Man gets 9 years for spamming...

[tlhInganHom]

A man has been sentenced to nine years in jail by a Virginia judge for sending millions of junk emails, or "spamming".

Jeremy Jaynes, 30, is the first person in the US to get a prison term in a spam case. He is said to have been the world's eighth most prolific spammer.

By selling sham products and services advertised in his messages, he earned up to $750,000 (£398,000) per month.

Jaynes has appealed, and the court has put off the start of his prison term because the new law raises questions.

Under Virginia law, sending bulk email using fake addresses is a crime.

"It was not just sending bulk emails, he was falsifying the routing information, disguising the origin," said prosecutor Lisa Hicks Thomas.

"The end user couldn't say: don't send this to me," she added.

Ms Thomas said she was pleased with the ruling and hoped it would be upheld.

'Never again'

Jaynes was operating though an America Online (AOL) server in Loudoun County, where the world's largest Internet services provider is based, and is believed to have sent some 10m unwanted emails a day.

Products advertised in his emails included a "Fed-Ex refund processor" which he claimed would have allowed people to earn $75 an hour by working from home.

Jaynes, who is from North Carolina, will appeal on the grounds that he has been charged as an out-of-state resident under a Virginia law that has only just come into effect.

His sentence is the harshest punishment handed down so far for junk emailing in the US, and appears to be a strong signal that authorities will not tolerate the spamming business.

Jaynes has pledged that regardless of the final outcome of his trial, he will never again be involved in what he called the "email marketing business".

It is believed that 70% of all emails are spam.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4426949.stm

I don't know how I feel about this. I'm certainly not ardently against it, though.

And I love the irony that he was operating through an AOL server.

[KillerGodMan]

FINALLY, that *can't say in the forums* was stopped, about HALF of those daily spam messages were sent to me

[richardson]

This is why I love hotmail and yahoo.

ABSOLUTELY NO SPAM! :D :D :D :D :D :D

[tlhInganHom]

...My hotmail account gets spammed to death!

[KillerGodMan]

This is why I love hotmail and yahoo.

ABSOLUTELY NO SPAM! :D :D :D :D :D :D

Both of mine get spammed to high heaven

[Marill]

LOL, you should of seen my yahoo account recently. About 70 emails in my inbox, all spam, and about 30 in my bulk mail folder.. and that was just after one day. I'm telling you, none were proper emails.

[tlhInganHom]

If you turn on the bulk filter in Yahoo! mail, it will catch pretty much ALL of the spam. If you turn on the junk mail filter on Hotmail, it does diddley and they try to sell you "advanced" spam protection.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Or you could just not use Hotmail or Yahoo.

I have a number of email accounts with semi-obscure providers (although I don't think Gmail counts as obscure), and the only one I get any form of spam at is my University of Ottawa account, mostly because it's been whored out to other academic institutions.

[Celeste]

Gah, I don't know what you're talking about. Hotmail is the spam dump capital of the internet, and I had to switch email accounts cause the Yahoo spam was getting so bad! I actualy pay for my own email server now because of it. And I still get spam.

[Zeke]

...the only one I get any form of spam at is my University of Ottawa account, mostly because it's been whored out to other academic institutions.

The University of Ottawa: Canada's pimp.

(On a related note, I find it telling that when you search for "university ottawa" on Google, Carleton is the first result. U of O? Fourth.)

[tlhInganHom]

Odd, I honestly hardly get any spam on Yahoo! mail, and what I do get is filtered into my bulk folder. I suppose that may be because my Yahoo! email address sounds like a spammer address anyway, lol; "tlhinganhom@yahoo". It might also be because I religously tell Yahoo! when any spam gets through, so anything else coming from the same server or address will get filtered in the future. Either way, no idea.

Gmail also has an excellant spam filter.

[Zeke]

I suppose that may be because my Yahoo! email address sounds like a spammer address anyway, lol; "tlhinganhom@yahoo".

True. I'd love to see StrongBad try to pronounce it (http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail9.html).

[evay]

I suppose that may be because my Yahoo! email address sounds like a spammer address anyway, lol; "tlhinganhom@yahoo".
Or at least it looks like you misspelled "tlhIngan Hol." (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/) Frankly, I think this guy's punishment should be to open, sort, and recycle bulk mail and to take calls from telemarketers for the next nine years.

[tlhInganHom]

Actually tlhInganHom means "little klingon". And, yeah, I kind of want to see Strong Bad try to pronounce it too. I bet he'd call me "thing-a-ma-bob", then "thingie-bob", and finally just "bob".

