I couldn't agree more about "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History" is outrageously funny and can be had on both Amazon.com and Netflix.com. It ranks right up there with "Vernon, Florida" as one of my favorite documentaries of all time. As a side note, for any Python fans out there, the inspiration for the stuttering fish keeper "Ken" played by Michael Palin in the movie "A Fish Called Wanda" was almost certainly a pet store owner from "Cane Toads". He also stuttered and stammered as he told how those Cane Toad bastages were killing his prized gold fish.
Having known Tim Roberts and his twin brother Peter since they were suburbian teenagers growing up in West St. Louis County, I can tell you that this console will never happen. (His twin brother Peter died of a drug overdose several years ago). I shouldn't say that it will never happen - that's just my opinion - because there's always the possibility that Tim will somehow manage to sell the company to someone that will ultimately deliver.
Do some searching on Tim and you'll find that he's started a whole host of companies where investers were coralled and then the money was spent in lavish style. See DBN and Savvis Communications. These companies were sold off early on, and after Tim bowed out, one did rather well. Savvis continues to this day. But as far as I can tell, Tim only excels in bullshitting investors into opening their wallets, then spending and spending and bullshitting some more.
Do some more searching and you'll find whole web pages devoted to exposing either Tim or his Phantom console as a hoax, scam, pump n' dump scheme etc. Some of them are really entertaining to read through.
(I knew Tim when he was teenage phone phreak trafficing in Commodore 64 games over a 300 baud... then the screaming fast 1200 baud Hayes modem. Anyone C64 people remember the "Wacko Cracko Brothers"? Hehe. Name that year.)
I think it might be helpful for you to go back and read up on what Blue Frog was initially about. Their FAQ is undoubtedly cached somewhere. Many of the people posting here -- and nearly all of the media in past weeks -- have missed the point entirely. Because of the deliciously newsworthy "angle" of using spam vs. spam, most reporters have molded Frog to fit that news story, but not to represent what it actually was.
Blue Frog didn't automatically focus on every Spam that was submitted. It focused on the ones where it could do the most good. To be specfic, the developers would identify Spam that had been submitted to the most Frog members and originating from Spam networks that were not in compliance with the Blue Frog opt-out list.
Then the developers would visit the page and develop a script/bot that would submit opt-out requests using the E-Commerce or "For More Information" forms on the website.
Give this, I think it's pretty unlikely that someone would get hit by accident, dont you agree? Frog was never a completely automatic process. It required intervention and that's a good thing.
Blue Frog won because it was systematically beating the big spammers into submission, one spammer at a time.
But how is it bad data? We can't reply to the email to opt-out because they've forged it. We use the opt-out function on their website and it's invariably broken or results in us getting more spam.
All we're doing is exercising our "right" to opt-out as we've been promised by the spammer that we can do.
They exercising their right to advertise - which as a side affect fills our Inboxes with crap and annoys the living sh*t out of us. We're exercising our right to opt-out which seems to be annoying the living sh*t out of them. All they have to do is **LET US OPT OUT** and we stop annoying the living sh*t out of them.
It's a perfect pairing.
Incidentally, having worked on a net team recovering from a DDOS from several thousand zombies sending unbelievable numbers of packets a second, I think there's a huge difference between what Blue Frog or Black Frog or Ok-Ok-I-pee-pee proposes to do. But I do see your point.
Black Frog. Easy to remember. Ominous sounding. Appropriate because it's the next generation of Jedi. The Darth Vader to Blue Frog's Blue.
Okopipi is less appropriate because no one knows how to pronounce it. Pronounced correctly, it may end up sounding like 'Ok-Ok I pee-pee!' - which is bad for everyone.
Worse still, it's obscure and spelled oddly and consequently most people are going to mistake it for the name of a new Linux Distro.
Blue Frog was NOT effective not as a denial of service attack or distributed denial of service attack. It was never meant or designed to be. The Russian spammer said it himself - they never brought down our servers, they only served as "a daily nuisance". The nuisance was this: for every spam that the spammer sent to the some 500,000 Blue Frog members, an automated script (bot) visited the website advertised and filled out the form for snakeoil, home refinancing -- whatever was being hawked. But instead of filling it in with valid input from someone interested in what the website was hawking, it filled it in with a legitimate plea from a single person to Opt-out of being spammed further. With me so far?
The spammer -- or worse, the spammer's client -- in turn, goes to check on their database of people or leads to which they can hawk their snakeoil and generic viagra and low and behold, instead of being filled with legitimate contacts of people they can do business with -- it's filled with hundreds upon thousands of opt-out requests.
Undoubtedly there are real requests from potential business contacts in there. But first they have to filter out all the opt-out requests that Blue Frog has submitted.
