Dak

From a users point of view, i dont really see that much difference between most of them, tbh. except ipb, which i really dislike, from both a user and mod pov (tho i cant put my finger on why... somehthing about it just sucks). VB and phpBB are the ones i like using most as a user.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/38004 <-- ISPs blocking port 25. As i understand it, all traffic aimed at or originating from port 25 is sometimes blocked, depending on the ISP.

I both agree and disagree with you, in quite a few different ways. whilst it's true that google the company may not be capable of altruism, google is directed by human beings who are, and its possible that they have descided to let altruism guide them in this instance. On the other hand, i've no doubt that googles 'do no evil' policy is, at the very least, partly a result of the positive effect that the directors felt that this policy would have on googles bottom line. On the other other hand, similar statements can be made about humans: at the end of the day, even seemingly altruistic acts are usually ultimately done for one of two reasons -- to make the philantrophist feel good, or to avoid making the philantrophist feel guilty for not doing it; so, in a way, every altruistic act, by human or corporation, is ultimately based upon selfish reasons, and how it will effect the 'bottom line', so to discount altruistic acts by corporations as 'invalid' because they are selfishly-motivated is, perhaps, a little unfair. Either way, I feel that there is enough to differentiate both cases that google can act in different ways in either case without it being hypocritical.

I was basing it on their non-compliance with the american govournment. complying with china didn't involve passing over any data; maybe this is their way of saying that they will not hand over user-data to any govournment. It may not be too seriouse an issue if they did hand the data over to the US govournment; but if, in the future, china asks google for user-data, that will be a more seriouse issue -- and now, google can atleast turn around and say 'no. we didn't hand data over to the us govournment, we wont hand it over to you'. In other words, maybe they're setting up so that they can deny any requests from china for user data without it being hypocritical. googles with-holding of gmail from china makes it seem to me that being used as a spying tool for the chinese govournment is definately a concern for google, so maybe its part of their reasoning in this case?

Indeed. maybe google are trying to set a precedent: 'we are not an information mine for the govournment, reguardless of which govournment that is'.

the two things can, on one hand, be linked by googles arguing (or not) with the local govournment, but on the other hand differentiated by the fact that one is a privacy issue and the other not; BUT... I was under the impression that the govournment was requesting data that was personally identifiable; a little more research reveals that, whilst this was initially true, the govournment have since re-worded their request so that the information would be non-identifying (which kinda invalidates my argument). Google are still, however, arguing that the information that the govournment is requesting could be personally identifyable. I guess it depends on how valid googles concerns are. Yes. they both want to restrict access to certain sites (america giving the protection of childeren online as a reason that they want the data), and both want google to aid them in this. the key difference being that google are, afaict, arguing that the american govournments subpoena is not within the bounds of american law (ie, they dont have to comply); the chinese sensoring, however, was pretty inevitable -- if they didn't voluntarily self-censor, then they would have had sensoring imposed upon them. if google are correct, then i dont think that google can be concidered hypocritical for doing something they don't want to but have to, and not doing another (similar) thing that they don't want to do and dont think that they have to. because america has too little, or china has too much? either way, google's official responce (assuming this isnt fake) is here (pdf). it seems asif google is arguing that it would be difficult, unnessesary, damaging to them in variouse ways, and not within the govournments right to demand, hence their refusal. However, if i may put my 'Mr. Sceptical' hat on, i kinda agree with your 'which govournment is more threatening' point. The chinese sensoring, as i said, was probably inevitable -- the way google handled it, they can argue that the self-censoring results in less sensoring, and that they will, at least, be able to offer some service to the chinese, and anyway they're job isn't to dictate foreighn policy with reguards to freedom-of-information, or to impose their ethics upon foreighn nations, and that they don't have the right to disobey local law -- in other words, google had a reason to compy, and could do so without damaging its reputation too much. the american subpoena, however, raises privacy concerns about google and, whilst this is only mentioned briefly in their official responce i'd suspect that it is the main reason for their refusal: a(n admittedly very) few organisations refuse to send emails to gmail accounts due to the fact that google scans them and saves them on file even after the user deletes them, and atleast one anti-spyware programs detect and remove google and googleadsence tracking cookies as 'spyware.cookies', and the only reason that things like that aren't more common -- and that people are prepared to use google, despite its invasiveness -- is due to googles genuinely good track-record with reguards to responsable use of personal information, and they no doubt consider preserving that reputation to be immensly important to their continualled financial success. So... with reguards to your original question: still no, for the following reasons 1/ because they had to comply in china, but they might not have to in america, and 2/complying with govournments when it's convienient, and resisting when to comply would damage you, isn't hypocritical imo Although without knowing googles actual reasoning in both instances, and the validity of googles claims, i can't be certain. The bigger question, imo, is what google will do if the subpoena is held up in a court of law. Theyve always given the impression that user privacy will be protected at all costs... so, would google refuse to comply and risk huge punative fines, withdraw from america to avoid having to comply, or hand over the 'potentially personallly identifyable' data? There is where i feel the huge potential for hypocracy lies. phew! sorry that was so long

