If you like libraries and you like to write, here’s a blog of note for you: http://librarywriting.blogspot.com. This blog, written by University of Toledo librarian Corey Seeman lists “calls for papers, presentations, participation, reviewers, and other notices [found] on the web.” A lot of the notices I’ve seen so far are solicitations for contributors to reference books. You can even subscribe to this blog (instructions are found at the web site address above) so that you get the announcements in your e-mail, as I do (so much on cutting back on e-mail clutter). I haven’t found that perfect writing opportunity yet, but maybe you will.
March 16, 2004
RSS Demystified (A Little, Anyway)
Yet another weapon in the fight to keep one’s e-mail inbox clutter-free (if not necessarily spam free), is the RSS feed. What’s that, you ask? RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and in some circles it’s replacing listserv subscriptions as a way to keep up with what’s new. For example, each week I receive an e-mail from Librarians’ Index to the Internet (www.lii.org) that gives me a list of the new sites that have been added to that comprehensive web directory. But now, I can also get the same list by using a site called a RSS reader (or aggregator). There are lots of these readers out there, but the one I use is called Bloglines (the name is a little confusing, because although you can use it to read blogs, that’s not the use I’m discussing here). You just go to the Bloglines web site (http://www.bloglines.com) and follow the instructions for setting up an account.
Then, if you are visiting a website and you see a bright orange graphic labeled XML (not exactly intuitive) or “Syndicate this Site” you can just click on the icon or the words to get to a link to a file with a strange looking name most likely ending in .RSS. You just add the url with the RSS to the Bloglines subscribe box and voila, you can access all the latest news on the topic at hand via Bloglines. For example, I can see the list of all the new sites on LII from Bloglines, and I’m also subscribed to Yahoo news feeds about the presidential election and technology news.
If all this confuses you, LII has done a much better job of explaining it all, which you’ll find at http://lii.org/search/file/liirss/.
I’m still very new to the RSS thing, and I’m not sure if I like it or not. In a way it is easier just to continue receiving listserv e-mail; it comes to me and I don’t have to remember to go to a web site to sign in and check it. On the other hand, it is useful to have one place to go to check my LII information, the latest on the candidates, and technology news. If you try any RSS feeds, be sure to let me know what you think!
Then, if you are visiting a website and you see a bright orange graphic labeled XML (not exactly intuitive) or “Syndicate this Site” you can just click on the icon or the words to get to a link to a file with a strange looking name most likely ending in .RSS. You just add the url with the RSS to the Bloglines subscribe box and voila, you can access all the latest news on the topic at hand via Bloglines. For example, I can see the list of all the new sites on LII from Bloglines, and I’m also subscribed to Yahoo news feeds about the presidential election and technology news.
If all this confuses you, LII has done a much better job of explaining it all, which you’ll find at http://lii.org/search/file/liirss/.
I’m still very new to the RSS thing, and I’m not sure if I like it or not. In a way it is easier just to continue receiving listserv e-mail; it comes to me and I don’t have to remember to go to a web site to sign in and check it. On the other hand, it is useful to have one place to go to check my LII information, the latest on the candidates, and technology news. If you try any RSS feeds, be sure to let me know what you think!
Yum! Spam!
Have you ever wondered, if everyone hates spam so much, why is it still around? Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal found the answer to that question. The financial newspaper has tracked down one man who actually enjoys getting unsolicited e-mail, and you know that if they found one, there are others out there.
Mr. Orlando Soto, a 45-year-old building superintendent in New York City, typically gets about 150 spam e-mails per day, and reads all of them. He “sometimes spends hundreds of dollars a week buying via spam…’I do a lot of impulse buys,’” he admits. Interestingly, he used to comb garage sales and flea markets for odd items before an injury forced him to turn to his computer. He’s also a former eBay fanatic. “It’s like a treasure hunt,” he says.
The spam industry doesn’t need very many Mr. Sotos to be profitable. The article says that “spammers… typically need just one buyer per 10,000 spam messages to break even.” In a recent survey, 8% of respondents confessed that they had bought products via spam; this percentage is probably low due to the embarrassment factor.
Last year it was reported that a now-defunct company that sold anatomical enhancement products via spam generated over $74 million in revenue, despite the fact that pills were made mostly of chalk and sugar. There’s even a guy in Colorado who has put all embarrassment aside and has initiated a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the men who tried the product, which, needless to say, does not work.