Sound familiar? It sure does. It's what we've been putting up with for years. We open our Inbox and instead of seeing email from friends and business associates, we first have to sift through and filter a few gazillion pieces of spam -- each with "Hi How are you?" and "Important Account Information" fake titles. Only then can we get down to the email that's actually sent to us. It's a nuisance.
Blue Frog forced spammers to deal with the SAME NUISANCE they cause us. And the spammers didn't care for it too much. They don't care about opt-out requests, the Internet, what people think of them, possible prosecution --- all they care about is making money and they're making it by the truckload.
The fact that Blue Frog actually bothered them enough to use their botnets to attack is VERY encouraging. It means we've found a way to kick them in the ass and make it hurt.
Please don't compare Blue Frog or Black Frog to a DDOS or DOS. As the Russian Spammer demonstrated with his attack, what little network disturbance Blue or Black Frog causes for the spammer or spammer client server pales in comparison to a real attack. Mainly because it isn't meant to be an attack in the first place.
If Black Frog ends up with 1,000,000 subscribers, then lets talk DDOS.
Excuse me. Me neither Blue Frog, not Black Frog are a botnet -- at least in a sense that the bots are using their combined strength to somehow attack or interupt the normal business of a server or network. If you think this is the case, then you are misinformed -- which isn't your fault, because the press has largely gotten it wrong as well. Please read up.
RIAA - would you be so kind to let us know when your Salem Witch Trial has reached its conclusion?
I managed record stores all throughout college. I own 1200 CDs and half as many DVDs - many of which were purchased in several formats beforehand *sigh*: VHS, Laserdisc, record, Cassette Tape, 8-track track -- or worse, purchased again in the same format because they were scratched, melted, eaten by the dog etc. And now that I can back them up, store them digitially, listen to them on my laptop, my Ipod, or in my car -- basically do the things I am entitled to do when I pay $14.99 (and upwards) to purchase and own a product -- you seem to want to tell me "how" I can own these CDs. I don't understand. Fruit of the Loom isn't suing me over the condition of my underwear drawer.
If you are reading this, you should know that I personally, haven't purchased a single brand new CD since you had your pansy boys Metallica march up to the media to defend your honor. If I can't buy it directly from the artist or USED or grab it from some other source, then I do without. You're not getting a dime of my money that I haven't already given to you in the past. And besides, I have 1200 others to listen to. They are mine. I can listen to them on my Ipod, covert them to various media types, balance them on my nose... and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Understand? Go get stuffed.
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I couldn't agree more about "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History" is outrageously funny and can be had on both Amazon.com and Netflix.com. It ranks right up there with "Vernon, Florida" as one of my favorite documentaries of all time. As a side note, for any Python fans out there, the inspiration for the stuttering fish keeper "Ken" played by Michael Palin in the movie "A Fish Called Wanda" was almost certainly a pet store owner from "Cane Toads". He also stuttered and stammered as he told how those Cane Toad bastages were killing his prized gold fish.
Do some searching on Tim and you'll find that he's started a whole host of companies where investers were coralled and then the money was spent in lavish style. See DBN and Savvis Communications. These companies were sold off early on, and after Tim bowed out, one did rather well. Savvis continues to this day. But as far as I can tell, Tim only excels in bullshitting investors into opening their wallets, then spending and spending and bullshitting some more.
Do some more searching and you'll find whole web pages devoted to exposing either Tim or his Phantom console as a hoax, scam, pump n' dump scheme etc. Some of them are really entertaining to read through.
(I knew Tim when he was teenage phone phreak trafficing in Commodore 64 games over a 300 baud... then the screaming fast 1200 baud Hayes modem. Anyone C64 people remember the "Wacko Cracko Brothers"? Hehe. Name that year.)
I think it might be helpful for you to go back and read up on what Blue Frog was initially about. Their FAQ is undoubtedly cached somewhere. Many of the people posting here -- and nearly all of the media in past weeks -- have missed the point entirely. Because of the deliciously newsworthy "angle" of using spam vs. spam, most reporters have molded Frog to fit that news story, but not to represent what it actually was.
Blue Frog didn't automatically focus on every Spam that was submitted. It focused on the ones where it could do the most good. To be specfic, the developers would identify Spam that had been submitted to the most Frog members and originating from Spam networks that were not in compliance with the Blue Frog opt-out list.
Then the developers would visit the page and develop a script/bot that would submit opt-out requests using the E-Commerce or "For More Information" forms on the website.
Give this, I think it's pretty unlikely that someone would get hit by accident, dont you agree? Frog was never a completely automatic process. It required intervention and that's a good thing.
Blue Frog won because it was systematically beating the big spammers into submission, one spammer at a time.
