in 1195402 20050404 191802 "foggytown" wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote:
On 3 Apr 2005 13:10:06 -0700, Charlie Self
wrote:
Anyone have any insight--got a spam email offering low cost
software,
but the curious part, is that it was followed by "monkeying
hardware"
as part of the headline.

Is there some kind of reason for that, and other gibberish, that
these
halfwits spout?

They're trying to defeat bayesian filters by making the subject line
and message look less spammish. That's why some of the spam now has
excerpts of normal text at the end, or other techniques.

Death penalty for spammers. It's the best way.


And it's humane, too. Puts them out of their misery.

It's time for a new name. The spammers who fill my in-tray with offers
of wondrous things at least have the motive of personal gain. I can understand
and almost respect that. But the idiots who blitz a newsgroup with thousands
of rubbish posts are something quite different and should have their own label
(but I can't think of anything appropriate).

On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 18:37:31 GMT, Bob Martin wrote:

It's time for a new name. The spammers who fill my in-tray with offers
of wondrous things at least have the motive of personal gain. I can understand
and almost respect that.

Hm. I put them in the same category as spyware advertisers, virus
writers, and microsoft developers. But I repeat myself.

But the idiots who blitz a newsgroup with thousands
of rubbish posts are something quite different and should have their own label
(but I can't think of anything appropriate).

Far as I know, it falls under "trolls" - a person who disrupts a group in
an effort to make it unusable and/or to get attention.

In article ,
Bob Martin wrote:

in 1195402 20050404 191802 "foggytown" wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote:
On 3 Apr 2005 13:10:06 -0700, Charlie Self
wrote:
Anyone have any insight--got a spam email offering low cost
software,
but the curious part, is that it was followed by "monkeying
hardware"
as part of the headline.

Is there some kind of reason for that, and other gibberish, that
these
halfwits spout?

They're trying to defeat bayesian filters by making the subject line
and message look less spammish. That's why some of the spam now has
excerpts of normal text at the end, or other techniques.

Death penalty for spammers. It's the best way.


And it's humane, too. Puts them out of their misery.

It's time for a new name. The spammers who fill my in-tray with offers
of wondrous things at least have the motive of personal gain. I can understand
and almost respect that. But the idiots who blitz a newsgroup with thousands
of rubbish posts are something quite different and should have their own label
(but I can't think of anything appropriate).



Those who do it think they're a wit. they're half right. grin

In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

Path:
sn-us!sn-xit-12!sn-xit-09!sn-xit-13!supernews.com!freenix!proxad.net!news.tele
.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!
not-for-mail
From: Dave Hinz
Newsgroups: rec.woodworking
Subject: OT Inside spammers' heads?
Date: 4 Apr 2005 19:09:06 GMT
Organization: cis.dfn.de

Dave, you always been posting through Germany? Never noticed before.
--
Owen Lowe
The Fly-by-Night Copper Company
____

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
Corporate States of America and to the
Republicans for which it stands, one nation,
under debt, easily divisible, with liberty
and justice for oil."
- Wiley Miller, Non Sequitur, 1/24/05

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:30:14 -0700, Fly-by-Night CC wrote:
In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

Path:
sn-us!sn-xit-12!sn-xit-09!sn-xit-13!supernews.com!freenix!proxad.net!news.tele
.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!
not-for-mail
From: Dave Hinz
Newsgroups: rec.woodworking
Subject: OT Inside spammers' heads?
Date: 4 Apr 2005 19:09:06 GMT
Organization: cis.dfn.de

Dave, you always been posting through Germany? Never noticed before.

Couple of years, since I got away from dial-up at home. I'm actually logged
into one of my servers in Milwaukee, but use the news.individual.net
newsserver.

Um, why do you ask?

Dave

Dave Hinz notes:
Hm. I put them in the same category as spyware advertisers, virus
writers, and microsoft developers. But I repeat myself.

I got a letter this morning from a woman writer in India, offering me,
as editor (which I am not), her production. At 2 cents per word.

I don't know for sure it's spam, but I cannot imagine how she got my
name as an editor, unless she's grabbing lists from everywhere and
mailing off the same clip and resume to them all.

For the uninitiated, 2 cents a word in the U.S. is an insult. Half a
buck a word is barely enough to let you make a living. So now we have
some new spamming for outsourcing, of technology writing, at less than
5% of a sensible rate.

A wondrous thing. I think not. Of course, this time it gored my ox.

