Hi. I'm going to ask a curious question. Does anyone have a feel for the
"average" salaries experienced Lisp developers are receiving in the U.S?
Just a rough indication is good enough. No, I'm not going to use this info
as a bludgeon on my current employer (I'm quite happy); indeed, I don't need
it for any particular endeavor other than useful knowledge. Thanks for any
help.
Regards,
--
David E. Young
"For wisdom is more precious than rubies,
and nothing you desire can compare with her."
-- Prov. 8:11
"But all the world understands my language."
-- Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
> From: "David E. Young" <·······@nospampoboxnospam.com>
> Does anyone have a feel for the "average" salaries experienced Lisp
> developers are receiving in the U.S?
The median is zero, because more than half are either unemployed or
working in some other area because there are no LISP jobs available.
But you asked about average, which I assume you mean to be arithmetic
mean, so I suggest you take a poll here and add up all the info and
divide by the number. In my case, it's zero. I have 15 years LISP
programming experience, 22 years total programming experience, but that
isn't enough to qualify for any job at all currently. If somebody wants
to hire me, I'm still available, and not yet homeless for another
couple months or so.
http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.921-LISP.txt
In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>, ··········@YahooGroups.Com
wrote:
> > From: "David E. Young" <·······@nospampoboxnospam.com>
> > Does anyone have a feel for the "average" salaries experienced Lisp
> > developers are receiving in the U.S?
>
> The median is zero, because more than half are either unemployed or
> working in some other area because there are no LISP jobs available.
But if they're working in another area then they are still (presumably)
making a salary. The median salary for, say, experienced chess players
is not necessarily zero just because most of them make their living
doing something other than playing chess.
> But you asked about average, which I assume you mean to be arithmetic
> mean, so I suggest you take a poll here and add up all the info and
> divide by the number.
I should think the results of such a poll would be subject to
significant self-selection bias.
E.
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
> http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.921-LISP.txt
do you really think an employer hires you with this resume? It's not the
content, but the presentation. Just try to put yourself in the position
of a manager, who is searching someone for a typical business
application, like a bookkeeping software and then try to design your
resume that the manager thinks, you are the right one (assuming you are
not reluctant to write bookkeeping software).
Another hint, which worked at least for me: Don't write "part-time". Most
employers want full time. I was registered in a freelancer database as
part-time and nobody offered me a job for weeks. Then I changed it to
full-time and got some offers within days and finally found a nice job
(using Java).
And a bit more On-Topic: I'm interested in your Hex-game. Did you
implement it in Lisp? I've done one in Java (not terminal-based :-)
http://jhex.sf.net
I planned to do a general gaming framework for all sorts of board games,
but perhaps Lisp is a better language to implement it than Java.
--
Frank Bu�, ··@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de> writes:
> ··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
>
> > http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.921-LISP.txt
>
> do you really think an employer hires you with this resume? It's not the
> content, but the presentation. Just try to put yourself in the position
> of a manager, who is searching someone for a typical business
> application, like a bookkeeping software and then try to design your
> resume that the manager thinks, you are the right one (assuming you are
> not reluctant to write bookkeeping software).
Yes, he should at least rename it: Resume.921-LISP.doc
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
> From: Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com>
> Yes, he should at least rename it: Resume.921-LISP.doc
Renaming a plain-ASCII-text document to have extension .doc is a very
bad idea, because that extension indicates to most Web browsers that
the file is a MicroSoft Word document. Browsers that have plug-ins for
MS-Word would try to use that, which would get confused at seeing a
plain-text document instead, while browsers which don't have such
plug-ins would refuse to show the file at all, insisting it be
downloaded as binary file instead. Either way, the file would not be
viewable correctly or at all.
Now if I had access to MicroSoft Word here, and a way to upload MS-Word
documents, maybe converting the text to MS-Word format might be useful,
but I don't have such access so the idea is moot.
··········@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>> From: Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com>
>> Yes, he should at least rename it: Resume.921-LISP.doc
>
> Renaming a plain-ASCII-text document to have extension .doc is a very
> bad idea, because that extension indicates to most Web browsers that
> the file is a MicroSoft Word document.
Standards-compliant Web browsers distinguish files on the basis of the
MIME type with which they are served -- not the filename. The HTTP spec
actually doesn't depend on "file extensions" at all. If the Web server
is sending the file out with a "text/plain" MIME type, then no properly
functioning Web browser should treat it as a binary.
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Email address is spamtrapped. s/example/whoi/
"Outlook not so good." -- Magic 8-Ball Software Reviews
In article <············@baldur.whoi.edu>,
"Karl A. Krueger" <········@example.edu> wrote:
> ··········@yahoogroups.com wrote:
> >> From: Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com>
> >> Yes, he should at least rename it: Resume.921-LISP.doc
> >
> > Renaming a plain-ASCII-text document to have extension .doc is a very
> > bad idea, because that extension indicates to most Web browsers that
> > the file is a MicroSoft Word document.
>
> Standards-compliant Web browsers distinguish files on the basis of the
> MIME type with which they are served -- not the filename. The HTTP spec
> actually doesn't depend on "file extensions" at all. If the Web server
> is sending the file out with a "text/plain" MIME type, then no properly
> functioning Web browser should treat it as a binary.
Yes, but many (perhaps even most) web servers will use the filename
extension as a heuristic to figure out what mime type to use. Like it
or not, filename extension as metadata is part of our world and probably
will be forever.
E.
"Karl A. Krueger" <········@example.edu> writes:
> Standards-compliant Web browsers distinguish files on the basis of the
> MIME type with which they are served -- not the filename.
Yes, but he wasn't talking about Standards-compliant web browsers---he
was talking about the one 99% of internet users (and 100% of hiring
managers) use. Life's though, but wishing it so doesn't make it so.
--ap (who's spent waaaay too much time these
past few bugs working around that particular
browser's set of peculiar behaviour. Makes
a mockery of reading CSS standards and such,
I'll tell you that.)
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
> Now if I had access to MicroSoft Word here, and a way to upload
> MS-Word documents, maybe converting the text to MS-Word format
> might be useful, but I don't have such access so the idea is moot.
OpenOffice.org has decent file export capabilities so you can save
the file in Microsoft Word format if you like.
--
David Magda <dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca>, http://www.magda.ca/
Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under
the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well
under the new. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Prince_, Chapter VI
David Magda <··················@ee.ryerson.ca> writes:
> ··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>
> > Now if I had access to MicroSoft Word here, and a way to upload
> > MS-Word documents, maybe converting the text to MS-Word format
> > might be useful, but I don't have such access so the idea is moot.
