I think Howard Dean just proved that three years ago, the media was still stronger than the blogosphere. He may have had the blogger's support, but after his "yippee" (or whatever) was mocked constantly on the news channels, etc. he was basically defeated.
Cute story, but that's not the way I remember it.
The way I remember it, by the end of 2003, the mainstream media had already anointed him the 2004 Democratic nominee. He had raised more money than his competitors, he had more superdelegates than his competitors, and more high-profile endorsements than his competitors (Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Bill Bradley, etc., and many celebrities, for whatever they're worth).
Going into Iowa, Dean was the strong frontrunner, and what happened in Iowa?
John Kerry 37.6% John Edwards 31.8% Howard Dean 18.0%
That happened. He got his arse handed to him, and his consolation speech congratulating John Kerry was that unstatesmanlike, obnoxious, and petty "Scream Speech" that you refer to.
My point? Despite being the frontrunner, Dean couldn't manage better than a 3rd place showing in Iowa and a distant, also-ran 3rd place at that. The Scream speech did not cause his defeat--he hadn't yet delivered it.
Of course, after that shameful showing in Iowa and reacting to it like a 2 year old, he was pretty much done in '04.
The correct procedure in this instance is to mail the traffic court and ask for a hearing, call the Department of Transportation and ask for a copy of the report for the malfunctioning traffic signal, send it to the DA with an explanation, and hope that he drops the charge.
If he doesn't, show up for court and show the report to the judge. There are no guarantees, but that should take care of the matter.
His "amazing discovery" is actually the whole point of sitekey.
You, sir, have forgotten who we're talking about here. Remember, this is boarding pass man.
The fact that you can trivially MITM SiteKey is just as obvious as the fact anyone with a 59 cent inkjet printer can trivially print out counterfeit boarding passes.
His point was not to say, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm so smart! I can defeat your security!" at all.
His point is to say, "Look at you! Look at you! You keep saying you're adding security measures, but you're not adding any real security! And I know nobody will listen to me without a proof of concept, so here it is!"
I've been back and forth about severing my relationship with Bank of America ever since they started charging me bogus fees. Sure, they correct them after I point them out, but it is a waste of my time.
This pushed me over the edge. The fact that they humiliated an innocent man like that and then refused to even help him clear his name afterwards is reprehensible.
I made my own greylisting implementation because none of the ones I found did exactly what I wanted.
Mine is time-based, not rejection count based. In other words, if your IP isn't whitelisted, I do some tests on your IP to see how long you have to wait to get through.
First, I try to do a reverse DNS lookup on your IP. No result means I don't like your IP.
Then, I look to see if I can find your IP address anywhere in the reverse-DNS result (indicating a dynamic IP). If I find it forwards or backwards, I don't like your IP.
Then I look to see if your IP is based in North America. If not, you guessed it. I don't like your IP.
Then, as a last resort, I run rblcheck on your IP to see if your IP is listed in their default set of RBLs (DUL, SC, etc.). Listed? Then I don't like your IP.
Ok, now that I know if I like your IP or not, I can determine how long you must sit on the greylist until I let you through. If I like your IP, you have to wait 10 seconds (you can retry 1000 times, but you won't get through until 10 seconds have elapsed).
On the other hand, if I do not like your IP, then you have to wait 60 minutes. Again, you can retry as many times as you want during those 60 minutes, but you won't get through until 60 minutes have gone by. This way, the RBLs have 60 minutes to get your IP onto their lists if you're a spammer, and then SpamAssassin makes quick work of your email if you are spamming.
I think greylisting is a great tool, but only if you use it properly.
I agree, and was pondering how to exploit that fact. I couldn't think of a good answer, so I decided to just let the Bayesian classifier figure it out for me.
I use a routine that can quickly determine the origin country of an IP address and just insert that origin country into the headers of the message in an X- header. Then, it's just one more thing for the Bayesian classifier to decide what to do with. It realizes that I don't get much ham from Latvia, so when it sees X-Origin-Country: Latvia, that spam probability goes through the roof.
