I think lots of people have done this before - I did something very similar four years ago, and it's actually pretty simple (assuming you understand degree-level vision processing), especially if they're only aiming to get 1 tag right in 15. I think that this is just another example of the US patent system is getting out of control.
I recently had a rather important e-mail fail to reach a client because the filter at their organisation noticed my e-mail had the word 'lottery' in the body, and spam-binned it. While I agree that if we had your system in place it would have got through, but I still don't think that's the solution, at least not on its own, how you suggested in your first post.
The problem in this case was with the ability of the filtering software, and I remain convinced that the best way to deal with spam will be with increasinly sophisticated server-side tools, rather than trying to get users to adapt. That's not to say that signatures don't have a place - they clearly do - but it's just not going to solve the problem all on its own.
You explain your point well, and I now see where you're coming from, but I'm afraid I'm still not convinced.
As we've seen with adoption of browser upgrades, the problem is that you're never going to be able to guarantee that all of your customers will be able to work the new system. You always have to cater for the lowest common denominator, otherwise you run the risk of alienating and losing customers. That's why when we develop for the web we still endeavour to support browsers that were released 7+ years ago. While digital signatures may see more widespread adoption, I doubt we will see the disappearance of unsigned e-mails any time soon.
With my conventional whitelist I have a 99.9% successful filter rate. Literally. However, although it is strict, my whitelist still allows people I don't know to get in touch - going on digital signatures would immediately cut out any new potential clients, or even old friends who I haven't spoken to in a while.
If you had bothered to read my post, you would have seen that my problem isn't with sorting the spam from the ham, the industry has nearly got that sorted - it's with the sheer volume of spam, and the associated bandwidth and hardware costs. For a digital signature whitelist to work, the spam would still have to get to my machine and be processed, so it offers no advantage over conventional means.
Digital signatures are not the magic bullet you seem to think they are. Even if Microsoft shipped a digital signature solution as standard with the next version of Outlook, it still wouldn't fix spam. Conventional e-mail is too widely adopted for a new protocol or major change to take hold, especially not in 6 months - there would need to be legacy support for many many years to come. And anyway, spammers will always find a way to circumvent barriers as long as there's easy money in it.
However, the most important point is that users aren't going to adapt to use a spam-beating technology that involves them doing something, because the majority of them are too stupid to figure out how, or even why, and the rest just can't be bothered. It's the filter programmers and sysadmins who are fighting the war against spammers, and they are the only ones who can win it for the rest of us.
Going after the spammers just doesn't seem to work any more though.
I think the people who buy from spam are getting off lightly. Those are the people we should target. Don't feel sorry for the people who get scammed for thousands, because they are the reason our inboxes are all full.
In 1859 they figured out why people like that have such bad luck, and they called it evolution. Survival of the fittest. The reason these people can't get a girlfriend and click through on online dating spam is not only because they're ugly, it's also because they're stupid. There's a reason they need to increase their "size and stamina" - nature didn't mean for them to use it in the first place.
What I want to know is what makes these people think those stocks are a good investment? Is it the spelling of '1nv 3$t0r z' that gets them thinking "hey, here's someone who knows what they're talking about"?
I think it's time we did something about these people. Let's be vigilantes, let's hit the spammer where it hurts - their pocket. If nobody buys from spam, nobody will pay spammers, and the spam will stop.
So from now on, whenever your someone brings you their computer and says "oh it's running a bit slow", stop and think. Before you scrape off the spyware and run anti-virus software to take it off the botnets, stop and think of the harm they're doing. Then just 'format C:' and wait for them to show up on next year's Darwin Awards.
Come on people, lets get these idiots the hell off our interweb.
Give it a year or two. I've got a catch-all set up like you, and I remember the good old days when I used to get a thousand spams a day. In fact the day I broke the 1000 spams mark was in May 2004. I'm now getting tens of thousands of spams a day.
Take today, for example. It's just gone 17:00 here, and since midnight this morning I've had 34929 spams. That's what, about 35 spams every minute? And the worst bit is that today isn't even a particularly heavy day - I must be getting nearly 15 million e-mails every year. 50+ GB of UCE? From one catch-all domain.
