South Korea in the 1970s was an oppressive capitalist dictatorship (specifically, a right-wing, military one).

So you appear to be agreeing that China is really quite similar...

Bank Americorp owns Visa and MasterCard

False. Both are publicly owned and publicly traded corporations.

Feel free to point out where BankAmericorp appears, or for that matter where anyone holds an ownership stake in excess of 10%.

In 2010, Visa processed 3.2 trillion dollars per year. The US Federal gross receipts for 2010 came out to a mere 2.2 trillion dollars (receipts, not GDP which came to 14.5 trillion for that year).

They handled 3.2 trillion dollars in transactions in the same way that NASDAQ has handled 1.2 billion shares so far today -- NASDAQ does not own those shares, NASDAQ processes trades of those shares between buyers and sellers. VISA processes payments between you and the merchant that you handed the credit card to. Since VISA falls well below your arbitrary line ($3 billion in n.o.p, not exactly a ruler of the universe there), there's no problem, right?

When MomCo bets the till on the ponies, MomCo goes under. When JP Morgan Chase effectively does the same, the whole goddamned stock market takes a dive and grandma's (not to mention, my) 401k edges lower and lower and lower...

Repeat after me... payment processors are not banks. Payment processors do not issue mortgages. Payment processors do not issue CDOs. Payment processors process electronic payments.

The way you've used "We The People" ("We The People don't care..."), besides demonstrating amazing hubris on your part, distills down to mob rule. Until you develop a logical rationale and dividing line to support what you claim ought to be done, you can quite rightly be ignored.

Sorry Mitt, but corporations ain't people.

For the purposes of entering into contracts, buying property, and the like, they are. Since well before you were born.

The mere fact that they're large businesses does not mean that they are forbidden from behaving like any small business or individual

But it should. As it is, they wield orders of magnitude more power than a small business or individual, yet have no more responsibility. This is a recipe for disaster, and indeed we are all paying the bill for the utter irresponsibility of financial businesses right now.

Not good enough. Where do you draw the line between large and small? How are you measuring power? You have to actually think through these issues and justify the conclusion of why you apply the principle only to some and not to all. That pesky Fourteenth Amendment, you know...

IIRC the payment processors have performed this economic blockade without due process or a legal ruling, so to clobber this organisation would take a court hearing, which may be what EFF is angling for.

Why would the payment processors have to provide due process or obtain a legal ruling? They're private businesses, not government agencies. The mere fact that they're large businesses does not mean that they are forbidden from behaving like any small business or individual -- if they do not want to do business with someone, they cannot be forced to. You should research the term "concerted refusal to deal," and then consider that there must be an actual prospective agreement, not merely independent action, before someone can successfully attack a refusal to trade on antitrust grounds. Hence decisions like the recent EC decision declining to go after the payment processors under competition laws.

The converse would be hilarious. Anyone boycotting a business or organization would have to provide due process and obtain a legal ruling that would permit them to refuse to trade with, say, Walmart. Hilarity ensues.

Once again, what I'm saying is, you're accepting everything the poster says on the assumption it's absolutely true. Spamtrap accounts don't reply to confirmation emails or click on confirmation links - ever. That's the whole point of them. Even if you're a malicious troll who got a list of Hotmail trap accounts from somewhere, how do you get control over them to confirm signup?

The confirmation email sent to the spamtrap account is itself the trap event. If the spamtrap does not confirm and the list does not send anything other than the confirmation email, then both the Hotmail management screen and his statements are still fully consistent. Do you want me to sign you up to his list to prove the point, or are you content with merely being lead to this very obvious conclusion through multiple Slashdot postings?

And yes, I am accepting it as true. It's trivial to follow the list signup procedure, respond to the confirmation message, and note that Hotmail even automatically categorizes the email as one from a newsletter. I unfortunately have to wait for the next mailing to confirm the unsubscribe link, unsubscribe, and then wait to not receive more messages, but it is consistent with everything that has been written, whereas you are merely guessing. And ignoring every other opinion to the contrary, e.g.:

http://features.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3314491&cid=42276705
http://features.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3314491&cid=42276435

The screenshot says more anyway. Judging from what he says the sizes of the mailshots are, it's a fresh IP that hasn't been used before. So the screenshot could have been taken before the reputation degrades.