I thought your question was intriguing, so I composed the following message: Subject: Interesting phenomon related to Viagra use
Hi, Dr. Smith-
I just wanted to write you to let you know that I really enjoyed the article you wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about the side effects of Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra. It turns out a patient of mine experienced debilitating nausea while on Levitra, so I prescribed Viagra in its place, as you recommend.
In addition, I thought you might be interested to know that this patient suffers from Raynaud's disease, and he reported a 50% reduction in the frequency of his attacks after switching from Levitra to Viagra. Curious, I found an article in PubMed detailing this phenomenon and I thought I'd pass it along to you.
I hope your knee is healing up nicely, I'm sure you can't wait to get back on the tennis court.
Best Regards, Dr. Gerald Jones
Then, I sent it from my business email to my personal email, which is protected by SpamAssassin. The results were as follows:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,DRUGS_ERECTILE, HTML_MESSAGE autolearn=no version=3.1.7-deb
I knew that the email would likely be delivered because, at the very least, the AutoWhiteList would knock the score down based on the low scores of previous messages. What I found to be pretty remarkable was that the Bayesian classifier scored the email at a 0 despite my gratuitous use of erectile drug names both in the subject as well as the body.
Conclusion: The work done by the SpamAssissin folks is top-notch and should be recognized as such. Thank you SpamAssassin for making my email bearable.
let's say that a tenant gave you damage deposit when he moved in
First of all, that's the tenant's money, not mine. I can deduct from it for various legal reasons (rent, damage, etc.), but if there is no legal reason for me to deduct, that money must be refunded when the tenant leaves.
But sometime before his lease is up, he has an unexpected change in income he is not going to be able to pay the next month's rent. He's already paid for the current month's rent, and he moves out, notifying you and leaving the apartment vacant for a few days near the end of the month, which happens to be insufficient time for you to arrange to get another tenant.
While I can agree he may not be entitled to get any of his damage deposit back, what, exactly, does he really owe you?
Whatever the judge says he owes me when I sue his balls off.;)
Kidding, sort of.
Let's assume that he is in month 3, day 28 of a 12 month lease (so the lease doesn't sneak up and expire on us). Rent is $500/mo and he's paid $500 security.
He owes me:
Rent for every day until I can get another renter in there
Any damage he's caused
Any fees he's incurred (court fees, late fees, etc.)
Whatever reasonable costs I incur to rerent the unit
So, let's say he leaves so I don't have to evict him (no court costs), he hasn't done any damage (hey, he's a good person, just ran into a bump in the road), and he even cleans the unit for me, top to bottom (Landlord's fantasy, I know... but he's trying to minimize his expenses here). I put an ad in the local paper for $50 and get a new renter in there in 2 weeks.
He would then owe me (if there is no lease-termination fee):
$50 for the newspaper ad
$200 for 12 days' rent (he's already paid for 2 of the 14 days)
Whatever his late fee is (which I'd waive in a heartbeat if he actually cleaned my unit.)
So basically $250, which I would deduct from his security deposit and return the remaining $250. For being so responsible, the tenant would escape with no evictions on his record and no black marks on his credit. In fact, if this ever happened, I might even have a handyman help him move.
Of course, that is never how it happens. Here's how it works in the real world, unfortunately:
Tenant's rent is missing. I send Pay or Quit notice, along with a list of charities that help renters facing eviction.
Tenant asks if I can "work with them on the rent", to which I reply, "I'm sorry, I cannot do that, but did you get the list of charities that will work with you?"
As soon as PorQ timer expires, I file for eviction.
Tenant calls frantically and says, "Why did you file? I can pay you by next Monday." I say, "No problem. When you pay, I'll dismiss the eviction. Did you get the list of charities I sent you?"
Tenant doesn't pay next Monday, and further doesn't show up in court next Wed so loses by default.
