Oh but it's worse than that. The opt-out provision only applies to the specific company being advertised. Start a new shell company (maybe $50 in some states, less in the carribean) and you can spam everyone all over again, 100% legally. Plus you've got all those freshly confirmed addresses!
In fact, I don't think the law prohibits selling your opt-out list to other spammers, for use as their new spam list. Isn't life grand?
Further problems with the law:
no private right of action. 99.98% of spammers don't cause $5000+ worth of damage and therefore will never be prosecuted by the FBI or FTC. Individuals, companies, and probably even state governments will have to take it up the ass.
Nulls out all existing state spam laws, most of which are stronger than this crap.
But all the Congress-critters get to go home to their districts and say "I voted to protect you from spam!" without even realizing that they're lying (except that as usual their lips are moving).
Respect for the Flag No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor. * The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
Violating the Bill of Rights, lying to the public in order to incite a war, huge crony payoffs, possible vote-rigging... I could see how some patriots might consider that to be dire distress and extreme danger.
If I had my choice between either of those two or nobody, I choose nobody. Anything else would be insincere. Funny, by your own admission, the majority in the last election voted for nobody too.
Nope. Those of you who don't go to the polls are absolutely 100% giving your implicit consent to the winners. They are completely utterly happy to let you be a sheep. If you don't like the big two, or even the next few guys, you can always write in. Vote for your mother, or your boss, or yourself.
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill I will choose a path that's clear I will choose free will.
This is the real deal, but Wired is known to write for shock value. In case you want other perspectives, Google Makes All Computing Simple
For example, it's interesting that the gambling industry is acting like this bill is targeted at them personally, when it actually mows over pretty much ANY business that moves money internationally.
I often reply to these with my real world (office) phone number, so that I can tell the lead purchaser that they're buying illegal spammed leads. If enough people did this, they stop buying internet leads entirely.
For added fun, you could imply that the spammer is actually paying you kickbacks to submit bogus leads. That'll get them shut down in a hurry.
You want to keep Corporate America honest? Two ways: government mandate and journalism.
Umm...this story is about Time Magazine (Journalism) covering up an unfavorable article on behalf of Bush Jr (Government). Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Dammit, stupid non-optical mouse jumped and I hit Submit instead of Preview.
Anyways, I meant to say that 69.64.32.59 is listed in SPEWS and it is not listed in Spamhaus. Given that the wider-reaching SPEWS only lists a/24 in that vicinity, I find it higly implausible that Spamhaus would drop a/20.
Instead, I am starting to consider the notion that there is a pro-spammer astroturf campaign being waged against blocklist sites.
Yes, you can find my address on my site. Alternately, you could repost this problem on NANAE with a subject line that includes the string S1995 and get their evidence firsthand.
we don't know what the question was. I suspect it was "why don't you monitor all the mail sent by all your customers using their own smtp servers?"
No. Scott Dorsey is a techie. His message, like most NANAEs, would be: "Your hosting customer foo.com is spamming. Evidence enclosed. Shut them down." HostEurope's reply was (BS removed) "You should ask the spammer to remove you. We won't do anything." Anyone who hunts spammers (for work or hobby) can tell you EXACTLY what their reply means.
they count all votes, and then the party that is coming last when all votes are counted, is removed, and their next preference is taken.
Yup, and that's the source of the problem. Here's a voting scenario I whipped together. There are better examples at ElectionMethods.org, but this one is mine:
At this point C is the winner, but digging down to 3rd out of 5 doesn't strike me as a ringing endorsement. Furthermore, a whopping 80% would have preferred E over C.
Next, let's kick it up a notch and see what happens if a few people who favored D instead voted for C:
22 ABECD 21 BADEC 23 CDEAB 16 DECBA 18 ECBDA
The lowest is D, so he gets dropped, leading to:
22 ABECx 21 BAxEC 23 CxEAB 16 xECBA 18 ECBxA
The lowest is B, so she gets dropped, leading to:
22 AxECx 21 xAxEC 23 CxEAx 16 xECxA 18 ECxxA
The lowest is C, so he gets dropped, leading to:
22 AxExx 21 xAxEx 23 xxEAx 16 xExxA 18 ExxxA
At this point E is the winner. Candidate C lost due to getting more votes!
If you're going to use numerical ranking, Condorcet is clearly superior to IRV. If not, Approval is easily implemented and avoids paradoxes efficiently.
Neil Gaiman, Prince of Stories
on
Neil Gaiman Responds
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'd like to preface this post by saying: I called it! Boo yah!
I absolutely love the way he says "I don't get as much reading time as I want, and I miss it very much" and then he rattles off ELEVEN of the books he's read and enjoyed in the past few months (i.e. not including the ones he disliked or forgot).