>
> OpenOffice.org has decent file export capabilities so you can save
> the file in Microsoft Word format if you like.
I'd like to stress my point here.
Just save a plain ASCII file under a file ending with ".doc"
(or if you really need fancy formatting, a plain RTF file under same ".doc").
Why such as file is better than a MS-Word-formatted file?
- because it cannot be contamined with a virus,
- because it is much smaller,
- because it can be read by ANY version of MS-Word,
- because it can be read by ANY version of ANY word processor,
- because it can still be read by ANY editor,
- because you don't need 900 MB to install OpenOffice, just a plain editor.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
> > From: Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com>
> > Yes, he should at least rename it: Resume.921-LISP.doc
>
> Renaming a plain-ASCII-text document to have extension .doc is a very
> bad idea, because that extension indicates to most Web browsers that
> the file is a MicroSoft Word document.
Yes, that's the idea!
> Browsers that have plug-ins for
> MS-Word would try to use that,
Indeed, that's what's intended!
> which would get confused at seeing a
> plain-text document instead,
No. MS-Word is quite able to recognize a plain ASCII or a plain RTF
file, whatever it's extension, and to process it correctly.
> while browsers which don't have such
> plug-ins would refuse to show the file at all, insisting it be
> downloaded as binary file instead.
Which is no problem, since only the techies inhibit downloading of
MS-Word or other binary files from random web browsers.
The typical hiring manager doesn't know any better.
> Either way, the file would not be
> viewable correctly or at all.
If you have a Microsoft License to Kill^W use MS-Word, please try it!
> Now if I had access to MicroSoft Word here, and a way to upload MS-Word
> documents, maybe converting the text to MS-Word format might be useful,
> but I don't have such access so the idea is moot.
Ah! You haven't. Hence my hint: just rename it .doc and it'll be better.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> writes:
>··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>> Now if I had access to MicroSoft Word here, and a way to upload
>> MS-Word documents, maybe converting the text to MS-Word format might
>> be useful, but I don't have such access so the idea is moot.
>
> Ah! You haven't. Hence my hint: just rename it .doc and it'll be better.
Not really. Plain ASCII text documents tend to convert and render
rather poorly in MS Word versions that I've had a chance to use.
The reasons for the poor formatting range from font availability
(Courier vs. Andale Mono vs. Fixed vs. whatever else) to hard TAB size
(which Microsoft Word users have rarely, if ever at all that is, any
idea about) or even local customizations to `normal.dot'.
I'd never use Microsoft Word to present my resume, since I believe that
plain ASCII, HTML or PDF is fine, but if I would depend on Microsoft
Word for presenting my resume's layout the _real_ DOC format would
certainly be my choise. There's no other way to be certain (or, at
least, as certain as one can be) that the layoyt will be exactly as
I'd want it to be.
Giorgos
Giorgos Keramidas <········@ceid.upatras.gr> writes:
> Not really. Plain ASCII text documents tend to convert and render
> rather poorly in MS Word versions that I've had a chance to use.
>
> The reasons for the poor formatting range from font availability
> (Courier vs. Andale Mono vs. Fixed vs. whatever else) to hard TAB size
> (which Microsoft Word users have rarely, if ever at all that is, any
> idea about) or even local customizations to `normal.dot'.
Oh, and I shouldn't have forgotten the most important breakage reason of
them all. Non-English text and character sets different from
Windows-1253 or whatever the installation choise was, might come out as
Chinese to Greek people and Greek to everyone else.
No, no... definitely not a good idea.
> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> > http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.921-LISP.txt
> do you really think an employer hires you with this resume?
I have no way to know whether your question has any meaning.
> It's not the content, but the presentation.
I'm good at programming computers, but I have no aptitude for
advertising, which is what a resume is supposed to do, and I've never
found anyone competant to help me with my LISP resume. Only a month ago
I finally found somebody to help me format my general programming
resume, but she didn't have time to work on my LISP resume too.
Perhaps you would be able to help me?
> Just try to put yourself in the position of a manager, who is
> searching someone for a typical business application, like a
> bookkeeping software and then try to design your resume that the
> manager thinks, you are the right one (assuming you are not reluctant
> to write bookkeeping software).
When I try that, all that comes to mind is that Robert has done a wide
variety of different kinds of programming using LISP, he doesn't seem
to be restricted to any particular kind of programming, so he probably
can do bookkeeping software too. Given that Robert's salary
requirements are minimal, Robert seems to be the best buy for the job.
> I'm interested in your Hex-game. Did you implement it in Lisp?
Yes, in MacLISP, on MIT-ML or MIT-MC.
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
>> It's not the content, but the presentation.
>
> I'm good at programming computers, but I have no aptitude for
> advertising, which is what a resume is supposed to do, and I've never
> found anyone competant to help me with my LISP resume. Only a month ago
> I finally found somebody to help me format my general programming
> resume, but she didn't have time to work on my LISP resume too.
> Perhaps you would be able to help me?
A start: don't write too much and structure it with tables, bigger fonts
for titles, subtitles etc. You can use free HTML editor like Netscape
Composer (don't know if it is included in Mozilla), if you don't want to
write raw HTML. For example my resume (I didn't design it, it was
generated by a form), which was successful:
http://www.gulp.de/profil/fbuss.html
>> Just try to put yourself in the position of a manager, who is
>> searching someone for a typical business application
>
> When I try that, all that comes to mind is that Robert has done a wide
> variety of different kinds of programming using LISP, he doesn't seem
> to be restricted to any particular kind of programming, so he probably
> can do bookkeeping software too. Given that Robert's salary
> requirements are minimal, Robert seems to be the best buy for the job.
The manager doesn't have the time to read all your text, for example your
stories why you wrote a resume and don't drive to the company like in
1970 (http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resumes.html). He wants
to know what you've learned, short descriptions of your projects, some
ideas what you want to do next and what your main skills are, and when
you can start work.
>> I'm interested in your Hex-game. Did you implement it in Lisp?
>
> Yes, in MacLISP, on MIT-ML or MIT-MC.
Do you want to publish it? Perhaps I can port it to CL and learning some
more Lisp by doing this. What computer algorithm did you implement? I
used a minimax algorithm
(http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs3361_96_spring/2360/lecture-13.html)
from the applet, which I integrated in the game (with permission of the
author).
