I was never a spammer, but I used to run a advertising supported newsletter of humor and inspirational stories that was faxed to local business five days a week. Each newsletter was one page long, and faxed in the dead of the night.
Everyone we faxed the newsletter too subscribed by placing their business card in one of our card bowls placed at restaurants around town. We didn't offer a prize or anything else with the subscription, so we weren't tricking anyone into anything.
At the bottom on the newsletter were unsubscribe instructions: write unsubscribe on this newsletter and fax it back.
Everyday we'd get unsubscribe requests, and everyday we'd process them. Many times someone would call from a business and unsubscribe one day, and then a couple days later a receptionist or something who sat near the fax machine and depended upon us for her daily chuckle would call wondering what happened to us, and we'd resubscribe them. Then, a week or two later someone from the business call and unsubscribe again, ad nasuem.
One day, without any notice, I was sued in small claims court by a local attorney who claimed that I was sending him unsolicited faxes, and as such owed him $500 for each of three faxes that he'd received unsolicited from me. The faxes weren't unsolicitied, and I had recorded in my files that someone from his office had called in to request the fax. Also in the files were notes detailing that someone had canceled, then restarted, then canceled the subscription of the course of a week and a half.
I took this information with me to court, but the judge explained that unfortunately his hands were tied and he was bound by the statute that required that I pay $500 for each of the three faxes -- no matter what the opinion of the court might have been about the excessiveness of the award.
That night, I removed every attorney and legal aide off the list, and within a year I totally ceased operation.
Re:User input could solve problems
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The new Google Toolbar has a "Vote for this Page" and a "Vote against this page" buttons.
If you find results that have been bombed, vote against them.
Unfortunately, the Toolbar requires Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or later, so I'll probably get flamed for this post.
All journalist endeavors are interests of the editor & publisher. By their very nature, some stories will be posted, while others will not. There are innumerable reasons for this, but the primary reason most stories are under/not reported is lack of time.
The Slashdot boys (even now that they are corporate) still only have so many hours in the day to read all of the submissions and create original content to buffer and provide perspective. This fact remains in all journalistic enterprises, be they one-man weblogs or huge business interests like CNN.
Its important for readers to keep this in mind when the persue news. Search engines like Headlines News Search help fight the problem of limited time by allowing you to find other websites covering similar news.
(I must disclose that I built and operate Headlines News Search)
I doubt that this was just a random spam to everyone in the world, with the hopes that it would reach some slashdot users who'd be taken in by the return address.
And i'd bet pretty heavily against these spammers having stolen the internal email address list.
What i imagine happened, was that some sort or crawler program sucked up hundreds of thousands of posts in the comments, after all its nots hard to generate the urls for the individual comments (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/06/17/1232 41&cid=xxx where xxx is the message number, can't be much simpler.) That would explain why not every single slashdot poster got the spam because some through that NOSPAM in the middle of their email addresses just to confuse spam bots.
This brings up an intersting question (that should probably be posted to "Ask Slashdot").
Does anyone know about the routing information printed via the half barcode on the bottom of the letters the USPS delivers? I assume they have something to do with the zip code, but:
Do they print them at the local post office after they pick them up and then use them for routing while in transit?
Are there any codes for things like "stay in the system, just going round and round and round and never leaving the auto sorter", or anything?
Any webpages with information about this sort of thing?
oh, wish i would have logged on somtime in the past seven hours so i could have saved the $40 (me, gf, gf's son, popcorn, cokes) i spent to see this ridiculous waste of an evening movie.
but, the trailer did make it worth it for me. unfortunately, my gf took her sons to the bathroom right before it started, so it probably only pissed her off.
Slashdot Mirror
I was never a spammer, but I used to run a advertising supported newsletter of humor and inspirational stories that was faxed to local business five days a week. Each newsletter was one page long, and faxed in the dead of the night.
Everyone we faxed the newsletter too subscribed by placing their business card in one of our card bowls placed at restaurants around town. We didn't offer a prize or anything else with the subscription, so we weren't tricking anyone into anything.
At the bottom on the newsletter were unsubscribe instructions: write unsubscribe on this newsletter and fax it back.
Everyday we'd get unsubscribe requests, and everyday we'd process them. Many times someone would call from a business and unsubscribe one day, and then a couple days later a receptionist or something who sat near the fax machine and depended upon us for her daily chuckle would call wondering what happened to us, and we'd resubscribe them. Then, a week or two later someone from the business call and unsubscribe again, ad nasuem.
One day, without any notice, I was sued in small claims court by a local attorney who claimed that I was sending him unsolicited faxes, and as such owed him $500 for each of three faxes that he'd received unsolicited from me. The faxes weren't unsolicitied, and I had recorded in my files that someone from his office had called in to request the fax. Also in the files were notes detailing that someone had canceled, then restarted, then canceled the subscription of the course of a week and a half.
I took this information with me to court, but the judge explained that unfortunately his hands were tied and he was bound by the statute that required that I pay $500 for each of the three faxes -- no matter what the opinion of the court might have been about the excessiveness of the award.
That night, I removed every attorney and legal aide off the list, and within a year I totally ceased operation.
The new Google Toolbar has a "Vote for this Page" and a "Vote against this page" buttons.
If you find results that have been bombed, vote against them.
Unfortunately, the Toolbar requires Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or later, so I'll probably get flamed for this post.
>> high speed network and a google of different communications devices. I enquired as
The word is googol not google.
Here's a screen shot of the ad. Notice, it does say "advertisement" above the ad.
screen shot
The Slashdot boys (even now that they are corporate) still only have so many hours in the day to read all of the submissions and create original content to buffer and provide perspective. This fact remains in all journalistic enterprises, be they one-man weblogs or huge business interests like CNN.
Its important for readers to keep this in mind when the persue news. Search engines like Headlines News Search help fight the problem of limited time by allowing you to find other websites covering similar news.
(I must disclose that I built and operate Headlines News Search)
Or here (zipped, not gziped and tarred).
so it was an early morning theory... i was wrong.
And i'd bet pretty heavily against these spammers having stolen the internal email address list.
What i imagine happened, was that some sort or crawler program sucked up hundreds of thousands of posts in the comments, after all its nots hard to generate the urls for the individual comments (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/06/17/123
If they were, don't you think it would be to some internet technology related company and not a porn site?
Really, i don't think they are.
This brings up an intersting question (that should probably be posted to "Ask Slashdot").
Does anyone know about the routing information printed via the half barcode on the bottom of the letters the USPS delivers? I assume they have something to do with the zip code, but:
thanks.
Up until a few days ago, there was little reason to visit the comment (other than to troll for flames) section. Now, I visit everyday.
Kudos CmdrTaco!
oh, wish i would have logged on somtime in the past seven hours so i could have saved the $40 (me, gf, gf's son, popcorn, cokes) i spent to see this ridiculous waste of an evening movie.
but, the trailer did make it worth it for me. unfortunately, my gf took her sons to the bathroom right before it started, so it probably only pissed her off.
:)
i think we've killed it.
dane-o