The radio station I once worked for used to have its 10,000 watt transmission cable shot out all the time. Bored hunters who can't find any game are extremely destructive. We probably averaged $5,000 - 10,000 per year repairing it.
I think a much better idea would be to modify the popular browsers to stop running animations on windows that are not visible to the user. Comnputers really do use more power when they have more to do, and running animations that nobody can see anyway is just a waste of power.
Whenever a window is completely obscured or minimized, the browser should pause all animated gifs, flash animations and even javascripts running in that window. This will save energy *and* make the user's system more responsive.
Also, older versions of netscape would halt animations if the user pressed the "Stop" button. Why did they take that feature away?
My prediction in zero jail time, and his assets are sufficiently hidden that he's fine-proof as well. He'll be given a substantial fine, but it will be suspended on the promise that he won't do it again. Then he'll do it again.
In 2000, Peacefire was hosted by ISP Media3, which also hosted of major spammers. That year, Media3 moved Peacefire into a new block of IP addresses which it knew was already listed in the MAPS RBL due to spamming. No reason was ever given for this move. Speculation was that this was either some sort of publicity stunt, or that Media3 was trying to use Peacefire as a sort of "human shield" to convince MAPS to drop the listing. That's when Haselton began complaining about censorship.
It was suggested that Haselton ask Media3 to move him back out of the block of IP addresses being listed. He refused. Haselton was offered free hosting at other ISPs which were not listed in the RBL. He refused. It almost seemed like he wanted to be listed in the RBL to make some sort of point.
I was told sharply that 12 hours was "more than enough time" to respond to such an abuse complaint
I agree. There was ongoing crime on your network. You should have responded immediately. Running the abuse desk at a sizeable ISP is not a 9-5 job.
In broadcast radio, the FCC has a regulation: the owner of a transmitter is legally required to maintain control of that transmitter. If something goes wrong (power fluctuations, frequency drift, someone shouting obscenities into the mic), you're required to rectify the situation immediately, not sometime the next day during business hours. If you can't get the transmitter back under control within a reasonably short time, you must shut it down.
I think this is a good policy and should apply to the internet. Once notified that there was an ongoing crime on your network, your obligation was to make it stop or pull the plug. If you can't get in touch with the owner of that server, then walk to the racks and yank a cable. If you can't be bothered to do that, then don't complain if someone else takes emergency action.
...Therefore none of their users would have seen any less spam as a result.
Perhaps, but fewer of them would have been ripped off by the phish.
Also, one of the kee aspects of fighting spam is doing it quickly. A spammer only needs their site to stay on line for a day or two to make spamming profitable. If phish and other spammer sites were taken down immediately, spamming would be much less of a problem.
Anti-spam laws don't come into it. The CAN-SPAM law preempts all state laws and makes almost all spam legal. In any event, spam isn't just something that's unsolicited. To be spam, it also has to be bulk. A single letter to a webmaster saying there's a problem with their site is not bulk.
And certainly I'd argue that anyone who establishes a "webmaster@" address at their site has implicitly solicited emails informing them of problems with their web site.
Back when we thought Usenet could be saved, the spam-cancellers experimented with a 1-week moratorium on cancelling spam. Usenet was brought to its knees under the resulting spam load, and many servers simply crashed. It would be interesting to see what would happen if all the blocking services had a one-week moratorium today. I'd like to see the sys admins participate too, but their users would probably not stand for it.
As for e360 being spammers, there's really no question about that. A simple Google Groups search of news.admin.net-abuse.sightings turns up plenty of evidence of e360 spam being sent to spamtraps, role accounts, and other email addresses known with absolute certainty to never have opted in to anything.
It's not the judge's job to do the defendant's lawyer's job for them. If one party in a lawsuit doesn't show up, the other side wins. End of story, full stop.
The judge may know full well (and probably does) that e360 are lying weasels, but the bottom line is that Spamhaus didn't show up.
We don't know for a fact that the accusations were unwarranted. All we know is that the defendant couldn't afford to defend herself in court and the plaintiff got a default judgement. This is the Spamhaus case all over again.
When Spamhaus bothers to defend themselves, the spammers tend to get stomped on badly once the judge realizes what the case is about.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. Spamhaus was sued by spammers previously in 2003. Spamhaus won. The court did not punish the spammers in any way. Even when you win a lawsuit, you're still out legal costs, which can be unbelievable, especially if discovery is involved.
I was sued by a spammer last year, and just arguing jurisdiction alone (I won) cost me tens of thousands of dollars. The judge did *nothing* to the spammer who wasted its time and my money.