[mudshark]

Odd, I honestly hardly get any spam on Yahoo! mail, and what I do get is filtered into my bulk folder.

[ ... ]

Gmail also has an excellant spam filter.That it does. :D

Yahoo wasn't bad, though. My problem with them now is that since their big "upgrade" last year, I can hardly ever get in without it freezing up my (poor old) system.

[Zeke]

Actually tlhInganHom means "little klingon".

Hmm. This could come in handy....

Job Interviewer: It says on your résumé that you speak six languages, Mr. Hayman.
Me: That's right. English, French, German, Latin, and classical Greek.
Job Interviewer: We do run into a lot of geeks here in the hi-tech industry, but I don't know that I'd call them classical... anyway, you only named five languages. What's the sixth one?
Me: Well, I know a little Klingon.
Job Interviewer: Really.
Me: I speak the literal truth.
Job Interviewer: All right. Say hello to me in Klingon.
(long pause)
Me: Um... I refuse. It is beneath my dignity as a warrior.
Job Interviewer: Get out of my office.

[Hotaru]

Job Interviewer: All right. Say hello to me in Klingon.
(long pause)
Me: Um... I refuse. It is beneath my dignity as a warrior.
Job Interviewer: Get out of my office.

Zeke, you should understand that most people don't know Klingon, so all you half to do is say a random word. Try to use H, K, T and G, they seem pretty common.

So Hello could be... H'ktg.

[tlhInganHom]

...Unless I'm the interviewer, in which case it would be a trick question.

P.S. There is no word for "hello" in Klingon, though they do have two similarly-used phrases. The most common is "nuqneH", which literally means, "What do you want?" The second is less common, as a Klingon will usually just state what he wants, rather than use formalities like greetings (hence, "What do you want?") The second is also as close to "hello" as you could probably get in Klingon. It is "qajatlh", which means, "I speak to you." Note that this is a statement -- almost a command in the first person; you're telling them what is going to happen.

I might say that I need a life if I weren't a Linguistics major http://www.halspages.com/smileys/wink.gif

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I swear that language was born in a random-letter generator.

[NAHTMMM]

^Then you're a much more suspicious type than I am ;)

[tlhInganHom]

I swear that language was born in a random-letter generator.

http://kli.org/tlh/sounds.html http://www.halspages.com/smileys/lilspin.gif

[Chancellor Valium]

I swear that language was born in a random-letter generator.
Couldn't agree more...


(confusing them would be like confusing "f" and "g" and English).
Of course. Those well-known languages of "f" and "g" :P :wink:

[evay]

I swear that language was born in a random-letter generator.
No, but Marc Okrand made very sure to keep track of how much he was borrowing from any given human language, so if it leaned too much on one or another he would know to stop and pick another direction. Klingon has the verb at the end of the sentence, for example, which only Russian and I think something Asian does.

[mudshark]

Klingon has the verb at the end of the sentence, for example, which only Russian and I think something Asian does.
"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth."
Mark Twain -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

[tlhInganHom]

Actually in German, the verb is always in the second position, unless it's preceeded by a model (http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/german/grammar/gr-pmod.htm) (which is actually a just the subjunctive of a weak verb) or you're talking in the (Imperfekt) past tense (http://german.about.com/library/verbs/blverb_past.htm), both of which put the verb at the end in its infinitive form. There are a couple other exceptions, I think, like würden which is really just the subjunctive of a weak verb, like the modals.

Pfftt, I hope I explained that correctly. It's so much easier to just speak it than it is to pick apart the grammar, sometimes. http://www.halspages.com/smileys/lilspin.gif

Speaking of word order, Klingon is also very unique in that it always goes object-subject, i.e. object-verb-noun. (Just about every other language keeps it the other way 'round.) Klingon also eiminates quite a few words by turning most pronouns and some adjectives into sufixes and prefixes. Hence, something that could take several words to say in English (i.e. "I hit you hard.") Would be fewer in Klingon (pe'vIl qaqIp.)

[evay]

Klingon also eiminates quite a few words by turning most pronouns and some adjectives into sufixes and prefixes. Hence, something that could take several words to say in English (i.e. "I hit you hard.") Would be fewer in Klingon (pe'vIl qaqIp.)
Reverse-borrowed from Latin? and Hebrew? I think in Latin, the suffixes on various words indicate the subect to the point where it can be dropped from the sentence, and I seem to recall that in Hebrew, verbs have gender as well as number and tense (i.e., the verb form for "he says" is different from the form for "she says" -- it would be like "he says, she sayes" or something).