--
Frank Bu�, ··@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
"Frank Buss" <··@frank-buss.de> wrote in message
·················@newsreader2.netcologne.de...
> ··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
>
> >> It's not the content, but the presentation.
> >
> The manager doesn't have the time to read all your text, for example your
> stories why you wrote a resume and don't drive to the company like in
> 1970 (http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resumes.html). He wants
> to know what you've learned, short descriptions of your projects, some
> ideas what you want to do next and what your main skills are, and when
> you can start work.
Run, don't walk, and pick up a copy of John Lucht's book: "Rites of Passage
... your insider's lifetime guide to executive job-changing".
Note that he has a chapter on breaking the typical rules to make your resume
stand out, including adopting a more chatty style that has a lot of text.
Key is to make sure the managers who don't want to hire you can figure that
out right away, so it doesn't take them any longer to deal with than the
usual 2 pager. Those who are interested won't mind the longer style, since
it's material they'd otherwise need a preliminary interview to learn
(typcially it takes 2-3 interviews to hire someone whose at the mid-level
management or high level engineering stage; I typically had 2 phone
interviews and one where they would fly me out to meet the team before
they'd make an offer the last time I went through it).
That's assuming you are targeting jobs in the 100K+ range; I didn't read
your resume and don't know your experience level. At any level, you might do
well to hire an outplacement service. Essentially, it's training on your job
to find a job. Just remember lots of folks go through outplacement, so while
it's better than ignorance, and you will learn a lot of good techniques for
finding relevant positions, you'll still tend to look like one of the crowd.
That's one reason I liked some of the ideas Lucht presented.
Best of luck,
Gorbag
> From: "Gorbag" <······@invalid.acct>
> That's assuming you are targeting jobs in the 100K+ range;
I find it hard to believe such jobs even exist. The most I ever got
paid for programming computers was about $20/hr. I'd gladly take half
that just to avoid becoming homeless when I max out my credit cards in
a couple more months.
> At any level, you might do well to hire an outplacement service.
That's not an option for me, because I have no money to hire anyone for
anything. I can't even pay the rent. Please somebody hire me for enough
money to at least pay the rent.
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: Salaries for Lisp engineers
Date:
Message-ID: <8yd0q7t0.fsf@ccs.neu.edu>
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>> From: "Gorbag" <······@invalid.acct>
>> That's assuming you are targeting jobs in the 100K+ range;
>
> I find it hard to believe such jobs even exist.
Many people who read this group make at least 6 figures.
> From: Joe Marshall <···@ccs.neu.edu>
> Many people who read this group make at least 6 figures.
Then maybe some of these people have some extra money they'd like to
spend to hire me to do some work on the side, some little project that
would be too boring for them to want to do, but something they'd like
to have done. It might be some boring part of something they're working
on, or a completely independent small application that would distract
them from their regular project if they did the side thing themselves.
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
> > From: Joe Marshall <···@ccs.neu.edu>
> > Many people who read this group make at least 6 figures.
>
> Then maybe some of these people have some extra money they'd like to
> spend to hire me to do some work on the side, some little project that
> would be too boring for them to want to do, but something they'd like
> to have done. It might be some boring part of something they're working
> on, or a completely independent small application that would distract
> them from their regular project if they did the side thing themselves.
Ummm, I guess those who make 6 figures have other things on their mind
as side projects, things like sails, islands in the caribean, diner in
Paris and back to Mountain View in the same night, etc.
Perhaps you should recycle to boat seller, chef de haute cuisine or
insular real estate agent...
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
"Pascal Bourguignon" <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> wrote in message
···················@thalassa.informatimago.com...
> ··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>
> > > From: Joe Marshall <···@ccs.neu.edu>
> > > Many people who read this group make at least 6 figures.
> >
> > Then maybe some of these people have some extra money they'd like to
> > spend to hire me to do some work on the side, some little project that
> > would be too boring for them to want to do, but something they'd like
> > to have done. It might be some boring part of something they're working
> > on, or a completely independent small application that would distract
> > them from their regular project if they did the side thing themselves.
>
> Ummm, I guess those who make 6 figures have other things on their mind
> as side projects, things like sails, islands in the caribean, diner in
> Paris and back to Mountain View in the same night, etc.
I think you both have highly exaggerated ideas of what someone with a
six-figure income has left after taxes.
>>>>> "Gorbag" == Gorbag <······@invalid.acct> writes:
Gorbag> "Pascal Bourguignon" <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> wrote in message
>> Ummm, I guess those who make 6 figures have other things on their mind
>> as side projects, things like sails, islands in the caribean, diner in
>> Paris and back to Mountain View in the same night, etc.
Gorbag> I think you both have highly exaggerated ideas of what someone with a
Gorbag> six-figure income has left after taxes.
That might depend on whether the 6 figures salary is almost 7 figures
or almost 5 figures. I wouldn't mind a 6 figure salary that is almost
7.
Ray
Raymond Toy wrote:
>>>>>>"Gorbag" == Gorbag <······@invalid.acct> writes:
>
>
> Gorbag> "Pascal Bourguignon" <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> wrote in message
>
> >> Ummm, I guess those who make 6 figures have other things on their mind
> >> as side projects, things like sails, islands in the caribean, diner in
> >> Paris and back to Mountain View in the same night, etc.
>
> Gorbag> I think you both have highly exaggerated ideas of what someone with a
> Gorbag> six-figure income has left after taxes.
>
> That might depend on whether the 6 figures salary is almost 7 figures
> or almost 5 figures. I wouldn't mind a 6 figure salary that is almost
> 7.
>
On top of that, in that case, you would have also received a fat tax
break from the "starve-the-government" ideologues in charge :)
Cheers
--
Marco
"Gorbag" <······@invalid.acct> wrote in message
···················@dfw-service2.ext.ray.com...
>
> "Pascal Bourguignon" <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> wrote in message
> ···················@thalassa.informatimago.com...
> > ··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
> >
> > > > From: Joe Marshall <···@ccs.neu.edu>
> > > > Many people who read this group make at least 6 figures.
> > >
> > > Then maybe some of these people have some extra money they'd like to
> > > spend to hire me to do some work on the side, some little project that
> > > would be too boring for them to want to do, but something they'd like
> > > to have done. It might be some boring part of something they're
working
> > > on, or a completely independent small application that would distract
> > > them from their regular project if they did the side thing themselves.
> >
> > Ummm, I guess those who make 6 figures have other things on their mind
> > as side projects, things like sails, islands in the caribean, diner in
> > Paris and back to Mountain View in the same night, etc.