The bottom line is that spam, like telemarketing, does work, so even though everyone complains about it, it keeps coming.
Mr. Orlando Soto, a 45-year-old building superintendent in New York City, typically gets about 150 spam e-mails per day, and reads all of them. He “sometimes spends hundreds of dollars a week buying via spam…’I do a lot of impulse buys,’” he admits. Interestingly, he used to comb garage sales and flea markets for odd items before an injury forced him to turn to his computer. He’s also a former eBay fanatic. “It’s like a treasure hunt,” he says.
The spam industry doesn’t need very many Mr. Sotos to be profitable. The article says that “spammers… typically need just one buyer per 10,000 spam messages to break even.” In a recent survey, 8% of respondents confessed that they had bought products via spam; this percentage is probably low due to the embarrassment factor.
Last year it was reported that a now-defunct company that sold anatomical enhancement products via spam generated over $74 million in revenue, despite the fact that pills were made mostly of chalk and sugar. There’s even a guy in Colorado who has put all embarrassment aside and has initiated a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the men who tried the product, which, needless to say, does not work.
The bottom line is that spam, like telemarketing, does work, so even though everyone complains about it, it keeps coming.
A Big Serving of Spam
Every issue of Net News has a theme. Some of these themes are more obvious than others. There has been a lot of news on the spam front lately, so this issue’s them will be more obvious than most. Although it may seem like just a nuisance, spam clogs the internet and represents a major threat to its usefulness. So it is worthwhile to spend a few moments pondering the rise of unsolicited e-mail and the various methods people have devised to avoid it. This issue will even answer the elusive question, if everyone hates spam so much, why is it still around?
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since the inception of spam. You may or may or may not remember how it all began: on March 3, 1994, an obscure Arizona law firm posted an “ACT NOW” type message to many Usenet newsgroups advertising their immigration services. These newsgroups, it must be noted, had nothing to do with immigration or the law, making the postings doubly inappropriate. At the time, the online community, especially those who wanted the Internet to remain a non-commercial entity, was up in arms regarding the blatant breech of “netiquette” (I remember that I, as a “newbie” thought that the some of the more vocal members of the online world were overreacting). The law firm persisted in posting its messages, despite widespread, vociferous disapproval of their unsolicited advertisements. Somehow, the term “spam” stuck to these unsolicited advertisements; it’s actually a reference to a Monty Python skit about a restaurant where customers can’t order any breakfast dish without Hormel’s canned meat product in it.
Despite the protests of the online purists, web entrepreneurs copied the law firm’s idea, and soon the Usenet was ruined as a center of intelligent conversation, if it ever was one. Then someone (exactly who the culprit is lost in the mists of Internet time) got the bright idea move spam out of the Usenet and into people’s e-mailboxes. Thus, the spam revolution was born.
Ten years later, e-mail users are inundated daily with advertisements for self-prescribed drugs, extra low mortgage rates, anatomical enhancements, pornographic material, and get rich quick schemes, among other things. Spam is also the most common way computer viruses are spread. Spam is such a part of modern life that the “delete without reading” routine is second nature to many of us.
As discussed in previous issues of Net News, Internet users try all kinds of things to cut back on their spam exposure, including spam-blocking software, white lists, disposable e-mail addresses, etc. and yet the spam keeps coming. There have been legislative attempts to stop spam (such as the cleverly named federal Can-Spam Act of 2003, which took effect on January 1st of this year), and some of the big ISPs have joined together to sue major spammers. But since this is an international problem, and spammers are adept at covering their tracks, there hasn’t been much of a dent in the deluge.
The FTC (Federal Telecommunications Commission) has considered creating a Do Not Spam Registry similar to the Do Not Call anti-telemarketing registry, but the agency is still studying the issue. Meanwhile, there’s at least one scam website that’s operating as a fake “Do Not Spam” registry. This site tricks people into submitting personal information and then signs them up for more spam, not less.
You may have heard that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, advocates the adoption of a “stamp” system for e-mail. Just like you affix a stamp on a letter before you mail it, there would be some way to pay a small fee per e-mail. Gates thinks that the nickel-and-dime approach wouldn’t be problem for the individual e-mail user, especially if people got to send a certain number of messages for free, and only paid a fee if they went over that amount. But, if you multiply even a small fee by millions of spam messages—well, Bill thinks spammers would have to be as rich as he is to pay to send all the junk mail they do now.