You really insist on not reading the source material, don't you. "Hotmail allows newsletter publishers to view data about what percent of their messages to Hotmail users are being flagged by users as "spam," and when I looked up the stats for our IP, they showed a "complaint rate" of less than 0.1% (usually the rest of people hitting 'Junk Mail' to unsubscribe from the list)." The screenshot states that it is for a 24 hour period. With a subscribership of 420,000, he's not going to be emailing 420,000 Hotmail users over 24 hours.

It's possible that this guy has done everything totally by the book and somehow has just got unlucky that his behaviour happens to closely match that of actual spammers.

In that case, why isn't the spam-identified content blocked when sent from other IPs/email accounts? "This only happened when sending from my own IP address at peacefire.org. It didn't happen if I tried sending a message from my Gmail account to a Hotmail address, even if the message contained one of the four banned domain names, so the issue probably won't reproduce if you try sending a test message yourself."

I think "sender is not following standard mail etiquette" is far more likely than some enormous conspiracy theory against him. After all, plenty of bulk mail senders do just fine.

In that case, why is the mailing list not blocked, but only certain content? "It turns out that out of the seven different URLs that I had been mailing to our users, four of the domains in those URLs would generate a "550 Message Contains SPAM Content" error when sent from my IP to a Hotmail address, and the other three did not."

What you keep saying is that you simply will not read what is going on, and will not address the actual problem, but by God you'll fight tooth and nail against anyone who dares to point that out. Bravo. You'll notice that others have picked up on it too. I replied because you were +5 Informative yet clearly wrong. That seems to have resolved itself now, so I'm done with you.

I see what you're saying, but he's not actually having his IP blocked in this case. The blocking is taking place based on the content of the message, specifically whether it mentions certain domains set up as relays. The interesting question (from his point of view and ours) is exactly how those domains become flagged as "spammy". For instance, I'd be interested to know (as others have asked) whether the relays allow traffic on port 25, and whether this is a factor.

Actually, as I read it, it's the combination of mentioning certain domain names and the fact that the message originates from the mailing list IPs. It seems that other messages from the same IP would be received rather than blocked (not specifically discussed, but implied in the three not-banned domain names) and that messages containing the same domains sent from other IPs and email addresses would be received rather than blocked (specifically discussed in his gmail example, paragraph after the session transcript).

It's a far more specific block, and one that I suspect whitelisting the mailing list email address does not overcome (I'm not a member of the mailing list) -- which would be the ultimate issue here.

Look at it this way. This guys screenshot shows Hotmail themselves saying he hit some of their spamtraps. From the SNDS FAQ we can see that "trap hits" means he mailed accounts that don't solicit mail - ever

Yes, you've noted three trap hits out of 68,000 messages. Do you want to bet that those three trap hits are signup confirmation emails resulting from (i) typographical errors in the email address submitted by someone attempting to sign up or (ii) 'drive by' sign ups by a third party who has an axe to grind against the list?

There is essentially nothing to prevent someone from signing mike@plan99.net up to a dozen mailing lists in the signup process. It doesn't matter if they're mile@plan99.net or simply a jerk -- the fact that it happens (at 0.0044% frequency) doesn't transform the mailing list operator into a spammer. Even Hotmail notes that "[w]ell-behaved senders will hit very few such accounts because they're generally sending to people who give them their address and because they collect and process their NDRs." They don't expect a zero rate.

so we already know his claim that every account is opt in isn't true. What else isn't true?

That you're not bothering to think through the signup and confirmation process, for one... that your putting claims in his mouth that he never made, for another... "The list is also comprised of 100%-verified-opt-in addresses, meaning that a new subscriber has to reply to a confirmation message in order to be added to the list. That's considered the gold standard for responsible mailing." There's simply no basis for you to say that those accounts were falsely opted-in.

FYI in the complaint rate section the SNDS FAW states that "more than 30% of the IPs sending mail to Windows Live Hotmail keep their complaint rate at less than 0.3% and this represents a good bar to shoot for." He's allegedly at 0.1%. Your expectations are simply unrealistic, and yet again show that you're not willing to deal with the reality of the situation rather than attributing anything other then perfection as being evidence that "the guy is a spammer." Frankly, you're a perfect example of the problem at hand.