I schedule eviction with the sheriff and notify tenant.
Tenant says, "Please don't evict. I can pay by next Monday." I say, "No problem. When you pay, I'll cancel the sheriff. Did you get the list of charities I sent you?"
Eviction day comes, tenant is long gone, there's some damage but mostly lots of garbage left in the unit.
I haul trash and repair unit
I rerent unit.
I total up everything the tenant owes me using the formula above, subtract whatever his security was, and sue for money judgment on the remainder
Tenant doesn't show up so I win by default and record the judgment and report to the credit bureaus.
5 years later the tenant tries to buy a car and the loan officer says, "Sorry. You've got to pay this old judgment or no loan for you."
Tenant calls me and offers me half of what he owes so he can buy more car than he can afford.
I say, "Pay in full if you want those wheels, my friend."
He pays in full.
As for me, I try to figure out what went wrong with this guy and adjust my rental application criteria to try to screen out for it the next go-around.
Sad. Well, next year you might try, "My parents asked that I attempt to qualify on my own. I can go back to them and ask if they'd be willing to cosign for another year, but every time I talk housing with them they encourage me to move.";) See if that gets this bozo's attention.
From your LL's perspective, he's currently got another party he can go after should you flake out and not pay rent, for whatever reason. They're not going to give it up if they don't think they have to. It's like a security blanket that helps us sleep at night.;)
(earning over 6x rental payment)
This should be sufficient for just about any landlord. I require 4x.
plus assets sufficient to pay 55 months of rent if I felt like it.
This is less important, since you could blow it all on a car or trip to Vegas tomorrow.;)
I'm renting in a town, metro area ~200,000, and there aren't many apartments this high quality.
You forgot to add "At this price".;)
At any rate, a thinly-veiled threat to move should take care of that cosigner issue next go-around.
Yeah, it does suck, I agree, but you do have an option: for a usurious premium, you can do a month-to-month lease.
Personally, I've never understood that. For reasons that you probably don't care about, m2m contracts are better for landlords. I only offer m2m for residential.
They said, basically, "sign the new lease, and then we'll tell you if they can be removed [due to sufficient credit on your own]."
Unfortunately, you were talking to a low-level leasing agent who gets a bonus when you renew and lacks the authority do what you requested. If you truly do qualify on your own, you can hunt down a real manager who can do it for you. On the flip side, it's more a matter of principle whether or not your parents are cosigning your lease. As long as you pay your rent, that is.;)
(the total dollar amount is always disclosed in California, for example "rent to be paid at so-and-so monthly for a total of $27,849 per year"). If you move out early and your agreement does not allow for breaking the contract at all, you're stuck until you pay every penny of that agreed-upon amount
I don't have any units in CA, but I really doubt that this is the case in sunny, tenant-friendly CA.
Let me tell you a few reasons why this is unlikely to be the case (I could look it up, but I don't really care enough to slog through CA code since I have no units there):
Every jurisdiction that I've ever heard of disallows this in residential leases. It's fine for commercial, but not residential. In residential, the landlord must mitigate the tenants damages by finding a replacement renter. The lease-breaking tenant is even free to help the landlord (I've had this happen and gotten quality tenants that way. It's a win win.) find someone.
$28k is way outside of small claims court land. Landlords only sue in SCC because it costs little money. In regular civil courts, you have high fees and you need a lawyer. And what would the landlord get for his effort and expense? A judge that says, "Yeah, lease breaker owes you $28k. Good luck collecting it, smarty-pants."
What if you move out early because you've had an unexpected change in income, and can no longer afford to live there?
Ever heard the expression "blood from a stone"?
You still owe your landlord, and your landlord can sue you.
Of course, your "blood from a stone" expression applies here more than ever. When I sue a tenant and win, all the judge can do is say the tenant owes me money. I still have to figure out how to collect that money.