>
> I think you both have highly exaggerated ideas of what someone with a
> six-figure income has left after taxes.
No kidding! I haven't even been able to refuel my jet since oil topped
$40...
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ big pond . com")
> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> don't write too much
Easier said than done. I have 15 years lisp programming experience, in
a wide variety of different areas, and it seems reasonable to include
all the major areas, not leaving anything out. If I decide to leave out
some of the major areas I've programmed in, I have no idea which areas
to leave out.
> and structure it with tables,
Do you mean HTML tables, or just plain-text arrays? I don't have access
to HTML tables from here (lynx is the only browser available), so if I
somehow created an HTML table I wouldn't be able to see what I was
doing to see if I got it right at all. If you mean plain-text arrays,
please tell me more what you have in mind.
> bigger fonts for titles, subtitles etc.
I have no access to fonts at all here. My access to the net is via
VT100 emulator into Unix shell. That's single-monospaced-font only,
except that alternate colors (locally on Macintosh) are used to
represent links and bold etc. So if I converted the resume from plain
ASCII text to HTML, the best I could do is <b>title</b>, no large font
etc.
> You can use free HTML editor like Netscape Composer (don't know if it
> is included in Mozilla), if you don't want to write raw HTML.
From the name, I would guess that requires a GUI interface to the net,
wouldn't work over VT100 dialup into Unix shell, so I can't use it.
For posting to newsgroups such as ba.jobs.resumes, plain text is needed.
For posting on Web site, lynx-compatible text-only HTML is only a slight
improvement over plain text, and is the best I have access to here.
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
> Easier said than done. I have 15 years lisp programming experience, in
> a wide variety of different areas, and it seems reasonable to include
> all the major areas, not leaving anything out. If I decide to leave
> out some of the major areas I've programmed in, I have no idea which
> areas to leave out.
this depends on the company to which you send your resume, if for
example you send a printed resume with snail mail. Then you can strip the
parts which are not important for the company.
>> bigger fonts for titles, subtitles etc.
>
> I have no access to fonts at all here. My access to the net is via
> VT100 emulator into Unix shell.
you are kidding? I assume you have a computer with a GUI, so you can at
least design your pages offline, viewing it in a offline web browser and
then upload it to your account (sounds like my first internet access
some 10 years ago, with Windows 3.1 and a telnet account over a modem
line and I was happy to use Gopher and FTP, with sz and rz for
transfering files from the telnet account :-)
> For posting to newsgroups such as ba.jobs.resumes, plain text is
> needed. For posting on Web site, lynx-compatible text-only HTML is
> only a slight improvement over plain text, and is the best I have
> access to here.
this is another project you can add to your resume and should be easy in
Lisp: write a small converter, which reads your own markup language and
produces HTML and text from it. Then add some CSS for a nice looking web
page and you are done (you can't see it in Lynx, go to a "internet cafe",
but a Sans Serif font, text-boxes with background and invers title bars,
like in my Blog, perhaps are a good starting point:
http://www.jroller.com/page/fb )
--
Frank Bu�, ··@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
From: ··········@YahooGroups.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004jul31-003@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> if for example you send a printed resume with snail mail. Then you
> can strip the parts which are not important for the company.
That's not really an option here. I don't have a printer, so I can't
print anything except by spending an hour each way on the bus to get to
the nearest Kinko's copy place. However I have a FAX modem, so I could
in theory create a custom version on my Macintosh and e-FAX that
instead of the full version. But I've never seen a LISP job advertised
that directly applied anything I've ever done in LISP, so if I stripped
out anything not directly applicable I'd have nothing remaining. In
such cases, showing the wide variety of stuff I can do and have done
makes more sense than trying to tailor the resume down to almost
nothing. But I am just guessing. I'm bright about programming and math
and science, but not at human psychology.
> I assume you have a computer with a GUI, so you can at least design
> your pages offline, viewing it in a offline web browser and then
> upload it to your account
There's a version of MicroSoft InterNet Explorer that came with my FAX
modem, for viewing the FAX documentation, and it worked when I first
got it in 1996, but after I tried AT&T WorldNet (which was horrendously
slow, worthless) that Summer, and tried to cancel before the free trial
month was finished, but had been bothered by the modem re-dialing AT&T
at random times about six hours after I go to bed, I stripped out all
the files for PPP access, so it wouldn't dial AT&T again and cause me
to be billed for additional months, and ever since then whenever I try
to run IE locally it freezes the whole computer and I have to do a cold
restart to get it working again. So thanks to AT&T, I can't even run IE
locally, and can't read my FAX-modem documentation any more. If you
know which file(s) I need to restore to make IE work in local mode
without dialing AT&T again, I'd appreciate the info.
> this is another project you can add to your resume and should be easy
> in Lisp: write a small converter, which reads your own markup
> language and produces HTML and text from it.
The world already has more than enough incompatible document-presention
languages, it doesn't need any more. Making a new one today, during the
transition from SGML/HTML to XML/XHTML would make me look like a fool
to waste my effort. Back in the days when I did such things (*), there
wasn't an international standard and there wasn't an InterNet and WWW
for people viewing each other's documents, but now there is.
* (1969-70: MRPPP and MRPP2 using CalComp 565 plotter to format
mathematical research paper. circa 1975: MRPP3 = POX using Xerox
Graphics Printer to format that paper better than before and lots of
other documents, as alternative to XGP-PUB which hadn't yet been
delivered. circa 1989: MRPP4 formatting mathematical text as part of a
CAI program.)
An effort to write an XML parser and a DTD parser and a validator for
the former using either the latter or an XML schema (which then
requires its own DTD validator but using the standard published DTD for
schemas), would seem to be more reasonble. But even that, nobody's
expressed any interest in my doing so.
In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>, ··········@YahooGroups.Com
wrote:
> > From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> > if for example you send a printed resume with snail mail. Then you
> > can strip the parts which are not important for the company.
>
> That's not really an option here. I don't have a printer, so I can't
> print anything except by spending an hour each way on the bus to get to
> the nearest Kinko's copy place. However I have a FAX modem, so I could
You live in Mountain View, right? I've been there, and I can't believe
there aren't any print shops nearby; it's a modern city, it's not like
you're out in the boondocks.
Anyway, a decent printer costs less than $100. Why don't you just get
one?
Do I understand your resume correctly? Have you really been unemployed
for the last 13 years?
