eth3rs

Comment Threads

• Joan Slonczewski commented on Pink Stuff Patrol
  Thanks for all the useful tips on this discussion--lots to think about, for those of us starting a blog. On another topic-- I gather a lot of the powerpoints and papers presented at the conference will become available online over the next days and weeks. I'll try and link to them when they do. Any of those starship/space colony papers posted yet?...
• Greg. Tingey commented on Pink Stuff Patrol
  Rosie @ 101 My point, exactly. The (probable) only way out is a binding International Treaty. I'm assuming there must be SOME profit in Spam, otherwise why is it being done? cui bono indeed. I wonder what the profit-margin is on Spam - is it really worth if for the spammers, or have they actually locked themselves into an illusory zero-sum game? Any real figures on this, anyone?...
• Charlie Stross commented on Pink Stuff Patrol
  I don't expect the US military to be any better than anyone else at winning a war on an abstraction. (Indeed, the whole 'war on [abstraction]' seems to have done very well for the military contractors and police agencies, but I don't expect the wars on drugs and terror to be won any time soon -- the first, because drugs are a movable feast (what about alcohol?) and demand for them is one of the constants of human nature, and the latter because terrorism is a movable feast (look how many respectable politicians are ex-'terrorists') and it seems to be...
• errolwi commented on Pink Stuff Patrol
  Or at a frequency that is in line with what the reader (who has to opt-in) wants i.e. like an RSS feed. I doubt that one in 500 tweets that I see could be classed as spam....
• roxysteve commented on Pink Stuff Patrol
  On CAPTCHAs: Shamus Young, when he was in the middle of his justly famous DM of the Rings screencap comic, instigated CAPTCHA-control of comments because he suddenly became very attractive to spammers. He found that after about three days he didn't need to actually go to the trouble of building the word/phrase and morphing it. He found that by using an easily-recognised phrase as the same CAPTCHA day in, day out, the spam became a minor problem again. Of course, there was always some twit ready to point out for the benefit of the bots that the CAPCHA wasn't working....