This is the spammer tactic. They have no chance of winning on the merits; instead, they hope to bankrupt the anti-spam movement. Spamming pays well, and spam-fighting is a mostly volunteer effort. The spammers can afford to bring one frivolous lawsuit after another against us and the courts let them do it. Eventually the spammers will wear us down and then destroy email they way they destroyed usenet.
Not allowing proprietary drivers to use Linux is a huge mistake, and imho contrary to the philosophy of free software.
Stallman says that the 0th law of free computing is that I own my computer. And he's right. I *do* own my computer, and I own my video card as well. If using a proprietary driver is the only way to use my video card on my computer, then who are the Linux community to tell me I can't? Or to even make it harder for me?
The fact is that Linux's hostility to third-party drivers -- even open ones -- is a huge detriment to the operating system.
Linux should take a lesson from Solaris and establish a standard interface which allows anybody to write a driver, open or not, and have it be binary-compatible with the operating system. Under Solaris, it was possible to create a single binary driver and have it run unchanged under Solaris 7, 8, 9, and 10. My understanding is that Linux deliberately cripples binary driver compatibility just to make it harder for anybody to ship pre-compiled drivers. That's the behavior I'd expect from a cell phone company, not an open operating system.
Also, for the record, I've written video drivers for ATI cards for a living (Solaris). They're insanely complicated; with literally thousands of registers. Reverse-engineering would never reveal the full complexity of the hardware.
As for documentation, the documentation I've worked with (from more than just one video chip vendor) is almost always woefully incomplete. It doesn't work to "just release it"; it really does involve a lot of cleanup or phone support with the people trying to develop software. Remember that the documentation is written by and for people who can just get up and walk down the hall if they have a question. Once you start supporting third-party developers, it can be a nightmare.
Centos could use a lesson in customer relations. Their first response was "I feel sorry for your city". *Not* getting things off on the right foot. I've had to deal with far bigger idiots over the phone on occasion, and this is not the way to deal with it.
"I'm sorry, sir, must've been a configuration error somewhere down the line. Have your IT people call me at this number and we'll work it out." Would have been much better. Then you and the IT people can have a nice laugh about it later.
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The radio station I once worked for used to have its 10,000 watt transmission cable shot out all the time. Bored hunters who can't find any game are extremely destructive. We probably averaged $5,000 - 10,000 per year repairing it.
I think a much better idea would be to modify the popular browsers to stop running animations on windows that are not visible to the user. Comnputers really do use more power when they have more to do, and running animations that nobody can see anyway is just a waste of power.
Whenever a window is completely obscured or minimized, the browser should pause all animated gifs, flash animations and even javascripts running in that window. This will save energy *and* make the user's system more responsive.
Also, older versions of netscape would halt animations if the user pressed the "Stop" button. Why did they take that feature away?
My prediction in zero jail time, and his assets are sufficiently hidden that he's fine-proof as well. He'll be given a substantial fine, but it will be suspended on the promise that he won't do it again. Then he'll do it again.
In 2000, Peacefire was hosted by ISP Media3, which also hosted of major spammers. That year, Media3 moved Peacefire into a new block of IP addresses which it knew was already listed in the MAPS RBL due to spamming. No reason was ever given for this move. Speculation was that this was either some sort of publicity stunt, or that Media3 was trying to use Peacefire as a sort of "human shield" to convince MAPS to drop the listing. That's when Haselton began complaining about censorship.
It was suggested that Haselton ask Media3 to move him back out of the block of IP addresses being listed. He refused. Haselton was offered free hosting at other ISPs which were not listed in the RBL. He refused. It almost seemed like he wanted to be listed in the RBL to make some sort of point.
More details can be found in the San Francisco Chronicle article Markets battle with e-mail activists over your inbox and Usenet threads The truth behind Peacefire/Media3, and Media3/Peacefire developments.
I have to agree. I solved more problems with one fight in the seventh grade than I ever did with a lifetime of turning the other cheek.
I was told sharply that 12 hours was "more than enough time" to respond to such an abuse complaint
I agree. There was ongoing crime on your network. You should have responded immediately. Running the abuse desk at a sizeable ISP is not a 9-5 job.
In broadcast radio, the FCC has a regulation: the owner of a transmitter is legally required to maintain control of that transmitter. If something goes wrong (power fluctuations, frequency drift, someone shouting obscenities into the mic), you're required to rectify the situation immediately, not sometime the next day during business hours. If you can't get the transmitter back under control within a reasonably short time, you must shut it down.
I think this is a good policy and should apply to the internet. Once notified that there was an ongoing crime on your network, your obligation was to make it stop or pull the plug. If you can't get in touch with the owner of that server, then walk to the racks and yank a cable. If you can't be bothered to do that, then don't complain if someone else takes emergency action.