I'm shamed by how much I read Slashdot instead of good books.:-/
never seen any quotes from any of the Diebold people
Diebold is a US company with strong (and right-wing) management. They don't allow their lower echelons to speak to the press; all contact is handled by Public Relations. See for yourself.
BTW, Diebold's "programmers" are in Ohio. I use quote marks because they're mainly MCSEs who write front-ends for MS Access running on XP Tablet.
I am afraid that we are unable to monitor all the mail that our entire = customer database sends out, we are also unable to delete e-mail = addresses from our customers databases. The only thing that we can do to = help is to notify our customer of the situation which we have done by = cc'ing them in on our previous mail.
In addition the first stage even if the mail is abusive is always to = notify the owner of the website, we would not be able to get involved = if the owner had not been notified.
I apologise if you feel that this is not good enough, but this is the = law and obviously we have no choice but to respect that.
Finally if you block us from sending you any mail, it will not help the = situation as it is our customer who is mailing you, not us, and this = would brake down the lines of communication should you have any further = queries.=20
Oops, spoke too soon. SPEWS is blocking 217.199.160.0/19, which happens to include carrelet.net (melonman's provider). HostEurope apparently has a pink contract with Magic-Moments.com / MagicHosting.org. Looks justified to me.
responses to date seem to take SPEWS' infallibility as an article of faith
I have investigated dozens of complaints about SPEWS blocking, and their accuracy is excellent. FWIW, I have also seen ISPs successfully remove themselves from SPEWS after reporting (truthfully) that all spammers were booted.
at least one person thinks servers should be blocked if their sys admins question SPEWS' policy
There are kooks on all sides. The point that he should have made is that being in SPEWS is greatly preferable to being stuck in the thousands of personal blocklists that would become much more necessary if SPEWS did not exist. SPEWS has well-defined removal criteria and is easily contacted via NANA*; independent operators might leave your IPs blocked forever and are often unreachable.
despite never having sent a spam, because someone else in the 16-bit IP range had.
[...]
my ISP (who, incidentally, enforces a strict anti-spam policy)
These two statements are mutually contradictory. But first, a reminder that SPEWS is not Not NOT representative of mainstream anti-spam blocklist providers. Both SpamCop and SpamHaus use narrow targeted blocklists. Furthermore, the real responsibility for your blocked email lies with the recipient postmaster who chose to use the SPEWS list. Their server, their rules. You could call them and ask to be whitelisted.
According to best evidence, SPEWS always starts with an abuse complaint email and a/32 blocklisting. If further spam arrives at their address(es?) the listing expands to/28,/24, etc, until either the spammers are removed or the entire ISP is listed. In order to reach/16, your ISP must have ignored SPEWS and retained its spammers for a long Long LONG time.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh but it's worse than that. The opt-out provision only applies to the specific company being advertised. Start a new shell company (maybe $50 in some states, less in the carribean) and you can spam everyone all over again, 100% legally. Plus you've got all those freshly confirmed addresses!
In fact, I don't think the law prohibits selling your opt-out list to other spammers, for use as their new spam list. Isn't life grand?
Further problems with the law:- no private right of action. 99.98% of spammers don't cause $5000+ worth of damage and therefore will never be prosecuted by the FBI or FTC. Individuals, companies, and probably even state governments will have to take it up the ass.
- Meanwhile, the big names on ROKSO will know how to abuse the loopholes free and clear.
- Nulls out all existing state spam laws, most of which are stronger than this crap.
But all the Congress-critters get to go home to their districts and say "I voted to protect you from spam!" without even realizing that they're lying (except that as usual their lips are moving).Umm... yes they have. So, when will you be joining the protests?
Not quite; it's "only" an ordinary federal law. Flag Code, Section 176:
Violating the Bill of Rights, lying to the public in order to incite a war, huge crony payoffs, possible vote-rigging... I could see how some patriots might consider that to be dire distress and extreme danger.
Nope. Those of you who don't go to the polls are absolutely 100% giving your implicit consent to the winners. They are completely utterly happy to let you be a sheep. If you don't like the big two, or even the next few guys, you can always write in. Vote for your mother, or your boss, or yourself.
- - - RushFor example, it's interesting that the gambling industry is acting like this bill is targeted at them personally, when it actually mows over pretty much ANY business that moves money internationally.
Well... your Slasdot login is (hashed but stealable) in a cookie right now.
Perhaps that doesn't qualify as "serious", but don't come crying to me when your karma bottoms out after "you" post 500 goatse trolls in a row.Your wish is granted
p.s. Another one for your enjoyment: (877) 452-5846For added fun, you could imply that the spammer is actually paying you kickbacks to submit bogus leads. That'll get them shut down in a hurry.