hmm... i dont really see the hypocracy, tbh. the chinese censoring is limiting googles useability, where as giving search data to the american govournment is a privacy issue, and tbh, considering just how intrusive google is (tracking cookies, scanning emails etc) i'm quite glad that theyre not easily aquiesting to the request.

May i suggest that you cite what you are claiming. I, for one, tend to ignore arguments that rely upon uncited facts, because its too dificult to establish wether or not the facts are being interpreted correctly. for example: Which bodies? how close to the centre of impact? close enough to be incredible, or far away enough to have died from asphixia from the smoke, but not get burnt from the fire? who knows, if you dont cite?

not sure atm, to be honest. maybe if/when the project grows. -------- slight change of tact: to try and get the ball rolling, what'cher all think about this provisional inclusion policy (its geared up to mainly accomodate the low number of people working on this project atm and to use a non-contentiouse definition of spam): Any site that gets suggested once gets included after two votes by the community. Any site who's inclusion seems 'odd' gets reviewed; a single objection results in no inclusion (to be re-reviewed if the site is ever submitted again). As far as what people should do: If you have recieved an unsolicited email from a company, and you are SURE that you haven't given your concent to them to email you, or your concent to a company to share your email address with third partys, then submit any websites linked to into this thread for inclusion. If the site is already on the list, resubmit it anyway (it'll add to the reliability/justification of including it). Before submitting a site, please hover your cursor over the link and check down in the task-bar, to ensure that the link actually points to the site that it says that it does. for example www.scienceforums.net that url points to wisci.org, not scienceforums.net If you notice a site on the spam list that doesn't seem as if it should be there, then flag it up for review. and please turn 'automatically parse links' off when submitting sites for inclusion, or 'break' the link by putting 'hxxp' before it, eg hxxp://www.scienceforums.net Whatcher all think? any suggestions/modifications? ----- Proposed safety guidlines for checking spam: Don't open any attachments from suspected spam messages, due to the possibility that they may be viral. Don't view a suspected spam message with 'active web content' enabled, due to the fact that a web-bug may be included, which will alert the spammer to the fact that your email account is active and will result in more spam for you. *in hotmail, mark a message as spam, and then view it from within your junk email folder -- this will deactivate web content for that message. *in gmail, external images are deactivated by default, so no worries about web-bugs. *other email sites/programs? ------ if anyone is aware of an email site/program that changes links in 'no active web content' mode so that <a href="www.wisci.org">www.scienceforums.net</a> would be displayed as http://www.scienceforums.net, rather than http://www.wisci.org, (ie, the wrong site would be displayed), then please mention it, along with how to safely view spam in email sites/programs other than hotmail/gmail, and any other suggestions etc. Also, if anyone has a suggestion for a name?

Lol, this one happened to me today: when you're watching futurama, and presedent nixon's head comes on, and you think 'what's sayo doing on futurama?'

Cheers reng. The 'programming' as such should be quite simple -- a batch file could handle adding to the hosts file, and the equivelent for linux etc i would imagine. Hmm... maybe if this takes off we could eventually have an auto-updater tho? I agree about the forse-sighning (and also where they bury the fact that you will get spammed in a 1,000,000 word EULA), but i disagree with the 'if it's selected by default'*. I currently recieve email from, for exampl, ZoneAlarm, 'cos i (intentionally) didn't uncheck the box when i d/l'd their firewall, and i can imagine that some people didn't uncheck it 'cos they were too lazy to read the page, and might consider them spam (and report them as such). hrm... if there's no functional opt-out link on the mails tho id consider that spam, wether consent was given via check-box or not. ---------------------------- * although ideally the box would be deselected by default.