My strategy is as follows: over the years I've learned to take steps to get insolvent tenants out of their leases as quickly as possible so that they don't owe me much money. It sounds heartless when you put it that way, but really it's a win-win. This way they don't owe me too much money (I'm happy), and they are then free to go find a different apartment that they can afford (they're happy).
Typically, I will sue them anyway and record the judgment. I realize that they aren't going to pay me now because they can't, but many people get back on their feet and do pay eventually. We're generally not talking huge sums of money, 'cuz I work quickly in the beginning to minimize their liability.
I think you will find many rent contracts have no break clauses whereby you are liable for the full term of the contract should you decide to leave early.
I know that a lot of leases say that, but most states have laws that disallow clauses like that in residential leases. They're ok in commercial leases, though.
In most jurisdictions, you will owe for your residential lease until the landlord is able to get a replacement tenant. You will owe rent and rerental costs (advertising, etc. Whatever the landlord has to spend to get another tenant, within reason). The landlord is required to make a reasonable effort to replace you to mitigate your damages.
Yea, I used to be a big pusher for people's rights not getting trampled. But after becoming so disillusioned in those years, then my stint in the Army, and current political happenings, it's enough that I'm willing to make/. posts.
Well, I have to say that if my daughter ever decides to pull a stunt like that, we're going to have to have a long talk about how proud I am of her for standing up for something she believes in like that.
But I do have to ask, would your tampons not fit into your backpacks?
I subscribe to both the Easy* lists and filterset.g. Adblock Plus lets you subscribe to more than one list.
I let the Easy* lists update automatically, and then every so often, I go in and manually correct the filterset.g link to the correct link (why can't they just make a symlink?)
Slashdot Mirror
The way I remember it, by the end of 2003, the mainstream media had already anointed him the 2004 Democratic nominee. He had raised more money than his competitors, he had more superdelegates than his competitors, and more high-profile endorsements than his competitors (Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Bill Bradley, etc., and many celebrities, for whatever they're worth).
Going into Iowa, Dean was the strong frontrunner, and what happened in Iowa? That happened. He got his arse handed to him, and his consolation speech congratulating John Kerry was that unstatesmanlike, obnoxious, and petty "Scream Speech" that you refer to.
My point? Despite being the frontrunner, Dean couldn't manage better than a 3rd place showing in Iowa and a distant, also-ran 3rd place at that. The Scream speech did not cause his defeat--he hadn't yet delivered it.
Of course, after that shameful showing in Iowa and reacting to it like a 2 year old, he was pretty much done in '04.
Way to stick it to the man.
Just ask Howard Dean how much influence the "left-wing blogosphere" wields in terms of getting their darling elected.
The correct procedure in this instance is to mail the traffic court and ask for a hearing, call the Department of Transportation and ask for a copy of the report for the malfunctioning traffic signal, send it to the DA with an explanation, and hope that he drops the charge.
If he doesn't, show up for court and show the report to the judge. There are no guarantees, but that should take care of the matter.
Do you really think that the cop can tell what color your skin is when you are flying by him at 90 mph?
The fact that you can trivially MITM SiteKey is just as obvious as the fact anyone with a 59 cent inkjet printer can trivially print out counterfeit boarding passes.
His point was not to say, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm so smart! I can defeat your security!" at all.
His point is to say, "Look at you! Look at you! You keep saying you're adding security measures, but you're not adding any real security! And I know nobody will listen to me without a proof of concept, so here it is!"
I've been back and forth about severing my relationship with Bank of America ever since they started charging me bogus fees. Sure, they correct them after I point them out, but it is a waste of my time.
This pushed me over the edge. The fact that they humiliated an innocent man like that and then refused to even help him clear his name afterwards is reprehensible.
I am finished banking at Bank of America.
I made my own greylisting implementation because none of the ones I found did exactly what I wanted.
Mine is time-based, not rejection count based. In other words, if your IP isn't whitelisted, I do some tests on your IP to see how long you have to wait to get through.
