Comments on: Bloody Vikings

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 19:28:51 +0000

Since this post is now getting spammed to hell, I’m closing comments on it

By: Phelps

Phelps — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 20:17:42 +0000

It’s not nonsense, it’s reality. Look at the War on (some) Drugs. We spend tons of money fighting people who are making a ton of money to deliver a product that (stupid) people pay great gobs of money for.

And we have totally failed to have any effect on it.

Spam is going to go the same way. If we could get people to stop buying from spammers, then spam would go away. While there is still a ton of money to be made, spammers will continue to come up with ways to get around whatever technology we come up with. Any technology that the same people who are buying from the spam buyers to handle will be simple enough for the spammers to subvert.

By: Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Teresa Nielsen Hayden — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:28:51 +0000

Nonsense, Phelps. We don’t deal with theft by getting rid of all our possessions. We don’t deal with drunk drivers by ceasing to drive.

We’re looking at a situation where a relatively small number of malfeasants are grossly abusing a public resource. It seems absurd to me that we don’t go after them more aggressively.

Yes, they can spoof their addresses and hide behind false domain names, but they’re spamming for money; and where they make contact with that money, they’re grounded.

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:56:35 +0000

Rid the world of stupidity, selfishness, and lust? Sounds like we’re back to nuking Florida again.

Nuke the whole state from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

By: Phelps

Phelps — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:53:43 +0000

To get rid of spammers, you would have to remove the incentive. You would have to get people to stop buying from spammers. Right now, about 20% of the internet population has bought from spammers, and the number is going up. They do it because they are stupid, selfish, and horny.

If you want to get rid of spam, you will have to rid the world of stupidity, selfishness, and lust. Good luck.

By: Serdar

Serdar — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:35:47 +0000

My current tactic is twofold:

1) My ISP has a spam filter, which is enabled and blocks the most obvious spam immediately.
2) Outlook’s junk mail controls are turned on. It works surprisingly well; I’ve not had a false positive in a long time.

My blog is approval-only, and MT has some stuff that makes it all the easier to filter in the legit stuff.

But I do agree that cracking down on the senders and making it highly impractical for them to use email like this will help. It will still only be one of the many ways this nonsense will be stopped, though.

I don’t think people are going to ditch email as we know it and move to something new when what they have is still even marginally functional.

By: Michael Orton

Michael Orton — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:17:16 +0000

Maybe we need to use a network of small private mail servers which only accept mail from trusted sources to build an alternative email system. Suppose the sender of a mail has to know where a mail-server is and contact it by SSL before depositing email which will only be accepted if it is to someone that server knows and the title line has an agreed keyword.

Yes, it would be a pain, but it would be secure.