If users are seeing false positives they can go and unmark the mail as spam, the system will learn that the user wants that mail and the problem is solved.

Again, deny any version of reality that doesn't align with your assumptions. Reread the actual problem -- the users do not see these emails when sent from this account, and therefore cannot unmark the mail as spam. The problem is not solved. The problem isn't even remotely what you concieve it to be.

Those half-million people you think really really want new proxy sites all the time? Guess what, many of them don't. They are reporting your mail as spam which is why you're getting blocked (this is domain reputation). You may not understand why, but they are, so deal with it.

You assume that this is case, yet the poster provides a link to management data which at least appears to show that your assumption is incorrect. Did you read the post where it mentions that "[it] showed a 'complaint rate' of less than 0.1% (usually the rest of people hitting 'Junk Mail' to unsubscribe from the list)," or are you simply going to deny any version of reality that doesn't align with your assumptions.

Expire addresses that signed up a long time ago - some people won't unsubscribe when it's no longer useful for them.

Apparently, deny any version of reality that doesn't align with your assumptions.

BAD 'EXPERT'!

If I sign up to a mailing list, I expect to receive the output of that mailing list until I unsubscribe. I certainly don't want the mailing list silently dropping me, and I'm not very interested in the ISP offloading its mailing list problem onto me by making me affirmatively renew my subscription. Especially when you offer no evidence that 'addresses that signed up a long time ago' make up a disproportionate fraction of the alleged 0.1% spam report rate.

Pushing the problem onto the 400,000+ individual users instead of dealiing with it at the ISP level is exactly the sort of free market failure tha the poster complains of.

If SpamHaus is blacklisting you, they probably think you're sending mail to their spamtraps. Hence the "zero false positives" claim. Are you sure every single address on your list replied to a confirmation mail? All 400,000+ of them? Because it sounds unlikely.

Again, deny any version of reality that doesn't align with your assumptions. He isn't being blocked by SpamHaus. He's being blocked by Hotmail and Yahoo. Just admit that you haven't actually read the post, that you're spouting off about your own personal bugbear, and that your advice has almost no bearing on the actual problem. It'll make you feel better, honest.

4. We are infact collectively having the pschotc episode.

I think the US should declare robots a munition subject to export control and extreme secrecy. With the increase in robotic soldiers, it will become important, and as the US learns to make better robots for the military, they will make better industrial robots. At some point the robots will be more cost effective than slaves in China... If they cannot be exported then manufacturing will return to the US. At least for a while Americans will be able to get high skill jobs building and fixing robots...

I find it disappointing that instead of actively fighting secure boot and making a BIG PUBLIC STINK about it and embarrassing everyone involved in implementing this, the community is aquiescing to the concept and "working with it."

Stallman is right, guys, and anyone endorsing Trusted Computing 2.0 by either actively participating in the distribution of it, or tacit approval needs to be publicly humiliated and embarassed into doing the right thing.

We will tolerate no dissent! Not only will we refuse to use this, but we will ensure that nobody who disagrees with us (or simply doesn't give a rat's ass about our fundamentalist take on software freedom) will be able to even have the opportunity to use this!

FREEDOM! (for us, not for you... you're too stupid to be allowed the choice).

Dear Shuttleworth,

Don't think I don't know what you are doing. It was clever of you to have invested $1M in Inktank to support Ceph. That got you a lot of hits on ceph.com. It may take me all year, but through the power of science I will eventually beat your record of who can drive more traffic to our website. Like a master ninja I will blind you with my amazing insights. Just look at my analysis of Ceph's write performance on different disk controllers. Yeah it didn't get as many hits as your little investment announcement, but this is just the beginning. So my questions is, do you want to just give up now?

Mark

(Nelson, not Shuttleworth!)

Yeah, I still remember how I switched. I was trying to get Windows 95 to back up some files on my hard drive to tape using their goofy backup software. To make a long story short, Windows 95 ultimately ended up corrupting my hard drive and the backup. It was at that point that I switched to OS/2 for a while, then slackware, then redhat, then debian. I stuck with debian for a while, then switched to ubuntu and have been mostly ubuntu since. For a while I had a windows or OSX partition for games, but in the last year or so I haven't bothered since wine+native has been good enough. I haven't looked back.