A variant of this concept has e-mailers spending a few minutes and a little computer power solving a math problem before sending a message. Advocates of this idea, which Gates also supports, say that requiring a little long division before sending a an e-mail proves that there is a real person behind the message, not just a hyperactive spam server. Presumably, spammers wouldn’t want to waste their time and computer capacity solving one math problem per e-mail, so they would stop sending out mass mailings.
The drawbacks to both proposed solutions to the spam dilemma are not hard to see. It’s hard to get people to pay for what they used to get for free. Charging for e-mail would make the “digital divide” (the gap between the technological “haves” and “have-nots”) even wider, and even making people solve math problems with their computers would set up an unfair distinction between those who know how to do the required calculations and those who don’t. Not to mention that such a system would be cumbersome and expensive to administer. On top of that, spammers would find a way to get around it anyway. As Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet said, “I continue to be impressed by the agility of spammers."
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since the inception of spam. You may or may or may not remember how it all began: on March 3, 1994, an obscure Arizona law firm posted an “ACT NOW” type message to many Usenet newsgroups advertising their immigration services. These newsgroups, it must be noted, had nothing to do with immigration or the law, making the postings doubly inappropriate. At the time, the online community, especially those who wanted the Internet to remain a non-commercial entity, was up in arms regarding the blatant breech of “netiquette” (I remember that I, as a “newbie” thought that the some of the more vocal members of the online world were overreacting). The law firm persisted in posting its messages, despite widespread, vociferous disapproval of their unsolicited advertisements. Somehow, the term “spam” stuck to these unsolicited advertisements; it’s actually a reference to a Monty Python skit about a restaurant where customers can’t order any breakfast dish without Hormel’s canned meat product in it.
Despite the protests of the online purists, web entrepreneurs copied the law firm’s idea, and soon the Usenet was ruined as a center of intelligent conversation, if it ever was one. Then someone (exactly who the culprit is lost in the mists of Internet time) got the bright idea move spam out of the Usenet and into people’s e-mailboxes. Thus, the spam revolution was born.
Ten years later, e-mail users are inundated daily with advertisements for self-prescribed drugs, extra low mortgage rates, anatomical enhancements, pornographic material, and get rich quick schemes, among other things. Spam is also the most common way computer viruses are spread. Spam is such a part of modern life that the “delete without reading” routine is second nature to many of us.
As discussed in previous issues of Net News, Internet users try all kinds of things to cut back on their spam exposure, including spam-blocking software, white lists, disposable e-mail addresses, etc. and yet the spam keeps coming. There have been legislative attempts to stop spam (such as the cleverly named federal Can-Spam Act of 2003, which took effect on January 1st of this year), and some of the big ISPs have joined together to sue major spammers. But since this is an international problem, and spammers are adept at covering their tracks, there hasn’t been much of a dent in the deluge.
The FTC (Federal Telecommunications Commission) has considered creating a Do Not Spam Registry similar to the Do Not Call anti-telemarketing registry, but the agency is still studying the issue. Meanwhile, there’s at least one scam website that’s operating as a fake “Do Not Spam” registry. This site tricks people into submitting personal information and then signs them up for more spam, not less.
You may have heard that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, advocates the adoption of a “stamp” system for e-mail. Just like you affix a stamp on a letter before you mail it, there would be some way to pay a small fee per e-mail. Gates thinks that the nickel-and-dime approach wouldn’t be problem for the individual e-mail user, especially if people got to send a certain number of messages for free, and only paid a fee if they went over that amount. But, if you multiply even a small fee by millions of spam messages—well, Bill thinks spammers would have to be as rich as he is to pay to send all the junk mail they do now.
A variant of this concept has e-mailers spending a few minutes and a little computer power solving a math problem before sending a message. Advocates of this idea, which Gates also supports, say that requiring a little long division before sending a an e-mail proves that there is a real person behind the message, not just a hyperactive spam server. Presumably, spammers wouldn’t want to waste their time and computer capacity solving one math problem per e-mail, so they would stop sending out mass mailings.
The drawbacks to both proposed solutions to the spam dilemma are not hard to see. It’s hard to get people to pay for what they used to get for free. Charging for e-mail would make the “digital divide” (the gap between the technological “haves” and “have-nots”) even wider, and even making people solve math problems with their computers would set up an unfair distinction between those who know how to do the required calculations and those who don’t. Not to mention that such a system would be cumbersome and expensive to administer. On top of that, spammers would find a way to get around it anyway. As Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet said, “I continue to be impressed by the agility of spammers."
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