jfields

As opposed to just drinking the alcohol and feeling really bad.

And I can pull up a ton of real life stories of people killed by legally obtained guns, or killed trying to use guns for self defense. The facts do not support gun ownership as a safety improvement. They may improve your chances of retaining property and material posessions, but not your life. It is all about what you want to do. If you want to own a gun, you will find justification to do so. That is fine. Rather than false or misleading statistics and sketchy anecdotes of how someone might have done better had they had a gun, just say, "I want to own a gun because I like them." No statistics, no "facts", just your personal opinion. There is no rebuttal to that. Damnit, I just gave you a way to get in the last word in this arguement.

Should the rest of us start with our 11B jokes now?

My parents had the book "How babies are made". As I recall, we had that discussion before I found the Playboys.

The sooner the better. My parents sat me down and had the discussion when I was really little, not even killing kittens yet.

It is admittedly ballpark, but here is the calculation: Number of junk e-mails per day * 10 seconds per message to identify and hit delete * number of employees = Total time wasted deleting junk Total time spent * billable hourly rate = total cost I work at an office that is geared around billable hours to clients, so each employee has a very specific, tangible billable rate. If they are deleting spam, they aren't billing. The cost I threw out does not include higher server utilization or bandwidth, just directly lost revenue. Not an exact number, but it gives an idea of how much spam can cost a small business. The anti-spam software we bought and my time invested with it have had an excellent ROI. PS Here is another tool you could use: http://www.cmsconnect.com/Marketing/spamcalc.htm

I believe you, but that is some really scary shit! Welcome to a new dad's nightmare.

I voted "now". Explain it before they can possibly do it. That way, they will know what the heck is going on when the little boy next door wants to play doctor.

What is the mail setup where you work? What kind of e-mail server software do you use? Exchange? Are you an admin with rights to muck with stuff, or just an over-spammed end user?

Is this for personal use, or are you looking to block spam at a company? If the latter, I can offer you some suggestions. Yeah. My personal website is so far out of date that it isn't funny.

Erno, Yahoo and Hotmail have gotten a little better, but they are still well known for (knowingly or unknowingly) harboring spammers. The free services are havens for spammers, because they don't have to pay for the address or mail server. When the account gets cancelled, they already have 10 more set up. Filtering out e-mail from those two providers isn't "widespread", but I wouldn't call it rare either. It depends on the business or individual, and their willingness to miss the occasional valid e-mail. At my office, we can't afford to block them completely. I can do that on my personal e-mail server. There is a slightly less harsh alternative, which is to send an auto-reply to every incoming e-mail that originates at one of those services. The reply has a specific text string that people can use to bypass the filter. But that requires a human being to read the reply and use it. Most spammers won't bother, so that cuts the spam, but allows valid yahoo and hotmail users to get their mail through. Of course, that system puts the brunt of the work on the sender, which is an inconvenience to them. But over 90% of our incoming yahoo and hotmail mail is spam, so I figure it is worth inconveniencing the others. The cost that spam inflicts on the small office where I work runs to about $5,000 / year. If I didn't have the spam filters I set up, it would be about an order of magnitude higher, or more, at about $60,000 / year. That is just too much wasted time and money, so getting strict on spam is the only answer.

The more fundamental question is why do you want to reply-spam the spammers? It would almost never get to the right person, and you risk being as bad as them by having your replies go to an innocent person. The reply addresses are usually either forged or invalid. If you are in a situation where you can do it, subscribe to a realtime blackhole list. Spamhaus and MAPS are good ones. If you aren't worried about missing messages, you can also just add the entire domain or IP block to your block list.

Erno, When I saw your thread title, I thought you were talking about filtering out all e-mail from Yahoo.com senders, which we generally do. Hotmail users get the heave-ho also. As to your actual question about how Yahoo mail filtering (doesn't) work, I have no idea. Sorry.

Sebazz, I've always been an atheist, but your religion sounds pretty good! I may just convert.

Oh, I have a good idea. I just choose to accept only that part and toss the rest away as superfluous.

Hmm. Interesting questions. I'm an atheist, and I pretty much sum my interpersonal, non-denominational, non-divine religious beliefs as "Do to others as you'd have them do to you". That's it. That is my "religion" in a nutshell. I think everyone is entitled to their own opinions and the freedom to think and believe as they see fit, as long as it doesn't obstruct those same freedoms in others. In the very limited scope of what I care about, I do believe others should see it the same way. If I'm proselytizing anything, it is general tolerance that transcends religion.

Knowing Skreamer, imagine my relief when I discovered he was referring to definition 5!