On 5 Apr 2005 07:42:12 -0700, Charlie Self wrote:
Dave Hinz notes:
Hm. I put them in the same category as spyware advertisers, virus
writers, and microsoft developers. But I repeat myself.

I got a letter this morning from a woman writer in India, offering me,
as editor (which I am not), her production. At 2 cents per word.

I don't know for sure it's spam, but I cannot imagine how she got my
name as an editor, unless she's grabbing lists from everywhere and
mailing off the same clip and resume to them all.

Well, if it's unsolicited, and commercial, and email, then that's
spammy enough for me. It might be _targeted_ spam, but what you
have there still seems like an oddly gelatinous pork-derived meat
extract product to me.

For the uninitiated, 2 cents a word in the U.S. is an insult. Half a
buck a word is barely enough to let you make a living. So now we have
some new spamming for outsourcing, of technology writing, at less than
5% of a sensible rate.

Isn't that wonderful.

A wondrous thing. I think not. Of course, this time it gored my ox.

spamcop.net has a good free spam reporting tool that non-members can
use; not only reports to the ISP, but to the upstream, and helps
to populate known spam account/domain lists. If nothing else, you can
use it to learn how to parse the headers to see which ones are
real, which are fake, and how to find out where it's really really from.

Dave

Charlie Self wrote:
I got a letter this morning from a woman writer in India, offering
me,
as editor (which I am not), her production. At 2 cents per word.

For the uninitiated, 2 cents a word in the U.S. is an insult. Half a
buck a word is barely enough to let you make a living. So now we have
some new spamming for outsourcing, of technology writing, at less
than
5% of a sensible rate.

A wondrous thing. I think not. Of course, this time it gored my ox.

Welcome to the new world order. Those stinking Indians are out to steal
all our jobs, and the coorporate leaders are smiling all the way to the
bank, as the USA gets raped.

Charlie Self wrote:
Dave Hinz notes:
Hm. I put them in the same category as spyware advertisers, virus
writers, and microsoft developers. But I repeat myself.

I got a letter this morning from a woman writer in India, offering
me,
as editor (which I am not), her production. At 2 cents per word.

I don't know for sure it's spam, but I cannot imagine how she got my
name as an editor, unless she's grabbing lists from everywhere and
mailing off the same clip and resume to them all.

Spamming is so cheap (for the spammer that is) that it makes little
economic sense for spammers to narrowly target their spew.

The primary concern that spammers have when editing their lists
is to remove flamer, persons known to complain, especially if the
flamer's email address is on the spammers' host.

Want to know where your spam is coming from? Check out

http://www.spamhaus.org.

Check out the spammers hosted by Verizon and MCI.

News.admin.net-abuse.email is where spam, spammers, and anti-spam
get cussed and discussed.

--

FF

In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

Um, why do you ask?

Just curious. Do you live in Germany, WI or Timbuktu?
--
Owen Lowe
The Fly-by-Night Copper Company
____

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
Corporate States of America and to the
Republicans for which it stands, one nation,
under debt, easily divisible, with liberty
and justice for oil."
- Wiley Miller, Non Sequitur, 1/24/05

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:51:51 -0700, Fly-by-Night CC wrote:
In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

Um, why do you ask?

Just curious. Do you live in Germany, WI or Timbuktu?

WI. I just subscribe to the German server because I'm kind of my own ISP,
and didn't want to pay for a supernews feed. I take an ala-carte approach
to connectivity - my DNS comes from one place, my email through another,
my bandwidth from a third, and my newsfeed from a fourth. Probably a
combination of factors - I tend to overcomplicate things for the hell of it,
but also I usually am not happy with the default options given. That, and
it's alot like my real job to put interesting/complex things together
and get them working.

Dave Hinz

In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

WI. I just subscribe to the German server because I'm kind of my own ISP,
and didn't want to pay for a supernews feed. I take an ala-carte approach
to connectivity - my DNS comes from one place, my email through another,
my bandwidth from a third, and my newsfeed from a fourth. Probably a
combination of factors - I tend to overcomplicate things for the hell of it,
but also I usually am not happy with the default options given. That, and
it's alot like my real job to put interesting/complex things together
and get them working.

Really livin' life on the edge there, huh Dave?