> in theory create a custom version on my Macintosh and e-FAX that
> instead of the full version. But I've never seen a LISP job advertised
> that directly applied anything I've ever done in LISP, so if I stripped
> out anything not directly applicable I'd have nothing remaining. In
> such cases, showing the wide variety of stuff I can do and have done
> makes more sense than trying to tailor the resume down to almost
> nothing. But I am just guessing. I'm bright about programming and math
> and science, but not at human psychology.
I said the same thing when I took seminars on resume writing and career
searching. But with a little work and advice from a consultant, I was
able to get my resume into shape.
One suggestion I have after looking at your resume: don't be so verbose.
You don't need to go into detail about a project, just summarize it in a
few words, at most a line or two. For instance, the paragraph on your
Go program could be: "Implemented Go playing program, which is nearly
unbeatable on 7x7 board." This can serve as a springboard for you to
explain the algorithm during the interview.
>
> > I assume you have a computer with a GUI, so you can at least design
> > your pages offline, viewing it in a offline web browser and then
> > upload it to your account
>
> There's a version of MicroSoft InterNet Explorer that came with my FAX
> modem, for viewing the FAX documentation, and it worked when I first
> got it in 1996, but after I tried AT&T WorldNet (which was horrendously
> slow, worthless) that Summer, and tried to cancel before the free trial
> month was finished, but had been bothered by the modem re-dialing AT&T
> at random times about six hours after I go to bed, I stripped out all
> the files for PPP access, so it wouldn't dial AT&T again and cause me
That seems extreme. All you should need to do is go into the PPP
control panel and remove the phone number.
> to be billed for additional months, and ever since then whenever I try
> to run IE locally it freezes the whole computer and I have to do a cold
> restart to get it working again. So thanks to AT&T, I can't even run IE
> locally, and can't read my FAX-modem documentation any more. If you
> know which file(s) I need to restore to make IE work in local mode
> without dialing AT&T again, I'd appreciate the info.
Are you really still using the same Macintosh as you were in 1996?
Maybe you should take a step into the 21st century.
I'm not particularly impressed that someone who has been a computer
professional for over 30 years, working on some very advanced systems,
is so backward in his personal use of computers.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
From: ··········@YahooGroups.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug05-004@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
> You live in Mountain View, right? I've been there, and I can't
> believe there aren't any print shops nearby; it's a modern city, it's
> not like you're out in the boondocks.
I live a half mile from the nearest bus service, which runs once per
hour except during early morning and late afternoon commute hours when
it runs half-hourly. That nearest bus stop is about a mile from the
start of the downtown section, about 1.5 miles from El Camino Real. The
nearest place I know of that allows printing from diskette or from the
Web is Kinko's which is about a mile down El Camino Real. I looked in
the Green index to the Yellow pages just now, and can't see any
category for printing services, the closest to that being prepress
services, and the nearest of that is on Lawrence Station Road in
Sunnyvale. Even Kinko's isn't listed under printing. (No, "Print
Shops", what you suggested, isn't listed at all as a category, which is
why I looked for "Printing ..." instead.) I looked in "Copy &
Duplicating Service" where I expected to find Kinko's, indeed it's
there, then looked through that section to see if anything is closer
than Kinko's. I found www.peninsuladigital.com which is 0.8 miles from
where I live, accessible by bicycle, but it's not clear that they offer
walk-in small-volume print service like Kinko's, and they have no
mention of prices so I get the idea if I need to ask the price then I
can't afford it. Also there's UPS Store (formerly Mailboxes Inc.) in
downtown MV. Nothing else closer than Kinko's by bike or bus.
> Have you really been unemployed for the last 13 years?
Not quite, but almost.
> You don't need to go into detail about a project, just summarize it
> in a few words, at most a line or two. For instance, the paragraph
> on your Go program could be: "Implemented Go playing program, which
>is nearly unbeatable on 7x7 board."
Hmm, it sounds like a reasonble suggestion. Would you be willing to
critique any such attempt I make? (In the past somebody would make a
suggestion, then just leave me out in left field with nobody to
evaluate whether I had correctly fixed my resume or not, and then years
later when I finally got somebody to look at my resume they'd say it's
garbage, making me feel that my fixup effort had been a stupid waste of
energy.)
> All you should need to do is go into the PPP control panel and remove
> the phone number.
I looked at Control Panels just now, and there isn't anything called
PPP. Maybe that's one of the files I deleted (after copying to Syquest
backup) six years ago. Someday I'll need to look where I put that stuff
and make a list of it and ask you what needs fixing to avoid accidently
dialing AT&T WorldNet, and what needs restoring to make IE work in
local mode without freezing the whole computer. Is there anywhere a
list of files that IE needs to avoid freezing the computer, so I can
make sure I get them all restored?
> Are you really still using the same Macintosh as you were in 1996?
Sorry, I typed the wrong year. It was early 1998 when I bought this
Macintosh Performa 600 for $300 total (which included the monitor), and
that Summer when I tried AT&T WorldNet and suffered such horrible
service with it. I continued to use my old Macintosh Plus with MACL for
doing LISP stuff until it died in mid-1999, and I couldn't afford to
get it fixed, especially since it'd probably die again at the end of
1999 due to y2k problems, so I've had only this Mac Performa to use
since then.
> I'm not particularly impressed that someone who has been a computer
> professional for over 30 years, working on some very advanced systems,
> is so backward in his personal use of computers.
Well most of my paid work was for Stanford University, whose pay rate
for Programmer/Analyst II (my category when I last worked there) is
lower than *entry*level* Software Engineer in a commercial company.
Working at such a low pay rate, managed to save up $10,000 in the bank
before I got married, but then lost it all when Kaiser refused to let
my wife get on my health plan until a year after we were married, so I
had to pay for all prenatal stuff and the C-section out of my $10,000,
whch exhausted it totally. Prior to 1989 when I got married, personal
computers were too expensive to even consider. Then in 1989 I got an
employee discount on the Macintosh Plus so I could afford that as a
starter personal computer, infinitely better than anything MicroSoft
had to offer at that time. Before I had any use for anything better, my
savings were all gone and I was unemployed and couldn't even buy a
printer. Once in 1998 I had a very brief time of just a tiny bit of
surplus money, just a few hundred dollars, when I bought this Mac
Performa etc. Now that the Web is so active, with lots of nice images
to see, I wish I could afford something that gave me full Web access
from home, but I really have no money to even be alive much less buy
new computer equipment. I've written lots of useful software using
these primitive devices (300-baud acoustic coupler circa 1980,
1200-baud modem dialed into Stanford during 1980s, same modem dialed
into ISP until 1998, 19200-bps modem into ISP since 1998). My GUI MACL
event-driven flashcard-drill algorithm on my Mac Plus was rather nice,
but I could never get anybody to look at it before my Mac died.