But how is it bad data? We can't reply to the email to opt-out because they've forged it. We use the opt-out function on their website and it's invariably broken or results in us getting more spam.
All we're doing is exercising our "right" to opt-out as we've been promised by the spammer that we can do.
They exercising their right to advertise - which as a side affect fills our Inboxes with crap and annoys the living sh*t out of us. We're exercising our right to opt-out which seems to be annoying the living sh*t out of them. All they have to do is **LET US OPT OUT** and we stop annoying the living sh*t out of them.
It's a perfect pairing.
Incidentally, having worked on a net team recovering from a DDOS from several thousand zombies sending unbelievable numbers of packets a second, I think there's a huge difference between what Blue Frog or Black Frog or Ok-Ok-I-pee-pee proposes to do. But I do see your point.
Black Frog. Easy to remember. Ominous sounding. Appropriate because it's the next generation of Jedi. The Darth Vader to Blue Frog's Blue.
Okopipi is less appropriate because no one knows how to pronounce it. Pronounced correctly, it may end up sounding like 'Ok-Ok I pee-pee!' - which is bad for everyone.
Worse still, it's obscure and spelled oddly and consequently most people are going to mistake it for the name of a new Linux Distro.
Ok folks, let get a few things straight.
Blue Frog was NOT effective not as a denial of service attack or distributed denial of service attack. It was never meant or designed to be. The Russian spammer said it himself - they never brought down our servers, they only served as "a daily nuisance". The nuisance was this: for every spam that the spammer sent to the some 500,000 Blue Frog members, an automated script (bot) visited the website advertised and filled out the form for snakeoil, home refinancing -- whatever was being hawked. But instead of filling it in with valid input from someone interested in what the website was hawking, it filled it in with a legitimate plea from a single person to Opt-out of being spammed further. With me so far?
The spammer -- or worse, the spammer's client -- in turn, goes to check on their database of people or leads to which they can hawk their snakeoil and generic viagra and low and behold, instead of being filled with legitimate contacts of people they can do business with -- it's filled with hundreds upon thousands of opt-out requests.
Undoubtedly there are real requests from potential business contacts in there. But first they have to filter out all the opt-out requests that Blue Frog has submitted.
Sound familiar? It sure does. It's what we've been putting up with for years. We open our Inbox and instead of seeing email from friends and business associates, we first have to sift through and filter a few gazillion pieces of spam -- each with "Hi How are you?" and "Important Account Information" fake titles. Only then can we get down to the email that's actually sent to us. It's a nuisance.
Blue Frog forced spammers to deal with the SAME NUISANCE they cause us. And the spammers didn't care for it too much. They don't care about opt-out requests, the Internet, what people think of them, possible prosecution --- all they care about is making money and they're making it by the truckload. The fact that Blue Frog actually bothered them enough to use their botnets to attack is VERY encouraging. It means we've found a way to kick them in the ass and make it hurt.
Please don't compare Blue Frog or Black Frog to a DDOS or DOS. As the Russian Spammer demonstrated with his attack, what little network disturbance Blue or Black Frog causes for the spammer or spammer client server pales in comparison to a real attack. Mainly because it isn't meant to be an attack in the first place.
If Black Frog ends up with 1,000,000 subscribers, then lets talk DDOS.
Excuse me. Me neither Blue Frog, not Black Frog are a botnet -- at least in a sense that the bots are using their combined strength to somehow attack or interupt the normal business of a server or network. If you think this is the case, then you are misinformed -- which isn't your fault, because the press has largely gotten it wrong as well. Please read up.
RIAA - would you be so kind to let us know when your Salem Witch Trial has reached its conclusion? I managed record stores all throughout college. I own 1200 CDs and half as many DVDs - many of which were purchased in several formats beforehand *sigh*: VHS, Laserdisc, record, Cassette Tape, 8-track track -- or worse, purchased again in the same format because they were scratched, melted, eaten by the dog etc. And now that I can back them up, store them digitially, listen to them on my laptop, my Ipod, or in my car -- basically do the things I am entitled to do when I pay $14.99 (and upwards) to purchase and own a product -- you seem to want to tell me "how" I can own these CDs. I don't understand. Fruit of the Loom isn't suing me over the condition of my underwear drawer. If you are reading this, you should know that I personally, haven't purchased a single brand new CD since you had your pansy boys Metallica march up to the media to defend your honor. If I can't buy it directly from the artist or USED or grab it from some other source, then I do without. You're not getting a dime of my money that I haven't already given to you in the past. And besides, I have 1200 others to listen to. They are mine. I can listen to them on my Ipod, covert them to various media types, balance them on my nose... and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Understand? Go get stuffed.