First, I try to do a reverse DNS lookup on your IP. No result means I don't like your IP.
Then, I look to see if I can find your IP address anywhere in the reverse-DNS result (indicating a dynamic IP). If I find it forwards or backwards, I don't like your IP.
Then I look to see if your IP is based in North America. If not, you guessed it. I don't like your IP.
Then, as a last resort, I run rblcheck on your IP to see if your IP is listed in their default set of RBLs (DUL, SC, etc.). Listed? Then I don't like your IP.
Ok, now that I know if I like your IP or not, I can determine how long you must sit on the greylist until I let you through. If I like your IP, you have to wait 10 seconds (you can retry 1000 times, but you won't get through until 10 seconds have elapsed).
On the other hand, if I do not like your IP, then you have to wait 60 minutes. Again, you can retry as many times as you want during those 60 minutes, but you won't get through until 60 minutes have gone by. This way, the RBLs have 60 minutes to get your IP onto their lists if you're a spammer, and then SpamAssassin makes quick work of your email if you are spamming.
I think greylisting is a great tool, but only if you use it properly.
I agree, and was pondering how to exploit that fact. I couldn't think of a good answer, so I decided to just let the Bayesian classifier figure it out for me.
I use a routine that can quickly determine the origin country of an IP address and just insert that origin country into the headers of the message in an X- header. Then, it's just one more thing for the Bayesian classifier to decide what to do with. It realizes that I don't get much ham from Latvia, so when it sees X-Origin-Country: Latvia, that spam probability goes through the roof.
I use both, and I have to say that greylisting catches a metric boatload of spam. On the other hand, spammers have wised up and many are now retrying.
Sure does take a lot of load off of spamassassin, though.
Subject: Interesting phenomon related to Viagra use
Hi, Dr. Smith-
I just wanted to write you to let you know that I really enjoyed the article you wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about the side effects of Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra. It turns out a patient of mine experienced debilitating nausea while on Levitra, so I prescribed Viagra in its place, as you recommend.
In addition, I thought you might be interested to know that this patient suffers from Raynaud's disease, and he reported a 50% reduction in the frequency of his attacks after switching from Levitra to Viagra. Curious, I found an article in PubMed detailing this phenomenon and I thought I'd pass it along to you.
I hope your knee is healing up nicely, I'm sure you can't wait to get back on the tennis court.
Best Regards,
Dr. Gerald Jones
Then, I sent it from my business email to my personal email, which is protected by SpamAssassin. The results were as follows: I knew that the email would likely be delivered because, at the very least, the AutoWhiteList would knock the score down based on the low scores of previous messages. What I found to be pretty remarkable was that the Bayesian classifier scored the email at a 0 despite my gratuitous use of erectile drug names both in the subject as well as the body.
Conclusion: The work done by the SpamAssissin folks is top-notch and should be recognized as such. Thank you SpamAssassin for making my email bearable.
Well, your landlord is behaving irrationally. Not sure what else we can say about him.
;)
Anyhow, if you ever move out to the east coast, look me up. I'd rent to you.
Kidding, sort of.
Let's assume that he is in month 3, day 28 of a 12 month lease (so the lease doesn't sneak up and expire on us). Rent is $500/mo and he's paid $500 security.
He owes me:
So, let's say he leaves so I don't have to evict him (no court costs), he hasn't done any damage (hey, he's a good person, just ran into a bump in the road), and he even cleans the unit for me, top to bottom (Landlord's fantasy, I know... but he's trying to minimize his expenses here). I put an ad in the local paper for $50 and get a new renter in there in 2 weeks.
He would then owe me (if there is no lease-termination fee):
- $50 for the newspaper ad
- $200 for 12 days' rent (he's already paid for 2 of the 14 days)
- Whatever his late fee is (which I'd waive in a heartbeat if he actually cleaned my unit.)