(See this reference to how effective it was:
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=4krhh7%24r5m%40openlink.openlink.com)
But I agree with you it'd be nice if I had better facilities. But I
disagree with your implication that there's something wrong with me
because I get by on what I can afford which is not much. GIven my lack
of money even for housing, much less computers, what alternative would
you propose, that I get into a life of crime or something??
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
> I looked at Control Panels just now, and there isn't anything called
> PPP. Maybe that's one of the files I deleted (after copying to Syquest
> backup) six years ago. Someday I'll need to look where I put that stuff
> and make a list of it and ask you what needs fixing to avoid accidently
> dialing AT&T WorldNet, and what needs restoring to make IE work in
> local mode without freezing the whole computer. Is there anywhere a
> list of files that IE needs to avoid freezing the computer, so I can
> make sure I get them all restored?
have you tried to reinstall your OS? Or trying to download another browser?
Opera works on MacOS 8 and MacOS 9:
http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=mac
I don't understand why you can't solve such simple tasks. Your experience,
even with low-level assembler, suggests that this should be trivial for
you. Millions of other computer users, even without programming experience,
managed somehow to have a computer with an internet browser. For me it
looks like you avoid using computers or getting a job. You pretend to
search a job, but perhaps unconsciously you do everything not to get one
and then you write long essays why the world is so bad, especially to you.
I tried to send you an eMail for a litte project, which you can do from
home, but your eMail address is not valid, I needed a Yahoo account. Ok,
then I sent it to you from the Yahoo account, but I didn't receive an
answer from you. It's easy to setup an eMail account, there are many free
eMail services. And don't tell me that you receive too much spam, for this
you can install good anti-spam software, if not already installed at the
eMail service. There are some nice programs, even written in Lisp. If you
can't do this, this proves to everyone that you don't know even the basic
computer technics, so which problems will you have in a real project?
Imagine the questions from an employee and your answers:
Writing an eMail? Sorry, I don't have one which is working.
Setting up CVS? Don't know, my internet account don't work, I have only
terminal access.
Doing some internet research? Sorry, my Lynx doesn't display graphics.
Writing some documentation? Ok, I can give you some unformated text file,
my computer doesn't display PDF and I don't know how to install it or how
to create a PDF.
Conclusion for me: Please forget my project offer. You can inform me again
when your computer is working properly and you really want a job.
--
Frank Bu�, ··@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
From: ··········@YahooGroups.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug07-004@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> have you tried to reinstall your OS?
No. That's not an option here. I bought this computer used, with System
7.5.5 already installed on hard disk, no installation CD-ROM or
anything like that.
> Or trying to download another browser?
Nope, haven't tried that. The only way to download here is with
text-mode Kermit, which works fine for BinHex files but not for
uuencoded files. Is there a small file I can download to check my
system files to make sure the proper files are present to run the
browser, before going to all the time of downloading the full browser
only to discover it doesn't work due to missing system file?
> Opera works on MacOS 8 and MacOS 9:
That doesn't do me any good.
> I don't understand why you can't solve such simple tasks.
Because I don't have the facilities to do some of the things you
suggest, and I don't have any money to purchase new facilities.
> Your experience, even with low-level assembler, suggests that this
> should be trivial for you.
You apparently don't understand the difference between computer
programming, whereby I already have some sort of compiler or whatever,
and I merely write software and compile it etc., vs. very different
tasks which cost money I don't have.
> Millions of other computer users, even without programming
> experience, managed somehow to have a computer with an internet
> browser.
Perhaps those people have the money to simply *buy* whatever they
needed? Even so, many of them have MicroSoft systems with security
flaws that allow their computers to be taken over by trojan/zombie
programs that use their computer and their net connection to flood the
net with spam/virus/worm/trojan. I don't even have enough money to pay
the rent. Buying a new computer is not an option for me.
> It's easy to setup an eMail account, there are many free eMail
> services.
Most of the Web-based services don't work without javascript and https.
Recently Yahoo! Mail changed their service so it's not even possible to
delete a message, nor to send a message, nor to see which messages are
new, without javascript. Do you know of any Web-based e-mail services
which work fine via lynx? I don't know of any currently.
> And don't tell me that you receive too much spam, for this you can
> install good anti-spam software, if not already installed at the
> eMail service.
Filtering spam at the SMTP level, so you don't receive spam, requires
special arrangement with the service provider. Do you know of any which
provide that arrangement for free? Otherwise, you have already received
the spam before your software gets a chance to see it and notice it's
spam. It's too late to not receive it. All your software can do is (1)
divert to side folder where it sits un-read for months, or (2) delete
it unseen, or (3) bounce it back somewhere. What specifically do you
have in mind in what you said above?
> Setting up CVS?
Are you referring to Concurrent Versions System as described here?
http://www.loria.fr/~molli/cvs/doc/cvs_toc.html
Presumably that would be set up on my employer's system, right?
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
>> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
>> have you tried to reinstall your OS?
>
> No. That's not an option here. I bought this computer used, with
> System 7.5.5 already installed on hard disk, no installation CD-ROM or
> anything like that.
Sorry, that's a lame excuse. A quick search at eBay shows you can buy
System 7 for $ 3.25 :
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11231&item=5712914886&rd=1
> Nope, haven't tried that. The only way to download here is with
> text-mode Kermit, which works fine for BinHex files but not for
> uuencoded files. Is there a small file I can download to check my
> system files to make sure the proper files are present to run the
> browser, before going to all the time of downloading the full browser
> only to discover it doesn't work due to missing system file?
This is the wrong newsgroup for this questions, try a Mac specific
newsgroup. But I can't see why you should not be able to download
whatever file you like. Just FTP from your telnet account to the
destination and download it with rz. But better would be to install
some modern browser first.
> You apparently don't understand the difference between computer
> programming, whereby I already have some sort of compiler or whatever,
> and I merely write software and compile it etc., vs. very different
> tasks which cost money I don't have.
$ 3.25 for new system disks and reinstalling it, then reinstalling your
software for Internet Explorer, should be possible for everyone, even if
you are an unemployeed programmer, only :-)
>> It's easy to setup an eMail account, there are many free eMail
>> services.