Perhaps, but fewer of them would have been ripped off by the phish.
Also, one of the kee aspects of fighting spam is doing it quickly. A spammer only needs their site to stay on line for a day or two to make spamming profitable. If phish and other spammer sites were taken down immediately, spamming would be much less of a problem.
Not impossible at all. Store MD5(password) (or other secure hash) in the program. Have I missed anything?
Anti-spam laws don't come into it. The CAN-SPAM law preempts all state laws and makes almost all spam legal. In any event, spam isn't just something that's unsolicited. To be spam, it also has to be bulk. A single letter to a webmaster saying there's a problem with their site is not bulk.
And certainly I'd argue that anyone who establishes a "webmaster@" address at their site has implicitly solicited emails informing them of problems with their web site.
http://www.efalk.org/Miatascope
By spamhaus? I'm aware of no such incidents. Perhaps you'd like to give specifics.
Back when we thought Usenet could be saved, the spam-cancellers experimented with a 1-week moratorium on cancelling spam. Usenet was brought to its knees under the resulting spam load, and many servers simply crashed. It would be interesting to see what would happen if all the blocking services had a one-week moratorium today. I'd like to see the sys admins participate too, but their users would probably not stand for it.
As for e360 being spammers, there's really no question about that. A simple Google Groups search of news.admin.net-abuse.sightings turns up plenty of evidence of e360 spam being sent to spamtraps, role accounts, and other email addresses known with absolute certainty to never have opted in to anything.
How asinine can any judge get?
It's not the judge's job to do the defendant's lawyer's job for them. If one party in a lawsuit doesn't show up, the other side wins. End of story, full stop.
The judge may know full well (and probably does) that e360 are lying weasels, but the bottom line is that Spamhaus didn't show up.
We don't know for a fact that the accusations were unwarranted. All we know is that the defendant couldn't afford to defend herself in court and the plaintiff got a default judgement. This is the Spamhaus case all over again.
When Spamhaus bothers to defend themselves, the spammers tend to get stomped on badly once the judge realizes what the case is about.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. Spamhaus was sued by spammers previously in 2003. Spamhaus won. The court did not punish the spammers in any way. Even when you win a lawsuit, you're still out legal costs, which can be unbelievable, especially if discovery is involved.
I was sued by a spammer last year, and just arguing jurisdiction alone (I won) cost me tens of thousands of dollars. The judge did *nothing* to the spammer who wasted its time and my money.
This is the spammer tactic. They have no chance of winning on the merits; instead, they hope to bankrupt the anti-spam movement. Spamming pays well, and spam-fighting is a mostly volunteer effort. The spammers can afford to bring one frivolous lawsuit after another against us and the courts let them do it. Eventually the spammers will wear us down and then destroy email they way they destroyed usenet.
Not allowing proprietary drivers to use Linux is a huge mistake, and imho contrary to the philosophy of free software.
Stallman says that the 0th law of free computing is that I own my computer. And he's right. I *do* own my computer, and I own my video card as well. If using a proprietary driver is the only way to use my video card on my computer, then who are the Linux community to tell me I can't? Or to even make it harder for me?
The fact is that Linux's hostility to third-party drivers -- even open ones -- is a huge detriment to the operating system.
Linux should take a lesson from Solaris and establish a standard interface which allows anybody to write a driver, open or not, and have it be binary-compatible with the operating system. Under Solaris, it was possible to create a single binary driver and have it run unchanged under Solaris 7, 8, 9, and 10. My understanding is that Linux deliberately cripples binary driver compatibility just to make it harder for anybody to ship pre-compiled drivers. That's the behavior I'd expect from a cell phone company, not an open operating system.
Also, for the record, I've written video drivers for ATI cards for a living (Solaris). They're insanely complicated; with literally thousands of registers. Reverse-engineering would never reveal the full complexity of the hardware.
As for documentation, the documentation I've worked with (from more than just one video chip vendor) is almost always woefully incomplete. It doesn't work to "just release it"; it really does involve a lot of cleanup or phone support with the people trying to develop software. Remember that the documentation is written by and for people who can just get up and walk down the hall if they have a question. Once you start supporting third-party developers, it can be a nightmare.
Centos could use a lesson in customer relations. Their first response was "I feel sorry for your city". *Not* getting things off on the right foot. I've had to deal with far bigger idiots over the phone on occasion, and this is not the way to deal with it.
"I'm sorry, sir, must've been a configuration error somewhere down the line. Have your IT people call me at this number and we'll work it out." Would have been much better. Then you and the IT people can have a nice laugh about it later.
It's called a Slapp lawsuit.