Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Spam Comes From Florida?

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I thought spam came from Taiwan, China and Korea these days. I was wrong.

AOL puts heat on alleged Sunshine State spammers: America Online reported on Wednesday that it has filed a civil suit against four Florida-based individuals who the company believes are responsible for sending massive amounts of spam e-mail to its members.

The giant Internet service provider said it brought the case in the U.S. District Court of Florida, Orlando Division, because the so-called “Sunshine State spammers” violated the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and Florida common law, by sending an avalanche of unsolicited e-mail to its subscribers. In the suit, AOL seeks damages of $1.6 million in addition to other forms of compensation, including potential asset forfeiture.

According to Dulles, Va.-based AOL, the Florida defendants teamed up with parties in Thailand to barrage AOL members with more than 35 million spam messages over the course of several years. The company said it first became aware of the group in January 2003 via a wave of 1.5 million user complaints and immediately launched an investigation into the spammer's operations. The scheme reportedly involved an onslaught of e-mail messages loaded with hypertext links advertising low mortgage rate offers for AOL members.

As part of its investigation, AOL said it was able to procure some 40 pages of text taken from instant-messaging conversations held between the defendants and their alleged Thailand partners. In those conversations, seized under a court order, the parties openly referred to AOL as a potential “goldmine” for spam and detailed their methods for evading the company's spam protection tools.

…

Florida is known as something of a hotbed for spam-related activity, with the Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) identifying three of the world's top 10 known spammers as residing in the state, more than any other in the United States.

I guess at least it shows not everything is outsourced…

Posted in Florida | Comments Off on Spam Comes From Florida?

Wonkette Tries Out New Edwards Campaign Theme

Posted on February 18, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Not safe for (some) work: Wonkette has a very funny, but not very clean, suggestion for a new Edwards campaign slogan. I think this would have to be done via independent non-campaign expenditures….

Posted in Completely Different | Comments Off on Wonkette Tries Out New Edwards Campaign Theme

Super Tuesday Comes Early

Posted on February 18, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I love the idea of an Edwards-Kerry race, although the final results suggest it wasn't quite as close as some of the earlier partial results made it sound. Will everyone else drop out now, please?

Meanwhile, the Chandler result is even more exciting, because the defeated Republican, in a Republican seat, started out her campaign proclaiming she'd be a Bush robot. Then she got a bit scared and asked him not to come on down after all. The House Republican leadership came down instead and offered the district a bribe—serious pork if you elect the Republican, nada if you don't (this was a remarkably honest description of a national policy adopted in the last two years). And that failed too. Big time.

Given the advantages of incumbency and the way districts are drawn, it's hard to seriously believe the House will change hands in the next election, especially given the Texas redistricting. But I imagine that Bush will be visiting somewhat fewer Republican marginals.

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on Super Tuesday Comes Early

Mysteries of Google Dept.

Posted on February 17, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

In the past two days or so, more than a thousand people who have Googled for search strings including the words “Kerry” and “Fonda” got sent to an empty trackback page for NYT Falls for Hoax Kerry-Fonda Photo instead of to the article itself. I have no idea why. (If search string weirdness appeals to you, check out the Discourse.net Zeitgeist.)

Posted in Discourse.net | 3 Comments

10th Circuit Blesses ‘Do Not Call’ Program

Posted on February 17, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Longtime (in internet years) readers will recall my interest in the validity of the 'do-not-call' registry. The 10th Circuit, having vacated the lower court's injunction, has now issued its ruling on the merits, and it upholds the registry. A quick look suggests this case doesn't break new ground. It doesn't try to untangle the confused Supreme Court jurisprudence on content discrimination. Rather, it just says that what the government did here is reasonable (and more likely to be effective than the rule struck down in Hudson Valley, the newsracks case) and that the action is permitted by the statute.

Continue reading →

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | Comments Off on 10th Circuit Blesses ‘Do Not Call’ Program

The Day the Print Server Died

Posted on February 17, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

For a long time the home network was fine. Then yesterday nothing would print. The problem seems to be the print server. I've proved that the printer cable from the print server to the printer works. The printer self-tests fine. I've tried two different cables from the Netgear PS111W print server to the Linksys BEFW11S4. The print server also has a wireless card in it (free if you mail in the coupon, but it took six months to turn up), so even if the cable were bad, it should work.

None of the computers on the network see the printer any more. After I reset the print server to the factory defaults, the administration software was able to tell it was there…sort of. Although it comes up as the sole item on the list of print servers when I do a survey, and I was even able to rename the print server from the default name to 'P2', the configuration software was initially unable to do any other sort of configuration, or even to read the settings. Yet the config settings are there: I can get the print server to print them out to the server.

In desperation, I read the manual and downloaded the binary file to re-flash the firmware. The manual does not list the error message I get from the administration software. But it does have instructions on how to configure the print server via FTP. I try that (I know the IP number because that's on the printout when you dump the config file). The print server will not respond to FTP—I get a 10060 (timeout) error. I can force my win98se computer to “find” the printer on the network if I give it the name, but I can't get it to install a new printer to that name (or take existing printers back online) because the printer installation system thinks the printer is not found or offline. I bet Linux users don't have these problems.

Having downloaded the firmware flash binary, I look for instructions on how to apply it. There are none in the manual, and none in any evident place on the support page .

Basically, the print server is not responding to tcp/ip requests. Maybe flashing the firmware would help, maybe it's hardware. I think it's just out of warranty, so it may be planned obsolescence. I've spent about three hours debugging this, and I didn't fix it. I've emailed my story to tech support, and if they don't have useful ideas, then I suppose I give up and buy a new print server.

I think I know a fair amount about computers, and usually feel proud that I can debug most of the domestic problems that come up on MS products, PC hardware issues, and the home network. But this experience makes me wonder: was this knowledge helpful here? If the right answer is, buy a new print server, a complete tech ignoramus could have reached that conclusion much more quickly….

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 3 Comments