>
> Most of the Web-based services don't work without javascript and
> https. Recently Yahoo! Mail changed their service so it's not even
> possible to delete a message, nor to send a message, nor to see which
> messages are new, without javascript. Do you know of any Web-based
> e-mail services which work fine via lynx? I don't know of any
> currently.
No, you have to install a GUI webbrowser first.
> Filtering spam at the SMTP level, so you don't receive spam, requires
> special arrangement with the service provider. Do you know of any
> which provide that arrangement for free? Otherwise, you have already
> received the spam before your software gets a chance to see it and
> notice it's spam. It's too late to not receive it. All your software
> can do is (1) divert to side folder where it sits un-read for months,
> or (2) delete it unseen, or (3) bounce it back somewhere. What
> specifically do you have in mind in what you said above?
You don't need filtering at the SMTP level, just some local filter. My
setup is a SMTP proxy at my local computer, which does the filtering and
is contacted by the eMail client and which contacts the server.
>> Setting up CVS?
>
> Are you referring to Concurrent Versions System as described here?
> http://www.loria.fr/~molli/cvs/doc/cvs_toc.html
> Presumably that would be set up on my employer's system, right?
Yes, but it is needed for many open source projects and I used it for
closed source projects over the internet as well from home.
--
Frank Bu�, ··@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
On Sat, 07 Aug 2004 20:36:42 +0000, Frank Buss wrote:
> ··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
>
>>> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
>>> have you tried to reinstall your OS?
>>
>> No. That's not an option here. I bought this computer used, with
>> System 7.5.5 already installed on hard disk, no installation CD-ROM or
>> anything like that.
>
> Sorry, that's a lame excuse. A quick search at eBay shows you can buy
> System 7 for $ 3.25 :
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11231&item=5712914886&rd=1
You can also download it from Apple along with networking support at:
<http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html>
Robert Swindells
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug09-003@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> > ... you have already
> > received the spam before your software gets a chance to see it and
> > notice it's spam. It's too late to not receive it. All your software
> > can do is (1) divert to side folder where it sits un-read for months,
> > or (2) delete it unseen, or (3) bounce it back somewhere. What
> > specifically do you have in mind in what you said above?
> You don't need filtering at the SMTP level, just some local filter.
You didn't answer my question. If you must accept all e-mail, including
spam, and *then* filter it locally, what do you propose the filter do
with all the apparent-spam it finds? Pick from one of the three choices
I listed above. What my CMUCL-based software currently does is bounce
the apparent-spam back to the spam-complaint address for whatever the
last-IP number was.
> My setup is a SMTP proxy at my local computer, which does the
> filtering and is contacted by the eMail client and which contacts the
> server.
But what exactly happens to all the messages that your filter considers
as likely spam and hence doesn't deliver into your inbox? (Pick from
the three options above, or explain any fourth option it does.)
Robert Maas wrote:
> You didn't answer my question. If you must accept all e-mail, including
> spam, and *then* filter it locally, what do you propose the filter do
> with all the apparent-spam it finds? Pick from one of the three choices
> I listed above. What my CMUCL-based software currently does is bounce
> the apparent-spam back to the spam-complaint address for whatever the
> last-IP number was.
You know of Paul Grahams nice paper, don't you?
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
(or other papers from http://www.paulgraham.com/antispam.html)
Of course that doesn't help with your question, but I think bouncing them
back is a bad idea for the same reason it is a bad idea to reply to any
spam mail. The spammer then get's the address verified and can sell it for
a better price (or whatever spammers do with that).
>> My setup is a SMTP proxy at my local computer, which does the
>> filtering and is contacted by the eMail client and which contacts the
>> server.
>
> But what exactly happens to all the messages that your filter considers
> as likely spam and hence doesn't deliver into your inbox? (Pick from
> the three options above, or explain any fourth option it does.)
Ok, so in case you haven't read the above mentioned article(s) yet, here's
a short summary: He creates two inboxes--spam and non-spam--and builds up
statistical filtering information. This filter is "intelligent" meaning
that it categorizes spam to *your* criteria. Actually you don't
necessarily need to keep the spam once you told the system that this mail
was spam and it updated the filter. But you could do in order to look for
false-positives once in a month or year. But PG claims that he had less
then 1% false positives. Also there're a lot of filters already
implemented using his technique (bayesian filtering) for e.g. emacs as a
mail client.
HTH
-ts
--
,,
\../ / <<< The LISP Effect
|_\\ _==__
__ | |bb| | _________________________________________________
Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:
> Of course that doesn't help with your question, but I think bouncing
> them back is a bad idea for the same reason it is a bad idea to reply
> to any spam mail. The spammer then get's the address verified and can
> sell it for a better price (or whatever spammers do with that).
Indeed, the only "good" way to deal with spam, if you can afford it,
is to slow them down while incoming. You have to classify them on the
fly in the smtpd server, and as soon as spam is detected, slow the
sending of TCP ack. Of course, this means that your smtp server will
have more connection active at the same time. High volume ISP cannot
afford this. I guess that you could also close the TCP connection as
soon as spam is detected and rejected further connections from the
same IP for some delay.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.
From: Karl A. Krueger
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <cf97n7$r83$1@baldur.whoi.edu>
Pascal Bourguignon <····@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> Indeed, the only "good" way to deal with spam, if you can afford it,
> is to slow them down while incoming. You have to classify them on the
> fly in the smtpd server, and as soon as spam is detected, slow the
> sending of TCP ack. Of course, this means that your smtp server will
> have more connection active at the same time. High volume ISP cannot
> afford this. I guess that you could also close the TCP connection as
> soon as spam is detected and rejected further connections from the
> same IP for some delay.
A similar thing can be done at the application (SMTP) layer, since SMTP
supports retransmission. You send a temporary failure, which makes real
senders wait and retransmit, while spamware programs give up.
Doing this is called "greylisting" and is a pretty well-established
technique, supported in the latest versions of the good SMTP MTAs. See
http://www.greylisting.org/ for details.
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Email address is spamtrapped. s/example/whoi/
"Outlook not so good." -- Magic 8-Ball Software Reviews
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug20-003@Yahoo.Com>
> From: "Karl A. Krueger" <········@example.edu>
> A similar thing can be done at the application (SMTP) layer, since
> SMTP supports retransmission. You send a temporary failure, which
> makes real senders wait and retransmit, while spamware programs give
> up.