ChillingEffects.org
Umm...this story is about Time Magazine (Journalism) covering up an unfavorable article on behalf of Bush Jr (Government). Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Anyways, I meant to say that 69.64.32.59 is listed in SPEWS and it is not listed in Spamhaus. Given that the wider-reaching SPEWS only lists a /24 in that vicinity, I find it higly implausible that Spamhaus would drop a /20.
Instead, I am starting to consider the notion that there is a pro-spammer astroturf campaign being waged against blocklist sites.Are you absolutely 100% sure you were blocked by Spamhaus and not by SPEWS? Spamhaus generally tries quite hard to avoid "collateral damage".
Yes, you are the only one. So go buy it already. That version has been available since August.
Any other questions?Yes, you can find my address on my site. Alternately, you could repost this problem on NANAE with a subject line that includes the string S1995 and get their evidence firsthand.
No. Scott Dorsey is a techie. His message, like most NANAEs, would be: "Your hosting customer foo.com is spamming. Evidence enclosed. Shut them down." HostEurope's reply was (BS removed) "You should ask the spammer to remove you. We won't do anything." Anyone who hunts spammers (for work or hobby) can tell you EXACTLY what their reply means.
Yup, and that's the source of the problem. Here's a voting scenario I whipped together. There are better examples at ElectionMethods.org, but this one is mine:
The lowest is E, so she gets dropped, leading to:The lowest is D, so he gets dropped, leading to:At this point C is the winner, but digging down to 3rd out of 5 doesn't strike me as a ringing endorsement. Furthermore, a whopping 80% would have preferred E over C.Next, let's kick it up a notch and see what happens if a few people who favored D instead voted for C:
The lowest is D, so he gets dropped, leading to:The lowest is B, so she gets dropped, leading to:The lowest is C, so he gets dropped, leading to:At this point E is the winner. Candidate C lost due to getting more votes!If you're going to use numerical ranking, Condorcet is clearly superior to IRV. If not, Approval is easily implemented and avoids paradoxes efficiently.
Or you could use a good meta-search instead to find the book faster &/or cheaper but more importantly with the ability to spurn evil patents.
I absolutely love the way he says "I don't get as much reading time as I want, and I miss it very much" and then he rattles off ELEVEN of the books he's read and enjoyed in the past few months (i.e. not including the ones he disliked or forgot).
I'm shamed by how much I read Slashdot instead of good books.Diebold is a US company with strong (and right-wing) management. They don't allow their lower echelons to speak to the press; all contact is handled by Public Relations. See for yourself.
BTW, Diebold's "programmers" are in Ohio. I use quote marks because they're mainly MCSEs who write front-ends for MS Access running on XP Tablet.Oops, you mis-capitalized that URL. I'm also a big fan of Approval Voting; it's simple and elegant.
Oops, spoke too soon. SPEWS is blocking 217.199.160.0/19, which happens to include carrelet.net (melonman's provider). HostEurope apparently has a pink contract with Magic-Moments.com / MagicHosting.org. Looks justified to me.
Umm... SPEWS is not blocking 217.199.0.0/16. In fact, I tried several searches and did not find any portion of that range being blocked.
responses to date seem to take SPEWS' infallibility as an article of faithI have investigated dozens of complaints about SPEWS blocking, and their accuracy is excellent. FWIW, I have also seen ISPs successfully remove themselves from SPEWS after reporting (truthfully) that all spammers were booted.
at least one person thinks servers should be blocked if their sys admins question SPEWS' policyThere are kooks on all sides. The point that he should have made is that being in SPEWS is greatly preferable to being stuck in the thousands of personal blocklists that would become much more necessary if SPEWS did not exist. SPEWS has well-defined removal criteria and is easily contacted via NANA*; independent operators might leave your IPs blocked forever and are often unreachable.
A quick Usenet search reveals a fat pile of spam complaints about HostEurope, including multiple sources in the past week. What say you, melonman?
[...]
my ISP (who, incidentally, enforces a strict anti-spam policy)
These two statements are mutually contradictory. But first, a reminder that SPEWS is not Not NOT representative of mainstream anti-spam blocklist providers. Both SpamCop and SpamHaus use narrow targeted blocklists. Furthermore, the real responsibility for your blocked email lies with the recipient postmaster who chose to use the SPEWS list. Their server, their rules. You could call them and ask to be whitelisted.
According to best evidence, SPEWS always starts with an abuse complaint email and a /32 blocklisting. If further spam arrives at their address(es?) the listing expands to /28, /24, etc, until either the spammers are removed or the entire ISP is listed. In order to reach /16, your ISP must have ignored SPEWS and retained its spammers for a long Long LONG time.