Though who am I to poke fun - I had enough trouble just getting my two
machines talk to each other over a simple ethernet crossover cable.
--
Owen Lowe
The Fly-by-Night Copper Company
____

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
Corporate States of America and to the
Republicans for which it stands, one nation,
under debt, easily divisible, with liberty
and justice for oil."
- Wiley Miller, Non Sequitur, 1/24/05

Dave Hinz wrote:

WI. I just subscribe to the German server because I'm kind of my own ISP,
and didn't want to pay for a supernews feed. I take an ala-carte approach
to connectivity - my DNS comes from one place, my email through another,
my bandwidth from a third, and my newsfeed from a fourth. Probably a

That is one nice set-up, Dave. I don't like my bandwidth providor much,
don't use their email services and their DNS used to drop all the time,
though they seem to have improved this. Actually their newsfeed
(Giganews) is pretty good, though the max of 2 connections is a PITA,
especially since it tends to be pretty agressive on "remembering"
connections you have abandoned. Now how did I get that carried away on
that topic?

I tend to overcomplicate things for the hell of it,

ROFLMAO!!! Now *that* is something I understand well....

PK

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 23:11:46 -0700, Fly-by-Night CC wrote:
In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

WI. I just subscribe to the German server because I'm kind of my own ISP,
and didn't want to pay for a supernews feed. I take an ala-carte approach
to connectivity - my DNS comes from one place, my email through another,
my bandwidth from a third, and my newsfeed from a fourth. Probably a
combination of factors - I tend to overcomplicate things for the hell of it,
but also I usually am not happy with the default options given. That, and
it's alot like my real job to put interesting/complex things together
and get them working.

Really livin' life on the edge there, huh Dave?

Something like that. Beats just putting up with the crap newsfeed my previous
ISP had.

Though who am I to poke fun - I had enough trouble just getting my two
machines talk to each other over a simple ethernet crossover cable.

I work for beer...(good beer)...

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 09:41:30 -0400, Paul Kierstead wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote:

WI. I just subscribe to the German server because I'm kind of my own ISP,
and didn't want to pay for a supernews feed. I take an ala-carte approach
to connectivity - my DNS comes from one place, my email through another,
my bandwidth from a third, and my newsfeed from a fourth. Probably a

That is one nice set-up, Dave. I don't like my bandwidth providor much,
don't use their email services and their DNS used to drop all the time,

Does the name sound at all like "voyager.net" by any chance?

though they seem to have improved this. Actually their newsfeed
(Giganews) is pretty good, though the max of 2 connections is a PITA,
especially since it tends to be pretty agressive on "remembering"
connections you have abandoned. Now how did I get that carried away on
that topic?

It's a free-flow rant, there are no rules. Carry on.

I tend to overcomplicate things for the hell of it,

ROFLMAO!!! Now *that* is something I understand well....

Did I ever mention the 802.11b T1 feed?

In article , Dave Hinz wrote:
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 09:41:30 -0400, Paul Kierstead wrote:

That is one nice set-up, Dave. I don't like my bandwidth providor much,
don't use their email services and their DNS used to drop all the time,

Does the name sound at all like "voyager.net" by any chance?

Oh, geez, don't get me started on Voyager. For years, I had an account with a
local ISP. Hardly ever had any technical problems, and when I did, the
customer service was superb. Then the local outfit was bought ought by
Voyager, and almost immediately everything went in the toilet. Dropped
connections, dial-up modems that wouldn't answer, sloooooow connections, at
least fifty times the amount of spam... and absolutely clueless customer
service. The last straw was when I called for about the seventeenth time to
complain about the slow connections. They insisted it had to be a problem in
my configuration (which hadn't changed for six months). Told me to run
traceroute to show where it's getting bogged down. OK... connection between me
and them was just fine. Two hops farther, though, it was a *very* different
story - repeated timeouts between two of *their* machines. The customer
disservice rep told me to reinstall Windows. Yeah, right. I told him, sure,
I'll do that, just as soon as you explain to me how anything on *my* machine
can cause packet timeouts between *your* servers.


--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt.
And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:45:02 GMT, Doug Miller wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz wrote:
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 09:41:30 -0400, Paul Kierstead wrote:

That is one nice set-up, Dave. I don't like my bandwidth providor much,
don't use their email services and their DNS used to drop all the time,

Does the name sound at all like "voyager.net" by any chance?

Oh, geez, don't get me started on Voyager. For years, I had an account with a
local ISP. Hardly ever had any technical problems, and when I did, the
customer service was superb.

That would be execpc, yes?

Then the local outfit was bought ought by
Voyager, and almost immediately everything went in the toilet. Dropped
connections, dial-up modems that wouldn't answer, sloooooow connections, at
least fifty times the amount of spam... and absolutely clueless customer
service.