So basically $250, which I would deduct from his security deposit and return the remaining $250. For being so responsible, the tenant would escape with no evictions on his record and no black marks on his credit. In fact, if this ever happened, I might even have a handyman help him move.Of course, that is never how it happens. Here's how it works in the real world, unfortunately:
- Tenant's rent is missing. I send Pay or Quit notice, along with a list of charities that help renters facing eviction.
- Tenant asks if I can "work with them on the rent", to which I reply, "I'm sorry, I cannot do that, but did you get the list of charities that will work with you?"
- As soon as PorQ timer expires, I file for eviction.
- Tenant calls frantically and says, "Why did you file? I can pay you by next Monday." I say, "No problem. When you pay, I'll dismiss the eviction. Did you get the list of charities I sent you?"
- Tenant doesn't pay next Monday, and further doesn't show up in court next Wed so loses by default.
- I schedule eviction with the sheriff and notify tenant.
- Tenant says, "Please don't evict. I can pay by next Monday." I say, "No problem. When you pay, I'll cancel the sheriff. Did you get the list of charities I sent you?"
- Eviction day comes, tenant is long gone, there's some damage but mostly lots of garbage left in the unit.
- I haul trash and repair unit
- I rerent unit.
- I total up everything the tenant owes me using the formula above, subtract whatever his security was, and sue for money judgment on the remainder
- Tenant doesn't show up so I win by default and record the judgment and report to the credit bureaus.
- 5 years later the tenant tries to buy a car and the loan officer says, "Sorry. You've got to pay this old judgment or no loan for you."
- Tenant calls me and offers me half of what he owes so he can buy more car than he can afford.
- I say, "Pay in full if you want those wheels, my friend."
- He pays in full.
As for me, I try to figure out what went wrong with this guy and adjust my rental application criteria to try to screen out for it the next go-around.From your LL's perspective, he's currently got another party he can go after should you flake out and not pay rent, for whatever reason. They're not going to give it up if they don't think they have to. It's like a security blanket that helps us sleep at night.
At any rate, a thinly-veiled threat to move should take care of that cosigner issue next go-around.
Good luck!
Nice work. I didn't think any company would have that type of gall.
Of course, I thnk they would have some difficulty collecting on that type of fee.
Let me tell you a few reasons why this is unlikely to be the case (I could look it up, but I don't really care enough to slog through CA code since I have no units there):
Of course, your "blood from a stone" expression applies here more than ever. When I sue a tenant and win, all the judge can do is say the tenant owes me money. I still have to figure out how to collect that money.
My strategy is as follows: over the years I've learned to take steps to get insolvent tenants out of their leases as quickly as possible so that they don't owe me much money. It sounds heartless when you put it that way, but really it's a win-win. This way they don't owe me too much money (I'm happy), and they are then free to go find a different apartment that they can afford (they're happy).
Typically, I will sue them anyway and record the judgment. I realize that they aren't going to pay me now because they can't, but many people get back on their feet and do pay eventually. We're generally not talking huge sums of money, 'cuz I work quickly in the beginning to minimize their liability.
In most jurisdictions, you will owe for your residential lease until the landlord is able to get a replacement tenant. You will owe rent and rerental costs (advertising, etc. Whatever the landlord has to spend to get another tenant, within reason). The landlord is required to make a reasonable effort to replace you to mitigate your damages.
By moving out early, you most likely owe money (there are certain exceptions). If you don't pay what you owe, you can be sued.
Care to link to a contract that specifies an ISP can dump you for any reason and you also have to pay the termination fee?
I didn't think so.
But I do have to ask, would your tampons not fit into your backpacks?
I've been looking for a good solution to the image spam problem, but this is not it.
I subscribe to both the Easy* lists and filterset.g. Adblock Plus lets you subscribe to more than one list.
I let the Easy* lists update automatically, and then every so often, I go in and manually correct the filterset.g link to the correct link (why can't they just make a symlink?)
To my ears, anyhow.