My bad. Very true. Sometimes you just don't need to know. Once again, heartily agreed. There, that wasn't so bad.

Kallend, When can bygones be bygones? When you stop keeping score and start playing for the love of the game, does it matter what last week's score was, or the game your grandfather played when he was young? Bringing it back to education, isn't "the game" about education? If it is really about education, and not revenge, then isn't a good fair game where the best person at the sport wins the objective? Going to the point you mentioned about reparations, that is part of the issue. I am already paying reparations, in the manner of opportunities that are less accessible to me, by order of the government. You want more, perhaps financial help from me, that is fine. I'll just sue all the people that discriminated against my ancestors, and the settlement will give me plenty of money to pay you. It just doesn't work. You can't go backward like that. If being discriminated against entitles you to a hand out, then every single entity backward through history is both entitled and owing. There comes a point where the perpetual reversals have only hurt everyone, instead of helping anyone. Isn't real equality what everyone really wants? Once people get to a mature far-sighted view of things, the only thing that makes any sense is true, blind equality. It is the only way to make sure nobody from that point forward is slighted, whatever their race/color/gender/sexual preference might be. No matter when you come to that defining moment, someone will have recently been on the short end. Things will never be fair for every group until things are fair for everyone.

Well, let's take another look... If the "game" is 200 years, the people that struggled uphill are dead by halftime. Why sentence a new generation of people to struggle up the opposite hill for their lifetimes? Eventually, there comes a time when both sides need to apologize to each other, level the field, and make it a pick-up game instead of keeping score. I'd rather have a level playing field than a teeter-totter.

Yes, you are right. It is about the pendulum. You are right there too. But perpetuating racism does not help the people that have been oppressed in past generations. Even though I didn't do it, I'm sorry lots of minorities got the shaft. Guess what? My ancestors got screwed too, but I'm not looking for handouts or quotas to help me at the specific expense of Germans and Russians. If it goes past straight, aren't you just setting up discrimination for new generations of people to be hostile about? How is that any better than what was done to you, or your ancestors? The only thing that can help right the great wrong is to stop the racism and work to provide better opportunities for people of all races. You can't simultaneously support equality and government-sanctioned racism. You have to pick one or the other.

Kevin, I agree that things need to be done to even the playing field with education of minorities. But I actually support the actions against the U of M. I think it is the best long-term solution and the ethically right thing to do. It is like a doctor who treats only symptoms, without looking at diseases or injuries. We can give painkillers all day long, but if someone femured and has their bone sticking out of their leg, the painkillers will never fix the problem. It might hurt a lot for a little while, but the bone needs to be set, so it can heal. Education is the same way. Affirmative action treats the inequalities, but not the causes. Compensating, or even overcompensating, just creates different inequalities. Aren't we striving for an equal playing field? Resources need to be thrown at bringing up the educational opportunities in poor areas, rather than propping up the products of those poor educational systems when they hit college age.

Not at all, actually.

In a bank robbery, does the driver of the getaway car just get a ticket for speeding? IF the gun shop was negligent and contributed to do the deaths of the people, then they share part of the blame. If they did wrong, I'm fine with them being sued. You are completely correct that the snipers could have bought the guns from some other sloppy gun store. That is exactly the point. The fact that a gun they sold was used in a crime is not the fault of the gun shop. Their sloppiness and disregard for the law is what is getting them in trouble, not their choice in merchandise. If the mismanaged and careless gun shops get sued out of business, what have we lost? You haven't lost the ability to buy a gun. Your selection of weapons isn't diminished. We have just closed some of the cracks where people buy weapons improperly, without harming the responsible, legal gun purchasers at all. What is objectionable about that?

Lou, I enlisted and served. I don't know what Bill does or does not do for the US, nor do I care. It is his business. When you throw everyone that casts a wary eye on US actions overseas together as unsupportive of our country, you are generalizing in the worst way. Even when I was in the military, I watched the news and disagreed with some of what the US did. That has no reflection on my desire to be a citizen, or in my commitment to my military obligation. There were times when I geared up and went to Greenramp for shit I thought was ridiculous. But I'd made a promise and I was prepared to fulfill it. Being a good soldier, or a good citizen does not require blind faith. Educated and informed support of the facets of policy we agree with is more important. The soldier is required to do even the things he does not like. The non-military citizen is not. It is that difference, and the freedom to criticize that helps mold future policy. Civilians can help keep people in the military safer by being gadflies and steering politicians down responsible paths of action, so the lives of soldiers are not thrown away without cause.