[Zeke]

Pfft. Suffixes. Anyone can handle that. Now Inuktitut -- there's a language with cojones. It uses infixes.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Gaelic. Mutative consonants make my brain dribble out my ears.

[mudshark]

Actually in German, the verb is always in the second position, unless it's preceeded by a model (http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/german/grammar/gr-pmod.htm) (which is actually a just the subjunctive of a weak verb) or you're talking in the (Imperfekt) past tense (http://german.about.com/library/verbs/blverb_past.htm), both of which put the verb at the end in its infinitive form. There are a couple other exceptions, I think, like würden which is really just the subjunctive of a weak verb, like the modals.

Pfftt, I hope I explained that correctly. It's so much easier to just speak it than it is to pick apart the grammar, sometimes. http://www.halspages.com/smileys/lilspin.gif You're right, and the explanation looks good from here. It's just hard for me sometimes to pass up a chance to use a good Mark Twain quote. :wink:

[Xeroc]

Well, I'm glad another one was caught, although I definitely think we need some sort of structural change to prevent spam, as long as the spammers can spam, we won't be able to capture them all.


Also, by the way I get almost no spam, and what very little spam I get is caught by my spam filter. This is mainly due to the fact I give my email away to only trustworthy sources.


Well, as for a hard language to learn, I don't know from experience, but I've heard Chinese (Mandarin) is one of the hardest.

Why, might you ask?

Well, they say so as it has over 50,000 characters (although you really only absolutely need about 3,000 for everyday life) and that the strokes can get awfully complex:
http://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/chinese_strokes2.gif

[Sa'ar Chasm]

In addition, the tone of the syllable can change the meaning.

In Cantonese, cho can mean "grass" or a half dozen completely unrelated things depending on the pitch given to it by the speaker.

[Chancellor Valium]

In addition, the tone of the syllable can change the meaning.

In Cantonese, cho can mean "grass" or a half dozen completely unrelated things depending on the pitch given to it by the speaker.

In other words, never teach cantonese to someone who's tone-deaf :P
Seriously, this was supposedly the reason Chairman Mao gave so few speeches towards the end of his life....he had (I think) Parkinsons, and (I'm not too sure on this either) it causes a deadening of speech.....

[NAHTMMM]

Can you just imagine trying to write some of those Chinese characters with a blunt pencil? :evil: ;)

[PointyHairedJedi]

5MV - Home of the Kings of OT. :D

[mudshark]

What? It was on-topic for at least ten or eleven posts, and then there was another part of a post up there ^ somewhere that was on-topic. :P

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Taw-pick? What is this taw-pick you speak of?

Is it linear?

[Hotaru]

Sa'ar, you see that thing the original post is about? The thing that's in the topic line? That's the topic. They're elusive little buggers, the stay around for an hour or two then BAM! gone. While other forums have gone crazy attempting to keep the topic going strong in it's place, 5MV has allowed for a more natural course, and lets the topic go as it pleases.

It's all very fascinating.

[Xeroc]

Sa'ar, you see that thing the original post is about? The thing that's in the topic line? That's the topic. They're elusive little buggers, the stay around for an hour or two then BAM! gone. While other forums have gone crazy attempting to keep the topic going strong in it's place, 5MV has allowed for a more natural course, and lets the topic go as it pleases.

It's all very fascinating.
Yes, our topics (and off-topics :)) aren't planned, but rather grow organically from a seed to grow upwards, reaching for the sun, then branch out horizontally into a myriad of forms and eventually release pollen into the great sky of the internet to grow and invade other topics and forums. :D

[KillerGodMan]

*Ahem* on the note of the original topic here;

Sympatico DSL= super crap internet, super crap e-mail.
Cogeco T3= super good internet and e-mail, PLUS a firewall that NOTHING can get past.

KillerGM done.

[Scooter]

OT: Verbs at the end of the sentence: classical Latin. And verb endings do replace pronouns (veni, vidi, vici).

T: I get no spam at all on my CUNY account. One spam solution is to get your own domain ($9 at godaddy). But you have to keep your address off of web pages.

[Chancellor Valium]

I get the occasional bit of spam on hotmail, usually from somewhere like algeria. I read it with amused disinterest, then consider writing a sharp reply, and finally just block the damn thing....

[catalina_marina]

I don't really care about spam. It all gets filtered out, just because the senders are not on my list. I had to do that since I've been getting way too much spam since I've made the address. But recently, I've been getting spam with large attachments. Those are quite annoying, since they still count towards my limit. I'll probably start using my gmail account whenever I have time to tell everyone.