and are so big that they crowd out others.
Really, why? Has he entered the spheree of the powerful who are so removed from reality that they couldn't tell it from a donkey anymore?
We might yet see that day. Most of the republicans realize that Bush is dragging them down and that it was he who cost many of them their seats last election.
There's still hope. I don't really believe it, but as long as there is at least the option that Bush and his cronies spend a few years in Guatanamo themselves, there is still hope.
Really. If I ever get caught in, say, a murder, I just stop killing anyone and I'm free.
Right?
Oh, wait. Doesn't that mean Bush should also stop hunting Bin Laden? I mean, he hasn't crashed any airliners into skycrapers for years now.
The mind boggles trying to follow what passes for "reason" in your government. I once thought Bush is stupid. I don't do that anymore. I think he has some unknown insanity that is contagious.
This amazing tale began in 1998 when Korea decided it couldn't wait for SSL to be standardized (which it was in 1999) and commissioned an ActiveX control for secure Web transactions. Has anyone ever investigate which backroom dealings resulted in this decision? Decisions like this, with a multi-billion profit guarantee to a specific vendor, aren't made for technical merit. If you really believe that neither MS nor someone else with stakes in it (maybe some reseller?) was involved, I have a few bridges for sale...
More info: Just in case anyone was wondering if it's just pin placement, no it isn't, that was just an example. In more expensive locks, the pins are shaped in a mushroom shape to defeat the bumping process (which relies on pressure keeping the bumped pins aligned). There's a lot more going on in locks.
Speaking as someone who does this at times for fun (and no profit), there are many different kinds of locks. I can get most simple padlocks open in under 30 seconds, and most simple locks, like those for bicycles, in around 10. However, good padlocks (I play with padlocks most of the time, they are good to handle and you can sit on the couch while opening them), good padlocks can take several minutes to open. And the top-of-the-line locks (seldom in padlocks, but quite common in door locks especially where a professional made the decision, i.e. companies, government offices, etc.) are very hard to defeat without special tools. Simple pin bumping doesn't get you anywhere with them as they were specifically designed to defeat this technique. There are other techniques, but as I said they require special tools, and many of the very good locks are imperverous to these as well. You have pins on both top and bottom, you have pins at the sides, some expensive locks use small magnets in addition to pins and lots of other trickery. Pin bumping really is just the top of the iceberg.
In theory, this would work and mailing lists would not be a problem. If the implementation sucks, though...
Same for "why trust your servers"? - you don't have to. If the method works, there will be multiple services offering similar products, and you can choose which one to trust.
Solveable problem. The traffic pattern of a mailing list is different from the traffic pattern of spam. Just for starters: Very few mailing lists have 50 million different subscribers.
The devil in this doesn't lie in the concept, the concept is sound. Implementation will be tricky.
What about time spent with both? Mine lives in a different city right now, and we play Guild Wars as a way to have something to do together in addition to mail and phone.
Foreign countries with different laws (or standards of justice) could be problems. But in reality, most spam comes from two or three dozen operations, and most of them are in the US or Europe. US. We dirty, socialist Europeans might be primitive backwater savages living in a communist utopia without realizing that only War on (Terror|Drugs|Communism|Whatever) makes true happiness and we are also far behind in turning out countries into surveilance police-states, but at least spam is not originating from Europe in considerable quantity.
Check the ROKSO list if you want to know who the top spammers are.
Re:Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.
on
MySpace Sues Spam King
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
To think of it. This dude sends 100 mio. mails per day. And CAN-SPAM or not, they let him continue for over 2 years even after this. That's 73 billion mails. Spam-excusers say "it takes only 5 seconds to delete an unwanted mail". Following that we're talking 101 million hours here. I'll leave it to someone else to put that in terms of productivity and national economy.
Scott Richter - sole destroyer of the US economy. Hey, maybe we can get him under some terrorism law?
Are we just arranging for the bear to eat our friend? There's a difference between running faster than your friend and breaking his legs to make sure he runs slower than you.