Yup.

The last straw was when I called for about the seventeenth time to
complain about the slow connections. They insisted it had to be a problem in
my configuration (which hadn't changed for six months). Told me to run
traceroute to show where it's getting bogged down. OK... connection between me
and them was just fine. Two hops farther, though, it was a *very* different
story - repeated timeouts between two of *their* machines.

The droids don't like it when the caller understands more than they do,
do they.

The customer
disservice rep told me to reinstall Windows. Yeah, right. I told him, sure,
I'll do that, just as soon as you explain to me how anything on *my* machine
can cause packet timeouts between *your* servers.

Heh. Now try being the server design guy for an e-commerce site (ahem),
who gets a ****ed off customer call escalated to him (why me? because I
have this "Sherlock Holmes" reputation or something). So, angry customer
says "I can't reach your site, you people aqre the suxx0rs!!@@!!!!!!".

OK, let's see. Go to this checklist-diags site I wrote. Can you see (item)?
Yes? How about the big red star? No? OK, that's interesting. Click on
"test 3" link please. No? I see. No, I'm sure our site is up, we've
processed 3000 transactions this morning already. OK, run a traceroute,
like this...

Ah, that helps. The problem is on that fifth hop there. The bad news is,
it's on equipment not owned by either you, or me, or your ISP, or my
ISP. It's actually equipment owned by someone in the middle, and neither
you nor I are their customer. Which means that we're both going to be
equally unable to get them to do anything, but we'll try since you're the
customer. Yes, sorry, that's the best I can do. No, I can't "just fix it",
it's not my equipment, and the people who own it don't care about your or
my business. Yes, that's the way the internet works, it's a network.

And then, hours later "No, I didn't change anything, but apparently
(sprintnet, let's say) noticed and fixed their problem."

Sometimes you just can't fix the stuff, but if the droid couldn't recognize
that it was their own switchgear where the traceroute was dying, well,
it's hard to get good helldesk people.

In article , Dave Hinz wrote:
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:45:02 GMT, Doug Miller wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz
wrote:
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 09:41:30 -0400, Paul Kierstead
wrote:

That is one nice set-up, Dave. I don't like my bandwidth providor much,
don't use their email services and their DNS used to drop all the time,

Does the name sound at all like "voyager.net" by any chance?

Oh, geez, don't get me started on Voyager. For years, I had an account with a

local ISP. Hardly ever had any technical problems, and when I did, the
customer service was superb.

That would be execpc, yes?

NetDirect.net, actually.

Then the local outfit was bought ought by
Voyager, and almost immediately everything went in the toilet. Dropped
connections, dial-up modems that wouldn't answer, sloooooow connections, at
least fifty times the amount of spam... and absolutely clueless customer
service.

Yup.

The last straw was when I called for about the seventeenth time to
complain about the slow connections. They insisted it had to be a problem in
my configuration (which hadn't changed for six months). Told me to run
traceroute to show where it's getting bogged down. OK... connection between
me
and them was just fine. Two hops farther, though, it was a *very* different
story - repeated timeouts between two of *their* machines.

The droids don't like it when the caller understands more than they do,
do they.

Not really. :-)

The customer
disservice rep told me to reinstall Windows. Yeah, right. I told him, sure,
I'll do that, just as soon as you explain to me how anything on *my* machine
can cause packet timeouts between *your* servers.
[snip an all-too-familiar story]

Sometimes you just can't fix the stuff, but if the droid couldn't recognize
that it was their own switchgear where the traceroute was dying, well,
it's hard to get good helldesk people.

I eventually did get him to realize that it was *their* equipment causing the
problem, and he kicked me up the line to a second-level tech who did a little
more digging, and actually admitted that they had a server configured
incorrectly. But did they *ever* fix it? Nooooooooooooooo.....

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt.
And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:19:04 GMT, Doug Miller wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz wrote:

Sometimes you just can't fix the stuff, but if the droid couldn't recognize
that it was their own switchgear where the traceroute was dying, well,
it's hard to get good helldesk people.

I eventually did get him to realize that it was *their* equipment causing the
problem, and he kicked me up the line to a second-level tech who did a little
more digging, and actually admitted that they had a server configured
incorrectly. But did they *ever* fix it? Nooooooooooooooo.....

Right up there with "Hi, your usenet server isn't getting any new
articles for the last 3 days". Followed by "What's Usenet, you mean
Internet", "have you rebooted 17 times", and "Which browser are you
using". Argh.