Thanks to strict whitelisting I've only seen 44 spams get through today, but still, it all adds to the bandwidth bill and wears the hard drive. I've had to get a dedicated local e-mail server to stay online 24/7 and download my e-mails as they arrive, otherwise I find myself with a 60+ MB download every morning before I can do any work. Before installing the new server, I used to come back from holiday and find I had nearly a gig to download, and checking my mail on the road over my mobile was definitely out.
This spam situation is a complete joke, and vigilantes are the only way we're going to get anywhere for now - it's not like we've got any kind of real online police presence, for the most part we ARE the police.
Anyway, just thought I'd let you know what you have to look forward to.
Yeah, nice try, but there are 123 keys on the original design, so assuming it sticks with that layout it will be $4100 based purely on price per key.
However, the $100 for the mini version will also include the rest of the device, not to mention a hefty markup to cover design and manufacturing costs and turn a profit at the end of it all.
But the most important fact you missed was that the size of the keys on the mini keyboard are 32mm x 32mm, whereas the size of normal keys would be ~15mm x 15mm. So even if the cost is $33/key and they plan to make a loss on it, you're looking at half the key surface area that $4100 would buy you.
Where did you get $300 from? If the mini keyboard has 3 keys and costs $100, and if the full keyboard keeps to the original design it will have 123 keys. 123/3=41, 41*100=$4100.
Obviously it isn't costing them the $33/key that they're charging, but it was never going to be cheap. They've always said it would be the same price as a decent mobile phone, and if that's a few hundred dollars, I'm sure they'll find a market. I'd be quite tempted, although not if the screens only last the 5000 hours I saw mentioned - even with my computer off half the time each day that would only last a year.
Think I'll stick with my £3 dabs.com keyboard for now.
Well, I actually prefer it - guess it depends what you're used to. It's also quieter, which saves me getting in trouble with the downstairs neighbours when I'm working late. Seriously, I tried a Microsoft internet keyboard for a bit when I built my new machine, and the guy downstairs rang me up complaining my typing was keeping them awake. I want to move.
I think I'll be tempted to move to the Optimus keyboard though, if they actually are in production. I'm sure the price will make me go back to cleaning...
I don't know about laptop keyboards, but for my desktop I use ~£3 keyboards from Dabs and replace them after a year or two.
I used to go through the whole thing of using wipes, cotton wool buds, alcohol-based cleaner, compressed air and tweezers. But you know, I spent more money on that than it cost to get a new keyboard, not to mention the amount of time I wasted, and even at the end it wouldn't be as clean as a new one.
Not the most environmentally friendly method, but at least I have a lot of spare keyboards.
Oh good, I thought it was just me. It's all well and good saying it's in the title, but I (like many others) skim read and got 'Microsoft Ends WMP'. I guess whoever wrote the post probably assumed that anyone reading it would already be in the apple section.
Getting back on topic, last month they pulled IE mac, wonder what it'll be next month. I can understand Microsoft producing Office for Mac - they are predominantly a software company after all, and where there's a market they can make money. But I can see why they'd drop IE mac - that's not bringing in anything apart from bad publicity.
If they want to 'sell' WMA/WMV to content encoders, the important thing is having the ability to play it on as many platforms as possible - mac WMP isn't making them money directly, and never will. This plugin is win-win for everyone concerned - Microsoft can ditch mac WMP without limiting the market for WMA/WMV, the plugin producer can cash in on a pro version, and Mac users don't get left out in the cold.
They're already running our governments, or at least the people behind Google are.
They couldn't read our brains with their satellite beams, because we out-smarted them with our protective foil hats. Instead they created a puppet company to create a popular search engine, and now they wait for people to send in their thoughts so they can combine them with their satellite images and records of our email and shopping habits.
But I'm onto you! You won't catch me running your desktop search!
