So I've had a Gmail account for the last few months, when the mother corp (Google) decides to give me 6 invites to ask others that I know to sign up. No sooner am I rid of them, I get 6 more - which are almost all gone. I point this out because even though I'm not compelled to invite others, I keep doing it - it's addictive, it's contagious. it's trendy.
First person to email me a request for one with the Subject "Gooosefraba" wins an invite.
Caught this juicy tidbit over on the Linux Ireland mailing list. An interesting read, given that I spent several minutes clearing out junk mail today. It's nice ot hear that sometimes the law catches up to people who have no regard for other people or respect for their time. Click on extended entry for the full blow-by-blow. btw - Gardai=cops in Ireland.
Personally, I think that the pay-to-send model for controlling spam is one of the best ones out there. This works by requiring the sending machine to compute a small algorithm, eating up a few seconds (say 10) of CPU time. No problem if you're only sending out a few emails. But if you're one of those slimeballs mass-emailing 50,000 people a day, well, the investment in number crunching computers would put you out of business (theoretically). This idea should work fine for the time being (ie. next 5-15 years) while computer CPUs are still taxed by such tasks. (Beyond that who can guesss).
Of course this would require a replacement to smtp, which would have to be massively implemented, so it won't likely ever come to fruition in that same time period. :(
Continue reading "Spammer Goes Down - Hard"
I really don't like Internet Explorer. Having switched to using Mozilla I really don't have the patience required for IE anymore. For those of you who've never heard about it, Mozilla is an open source browser that is, and I repeat, standards compliant. This means that when I write code for a page on my site, I know exactly how it will behave in all versions of Mozilla. This article sums the problem up best.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for IE. That is why I just spent the last hour or so resizing fonts and rewriting code to make IE stop cutting of letters in my entries. This was not a fun process, but I had heard enough feedback about it to make me invest the time.
Since 95% of computers come preinstalled with IE, M$ really has no compulsion to keep their browser up to date and bug free. If standards or convenience don't interest you, then perhaps the litany of computer bugs discovered on a routine basis in IE will.
Jack Kapica, in his usual right-on-the-mark fashion wrote an excellent article in the Globe today. From the article:
It might be wiser then to target the sellers as well as the spammers. While spammers are adept at hiding their identities, the drug pushers, anatomical enhancers and porn merchants have to have some point at which they can connect with the public, leaving themselves more vulnerable to law enforcement. Slapping merchants as well as their agents with fines could prove effective, too.I think hitting the advertisers is the ONLY way to stop spam dead. If the spammers have no customers I don't think they'll have much to spam over. Unfortunately this won't have a direct effect on the multitudes of virus infected *.com, *.scr, *.bat files that I get, but that is mostly the fault of my technologically-challenged friends not having antivirus software with updates.