The sites that the spam advertises care wether you go to their sites or not. As it stands at the moment, because of the cheapness of emails, even if only one in every [insert large number here] people follow the link in a spam mail, the site spammers make a profit; the cost of an email that doesn't produce a new customer is so negligable as to not matter. If every non-biting spam recipient ran the risk of preventing others from going to the site, then it might make a difference to wether or not a site descides to advertise via spam.

only problem is: how do we discern wether someone has given their permission to recieve spam emails from the site? Also, many spam emails are sent using hacked servers, or using exploits in servers; email-sender spoofing is quite easy, etc i was thinking that we could block the sites that are linked to in the message, and maybe the web-bugs aswell: for example, i have a charming one in my in-box at the moment that reads: From: Mature Subject: Sloppy gum jobs MessageSo, get ready for soft, sloppy gum jobs followed by a nice pinch on the = cheek see my video's inside hxxp://www.newdsite.com So, i was thinking that newdsite.com and www.newdsite.com could be added to the hosts file. BUT, the concern is that i may have, at some point in the past, given my email address out without deselecting a 'sure, send me emails' box, so the spam -- whilst annoying -- isn't technically unsolicited. thoughts? (by-the-by, given the pornographic/malware-related nature of lots of spam-advertised sites, i suggest we all un-select the 'automatically parse links in text' option when replying in this thread)

ouch! and i thought i got spammed alot Well, any ideas for the inclusion policy? If the idea takes off, i suppose we could say that a site has to be reported x times before inclusion, but to begin with, i dont think that'll the list will get created unless x = 1. my main concern is that someone would report a site that they actually agreed to recieve emails from, and then forgot that they had. hmm...

fa-nah!

carrying on from this thread... The idea, as it stands at the moment, is for a community-project to create a hosts file that restricts access to websites that advertise via spam, the intent being to damage their profit margin and hopefully convince them to stop being such spammy goits. for this, we'd need alot of people to periodically trawl through their 'junk email' folders to find websites that are advertising by spam, and add them to the list of blocked sites. Who'd be interested in doing that? Also, any ideas/input would be appreciated. first idea/input: before we start, i think we should forumulate an inclusion policy... i cant imagine the website owners would be too happy about this if it takes off, and i doubt anyone fancies getting sued

like you just told me, and as i just witnest when i checked, hosts file entries pointing to 127.0.0.1 cause a 'website unavailable -- server not found' error in firefox I think we should start a new thread rather than hijack this one, as theorin started this thread for help with his idea. Death to spam!

Well, i could trawl through my junk email box for website addresses if anyone else is interested in making a 'spite' hosts file that blocks the websites that advertise via spam?

Well, you live and learn... i thought it was IE used the hosts file, before asking the OS to resolve the address; didn't know that hosts entries would affect browsers like firefox. cheers for the info.

Dont forget that a significant amount of spam -- perhaps the majority -- comes from pc's that are infected with mass-mailer worms, and from hacked/exploited servers, so trying to DoS the spammers by mass-returning the mails wont work particulaly well. The database is quite a good idea, and would be extremely technically easy to do (for IE at any rate) with a hosts file.

Aardvark, im tired now so ill address your points later, but how in hell does suggesting that islam isnt inherently evil count as bigoted?

Nope. Do you have a link?

That was my point -- that they can't. Alright, look at it like this: if america were a predominantly muslim country, and the areas where these riots/rapings/beheadings/whatever are happening were predominantly christian, do you think the islamic states of american would be rioting over cartoons because of the muslims, or do you think that the christians would be rioting in plases like gaza over the latest blaspheme against jesus because they can get away with it over there? Bearing in mind that historically, when allowed, christian fundamentalists have shown a bit of a penchant for genoside, burnings etc. All im saying is that i suspect that its the region thats brutal and barbaric, and that the most extreme example of this is from the local religiouse extremists (you know what religiouse extremists are like), as opposed to the religion itself being notably more brutal and barbaric than other religions.