The bear is going to eat one of you anyways. The spam is going to be sent anyways. In the large picture, something bad is going to happen, one way or the other. Making sure you're not the one it's happening to isn't unethical.
Slashdot Mirror
Google for "Kurnaz", please. You'll find the guy is the #1 news item in Germany right now. He was held in "Gitmo" for over 5 years, and has recently been released, with no charges and a very clear "oops, he was perfectly innocent" statement by the US administration.
There are other cases as well, but I'd have to research the names. This one is current and very obvious. So obvious that journalists in Germany are talking about lawsuits against our former government because they didn't help him get out.
Doesn't anyone notice anymore that spam isn't an Internet-only phenomenon? I do. When I go to work, or virtually anywhere, I'm being spammed by ads. Try finding a place in the inner city where you can turn 360 without being flooded by more ads than you could recall after the spin.
Advertisement is intrusive, and on purpose. I wouldn't mind the entire marketing sector being made illegal on penalty of death. I don't advocate the idea, because it will probably be impossible to draw a sharp enough line, but to sum it up: There is no legitimate advertisement, end of story. Some isn't illegal, the way that until the middle of the 20th century raping your wife wasn't illegal in most western countries.
Mod parent up, exactly what I was about to say.
There are very, very few "legitimate marketing e-mails". If it's advertisement and I didn't explicitly ask for it, it's spam. It really is that simple.
So, instead of "7 ways to be a spammer", they should have written an article "3 ways to make sure you are not a spammer":
1. Send advertisement only to people who have explicitly asked for it (opt-in), and that means without the "please spam me" clause being hidden in 1-pixel sized text on page 34 of your obscure ordering guidelines nobody reads anyways.
2. Honour each and every "stop sending me this stuff" request immediately and with no hassle.
3. Provide clear and easy to spot essential information in each mail, including: Who you are and how I can get rid of the stuff.
Bonus points if a domain holder can tell you to stop sending to any mails in his domain, even if they asked for it.
Extra special bonus points if your advertisement is small and to the point, instead of a 500k flash animated webpage sent by mail.
The law does have quite a bit of humour, you just have to be a lawyer or someone with legal training to appreciate it.
For example, a workers law here in Germany requires the top boss to talk to the elected workers' council at least once a month. Let me skip the why and boring details. One company persistently rejected to even acknowledge that elected body even existed, much less deal with them.
So one court case later, the judgement was to take the offenders into custody. It's called "Beugehaft" in Germany, the idea being that for minor crimes where fines aren't the proper punishment because what you want is someone to do something, you take him into custody until he says "ok, ok". Now here's the joke: The judgement called for this punishment to be levied on the entire board of directors, and immediately due to the danger of them fleeing. The people who thought they were above it all were in immediate danger of being put behind bars within the hour. And sure, they could call for revision, but they'd still be taken from their office by police and spend at least one night in jail.
A bunch of frentic phonecalls later, the CEO had binding instructions to cooperate fully with the workers council.
Lawyers laugh as much as anyone. It's just that most of their jokes are as puzzling to us as C++ jokes are to your grandmother.
You really believe Starforce et al will have any trouble whatsoever to get their "drivers" signed? You dramatically misunderstand what this tax-on-hardware system is all about.
Ok, I dig dual-booting between OSX and windos for games, and between Linux and windos for games. But between windos and windos for games???
Does that make even remotely sense to anyone?
No area where the market is mostly free is even talking about DRM. I wonder if that's coincidence, but one way or the other, in these areas, we are not living in a free market society.
Ok, let me get this straight: The remedy for beating my wife is jail. The remedy for violating the privacy of millions of citizen is "please stop"?
I understand what you're getting at, and in a strictly technical sense, you are correct. That doesn't mean it's proper. Frankly, I would like to know why the ACLU didn't ask for damages. How about $100 per illegally monitored call, payable in half to each participant in the call.
I mean, it's not as if you could bancrupt the government, not anymore than they already are.
Look, your leader is a psychopath. The fact that others aren't much better doesn't change it, doesn't make it any less horrible, and should not take attention away from the fact that yes, there might be 50 criminally insane heads of state around the world, but you can do something about this one.