Slashdot Mirror
I think lots of people have done this before - I did something very similar four years ago, and it's actually pretty simple (assuming you understand degree-level vision processing), especially if they're only aiming to get 1 tag right in 15. I think that this is just another example of the US patent system is getting out of control.
The underpants gnomes look upon you with disgust.
I recently had a rather important e-mail fail to reach a client because the filter at their organisation noticed my e-mail had the word 'lottery' in the body, and spam-binned it. While I agree that if we had your system in place it would have got through, but I still don't think that's the solution, at least not on its own, how you suggested in your first post.
The problem in this case was with the ability of the filtering software, and I remain convinced that the best way to deal with spam will be with increasinly sophisticated server-side tools, rather than trying to get users to adapt. That's not to say that signatures don't have a place - they clearly do - but it's just not going to solve the problem all on its own.
You explain your point well, and I now see where you're coming from, but I'm afraid I'm still not convinced.
As we've seen with adoption of browser upgrades, the problem is that you're never going to be able to guarantee that all of your customers will be able to work the new system. You always have to cater for the lowest common denominator, otherwise you run the risk of alienating and losing customers. That's why when we develop for the web we still endeavour to support browsers that were released 7+ years ago. While digital signatures may see more widespread adoption, I doubt we will see the disappearance of unsigned e-mails any time soon.
I see your prediction and raise you 'bullshit'.
With my conventional whitelist I have a 99.9% successful filter rate. Literally. However, although it is strict, my whitelist still allows people I don't know to get in touch - going on digital signatures would immediately cut out any new potential clients, or even old friends who I haven't spoken to in a while.
If you had bothered to read my post, you would have seen that my problem isn't with sorting the spam from the ham, the industry has nearly got that sorted - it's with the sheer volume of spam, and the associated bandwidth and hardware costs. For a digital signature whitelist to work, the spam would still have to get to my machine and be processed, so it offers no advantage over conventional means.
Digital signatures are not the magic bullet you seem to think they are. Even if Microsoft shipped a digital signature solution as standard with the next version of Outlook, it still wouldn't fix spam. Conventional e-mail is too widely adopted for a new protocol or major change to take hold, especially not in 6 months - there would need to be legacy support for many many years to come. And anyway, spammers will always find a way to circumvent barriers as long as there's easy money in it.
However, the most important point is that users aren't going to adapt to use a spam-beating technology that involves them doing something, because the majority of them are too stupid to figure out how, or even why, and the rest just can't be bothered. It's the filter programmers and sysadmins who are fighting the war against spammers, and they are the only ones who can win it for the rest of us.
Going after the spammers just doesn't seem to work any more though.
I think the people who buy from spam are getting off lightly. Those are the people we should target. Don't feel sorry for the people who get scammed for thousands, because they are the reason our inboxes are all full.
In 1859 they figured out why people like that have such bad luck, and they called it evolution. Survival of the fittest. The reason these people can't get a girlfriend and click through on online dating spam is not only because they're ugly, it's also because they're stupid. There's a reason they need to increase their "size and stamina" - nature didn't mean for them to use it in the first place.
What I want to know is what makes these people think those stocks are a good investment? Is it the spelling of '1nv 3$t0r z' that gets them thinking "hey, here's someone who knows what they're talking about"?
I think it's time we did something about these people. Let's be vigilantes, let's hit the spammer where it hurts - their pocket. If nobody buys from spam, nobody will pay spammers, and the spam will stop.
So from now on, whenever your someone brings you their computer and says "oh it's running a bit slow", stop and think. Before you scrape off the spyware and run anti-virus software to take it off the botnets, stop and think of the harm they're doing. Then just 'format C:' and wait for them to show up on next year's Darwin Awards.
Come on people, lets get these idiots the hell off our interweb.
Give it a year or two. I've got a catch-all set up like you, and I remember the good old days when I used to get a thousand spams a day. In fact the day I broke the 1000 spams mark was in May 2004. I'm now getting tens of thousands of spams a day.