Hey Bill, you also promised that the spam problem would be solved by the end of 2006. How about you live up to your old promises first, before making new ones? Or is this just a cheap stunt to draw attention away from the fact that quite contrary to your "prediction", spam is worse then ever before?
So, how about the end of spam? How about living up to your words, just this once?
Even the mainstream doesn't buy the "Visionary" crap anymore, so why persist? Let's check: He's failed with every major prediction he made. His books had to be revised several times to catch up with the facts, and that's in addition to being almost certainly being written by ghostwriters.
MS is the WalMart of computing: Zero innovation, but they sell to the mainstream and are so big that they crowd out others.
Really, why? Has he entered the spheree of the powerful who are so removed from reality that they couldn't tell it from a donkey anymore?
We might yet see that day. Most of the republicans realize that Bush is dragging them down and that it was he who cost many of them their seats last election.
There's still hope. I don't really believe it, but as long as there is at least the option that Bush and his cronies spend a few years in Guatanamo themselves, there is still hope.
Really. If I ever get caught in, say, a murder, I just stop killing anyone and I'm free.
Right?
Oh, wait. Doesn't that mean Bush should also stop hunting Bin Laden? I mean, he hasn't crashed any airliners into skycrapers for years now.
The mind boggles trying to follow what passes for "reason" in your government. I once thought Bush is stupid. I don't do that anymore. I think he has some unknown insanity that is contagious.
They should teach them a better lesson: To not rely on one source, no matter which one it is, for all or the majority of their research.
More info: Just in case anyone was wondering if it's just pin placement, no it isn't, that was just an example. In more expensive locks, the pins are shaped in a mushroom shape to defeat the bumping process (which relies on pressure keeping the bumped pins aligned). There's a lot more going on in locks.
Speaking as someone who does this at times for fun (and no profit), there are many different kinds of locks. I can get most simple padlocks open in under 30 seconds, and most simple locks, like those for bicycles, in around 10.
However, good padlocks (I play with padlocks most of the time, they are good to handle and you can sit on the couch while opening them), good padlocks can take several minutes to open. And the top-of-the-line locks (seldom in padlocks, but quite common in door locks especially where a professional made the decision, i.e. companies, government offices, etc.) are very hard to defeat without special tools. Simple pin bumping doesn't get you anywhere with them as they were specifically designed to defeat this technique. There are other techniques, but as I said they require special tools, and many of the very good locks are imperverous to these as well. You have pins on both top and bottom, you have pins at the sides, some expensive locks use small magnets in addition to pins and lots of other trickery. Pin bumping really is just the top of the iceberg.
(x) You didn't understand before you hit "reply".
In theory, this would work and mailing lists would not be a problem. If the implementation sucks, though...
Same for "why trust your servers"? - you don't have to. If the method works, there will be multiple services offering similar products, and you can choose which one to trust.
Solveable problem. The traffic pattern of a mailing list is different from the traffic pattern of spam. Just for starters: Very few mailing lists have 50 million different subscribers.
The devil in this doesn't lie in the concept, the concept is sound. Implementation will be tricky.
What about time spent with both? Mine lives in a different city right now, and we play Guild Wars as a way to have something to do together in addition to mail and phone.
Check the ROKSO list if you want to know who the top spammers are.
200 Known Spam Operations responsible for 80% of your spam.
That's not from last year, it's from 2004.
To think of it. This dude sends 100 mio. mails per day. And CAN-SPAM or not, they let him continue for over 2 years even after this. That's 73 billion mails. Spam-excusers say "it takes only 5 seconds to delete an unwanted mail". Following that we're talking 101 million hours here. I'll leave it to someone else to put that in terms of productivity and national economy.
Scott Richter - sole destroyer of the US economy. Hey, maybe we can get him under some terrorism law?
The bear is going to eat one of you anyways. The spam is going to be sent anyways. In the large picture, something bad is going to happen, one way or the other. Making sure you're not the one it's happening to isn't unethical.