Take today, for example. It's just gone 17:00 here, and since midnight this morning I've had 34929 spams. That's what, about 35 spams every minute? And the worst bit is that today isn't even a particularly heavy day - I must be getting nearly 15 million e-mails every year. 50+ GB of UCE? From one catch-all domain.
Thanks to strict whitelisting I've only seen 44 spams get through today, but still, it all adds to the bandwidth bill and wears the hard drive. I've had to get a dedicated local e-mail server to stay online 24/7 and download my e-mails as they arrive, otherwise I find myself with a 60+ MB download every morning before I can do any work. Before installing the new server, I used to come back from holiday and find I had nearly a gig to download, and checking my mail on the road over my mobile was definitely out.
This spam situation is a complete joke, and vigilantes are the only way we're going to get anywhere for now - it's not like we've got any kind of real online police presence, for the most part we ARE the police.
Anyway, just thought I'd let you know what you have to look forward to.
Yeah, nice try, but there are 123 keys on the original design, so assuming it sticks with that layout it will be $4100 based purely on price per key.
However, the $100 for the mini version will also include the rest of the device, not to mention a hefty markup to cover design and manufacturing costs and turn a profit at the end of it all.
But the most important fact you missed was that the size of the keys on the mini keyboard are 32mm x 32mm, whereas the size of normal keys would be ~15mm x 15mm. So even if the cost is $33/key and they plan to make a loss on it, you're looking at half the key surface area that $4100 would buy you.
Mod parent 'talking crap'.
Where did you get $300 from? If the mini keyboard has 3 keys and costs $100, and if the full keyboard keeps to the original design it will have 123 keys. 123/3=41, 41*100=$4100.
Obviously it isn't costing them the $33/key that they're charging, but it was never going to be cheap. They've always said it would be the same price as a decent mobile phone, and if that's a few hundred dollars, I'm sure they'll find a market. I'd be quite tempted, although not if the screens only last the 5000 hours I saw mentioned - even with my computer off half the time each day that would only last a year.
Think I'll stick with my £3 dabs.com keyboard for now.
Well, I actually prefer it - guess it depends what you're used to. It's also quieter, which saves me getting in trouble with the downstairs neighbours when I'm working late. Seriously, I tried a Microsoft internet keyboard for a bit when I built my new machine, and the guy downstairs rang me up complaining my typing was keeping them awake. I want to move.
I think I'll be tempted to move to the Optimus keyboard though, if they actually are in production. I'm sure the price will make me go back to cleaning...
I don't know about laptop keyboards, but for my desktop I use ~£3 keyboards from Dabs and replace them after a year or two.
I used to go through the whole thing of using wipes, cotton wool buds, alcohol-based cleaner, compressed air and tweezers. But you know, I spent more money on that than it cost to get a new keyboard, not to mention the amount of time I wasted, and even at the end it wouldn't be as clean as a new one.
Not the most environmentally friendly method, but at least I have a lot of spare keyboards.
Oh good, I thought it was just me. It's all well and good saying it's in the title, but I (like many others) skim read and got 'Microsoft Ends WMP'. I guess whoever wrote the post probably assumed that anyone reading it would already be in the apple section.
Getting back on topic, last month they pulled IE mac, wonder what it'll be next month. I can understand Microsoft producing Office for Mac - they are predominantly a software company after all, and where there's a market they can make money. But I can see why they'd drop IE mac - that's not bringing in anything apart from bad publicity.
If they want to 'sell' WMA/WMV to content encoders, the important thing is having the ability to play it on as many platforms as possible - mac WMP isn't making them money directly, and never will. This plugin is win-win for everyone concerned - Microsoft can ditch mac WMP without limiting the market for WMA/WMV, the plugin producer can cash in on a pro version, and Mac users don't get left out in the cold.
They're already running our governments, or at least the people behind Google are.
They couldn't read our brains with their satellite beams, because we out-smarted them with our protective foil hats. Instead they created a puppet company to create a popular search engine, and now they wait for people to send in their thoughts so they can combine them with their satellite images and records of our email and shopping habits.
But I'm onto you! You won't catch me running your desktop search!
The underpants gnomes look upon you with disgust.