I proposed this idea many many months ago, and mostly I got a cold
reception from people in news.admin.net-abuse.email. I was thinking
mostly of spammers who use open relays, or otherwise queue their
outgoing spam on a regular (SMTP-conforming) MTA. If spam is accepted
or rejected immediately, it's deleted from the queue. But if spam is
made to wait, it sits in the outgoing message queue for several days.
If a very large spam run is done on a single system, and if many
victims of the spam are on ISPs that do this trick, then a lot of disk
space will be tied up on the spamming system, and a lot of compute time
will be spent re-trying, and all that might possibly tie up so much
resources that the spamming system is unable to send out any new spam
for several days.
> Doing this is called "greylisting" and is a pretty well-established
> technique, supported in the latest versions of the good SMTP MTAs.
Ah, I'm glad to see my idea is now accepted and in use! But I wish a
very large number of big ISPs would do that, so as to tie up all the
spam relays so badly they'd never get around to sending me any spam.
(Currently I get more than 2000 spam per month on just one Yahoo! Mail
account, most of them diverted to the Bulk folder, but there could be
some false positives there, which I'd never see because I never look
through the Bulk folder to see what's there among the huge volume of
crap there.)
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug19-003@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Pascal Bourguignon <····@mouse-potato.com>
> Indeed, the only "good" way to deal with spam, if you can afford it,
> is to slow them down while incoming. You have to classify them on the
> fly in the smtpd server, and as soon as spam is detected, slow the
> sending of TCP ack. Of course, this means that your smtp server will
> have more connection active at the same time. High volume ISP cannot
> afford this.
Here's an alternative idea I thought of just within the past day or so,
which would slow down the spam source a lot without wasting much time
of the victim server at all, thus would be suitable for large servers:
Suppose the large server has five MX servers, listed in sequence,
first, second, etc. So the sender tries the first, and if it can't
connect then it tries the second, etc. So my idea is that the router
would be configured on all but the last MX server to just drop packets
from any IP address block that is a known source of spam. So the
spam-source tries connecting to first MX server, sits for a long time
not getting any ack to packets, finally times out and tries second,
same there, tries third, same there, tries fourth, same there, tries
fifth, gets connected, identifies who message is from and who it's to,
and unless that specific recipient has that specific sender
whitelisted, the e-mail is refused. So white-listed senders on a
black-listed ISP have a delay of a minute or so before their e-mail is
delivered, but it still gets through, while spammers are tied up for
those same minutes for no success at all. Meanwhile any senders from
non-blacklisted ISPs get through right away on the first server, no
delay at all.
Is this idea feasible? Could the flash memory in Cisco routers handle
the stress of being reconfigured several times a day as new sources of
spam are discovered and consequently blacklisted?
Note that to reduce the frequency of router configuration changes, when
a particular ISP ceases to be blacklisted, you don't have to
immediately give them access to your primary MX servers. Instead you
just configure that very last one to accept rather than refuse their
e-mail. So for a long time after they are no longer blacklisted,
they'll still be slowed down in their attempts to send you e-mail.
Also, because the router configuration isn't totally refusing e-mail
from blacklisted places, it's just slowing them down a lot, you can be
quite draconian: The moment SPEWS etc. lists any part of a /16, you
configure your router to deny access (except for very last MX server)
to the entire /16. Then when SPEWS etc. expands the blacklist, and it's
still within the same /16, you don't have to make any change to your
router configuration.
From: Karl A. Krueger
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <cg4squ$k09$1@baldur.whoi.edu>
·······@Yahoo.Com <··········@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> Is this idea feasible? Could the flash memory in Cisco routers handle
> the stress of being reconfigured several times a day as new sources of
> spam are discovered and consequently blacklisted?
You do not need to play games with routers or MXes to get the effect you
are describing. It is called "greylisting", and can be done completely
at the application layer. The major SMTP MTAs (mail server software)
already support it:
http://greylisting.org/
http://greylisting.org/implementations/
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Email address is spamtrapped. s/example/whoi/
"Outlook not so good." -- Magic 8-Ball Software Reviews
··········@YahooGroups.Com (·······@Yahoo.Com) writes:
> > From: Pascal Bourguignon <····@mouse-potato.com>
> > Indeed, the only "good" way to deal with spam, if you can afford it,
> > is to slow them down while incoming. You have to classify them on the
> > fly in the smtpd server, and as soon as spam is detected, slow the
> > sending of TCP ack. Of course, this means that your smtp server will
> > have more connection active at the same time. High volume ISP cannot
> > afford this.
>
> Here's an alternative idea I thought of just within the past day or so,
> which would slow down the spam source a lot without wasting much time
> of the victim server at all, thus would be suitable for large servers:
> Suppose the large server has five MX servers, listed in sequence,
> first, second, etc. So the sender tries the first, and if it can't
> connect then it tries the second, etc. So my idea is that the router
> would be configured on all but the last MX server to just drop packets
> from any IP address block that is a known source of spam. So the
> spam-source tries connecting to first MX server, sits for a long time
> not getting any ack to packets, finally times out and tries second,
> same there, tries third, same there, tries fourth, same there, tries
> fifth, gets connected, identifies who message is from and who it's to,
> and unless that specific recipient has that specific sender
> whitelisted, the e-mail is refused. So white-listed senders on a
> black-listed ISP have a delay of a minute or so before their e-mail is
> delivered, but it still gets through, while spammers are tied up for
> those same minutes for no success at all. Meanwhile any senders from
> non-blacklisted ISPs get through right away on the first server, no
> delay at all.
>
> Is this idea feasible?
It sounds so.
> Could the flash memory in Cisco routers handle
> the stress of being reconfigured several times a day as new sources of
> spam are discovered and consequently blacklisted?
Perhaps you don't have to write this part of the configuration in
flash: keep it in RAM and reload it whenever the router reboots.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.
On 24 Aug 2004 20:13:48 +0100, <······@hexapodia.net> wrote:
> ··········@YahooGroups.Com (·······@Yahoo.Com) writes:
>
> [ Spam filtering on ingress points, from what I can see ]
>> Is this idea feasible? Could the flash memory in Cisco routers handle
>> the stress of being reconfigured several times a day as new sources of
>> spam are discovered and consequently blacklisted?
>
> The massive problem is that any packet inspection over and above
> "destination IP" (and subsequent look-up in the forwarding RIB) is
> liable to slow things down, A Lot. You might be able to get similar by
> simply taking a BGP feed of "known spammers" and simply make sure the
> incoming routing protocol rewrites the outgoing interface as a Null
> interface (software interface that silently drops the packet) and then
> making sure to have BGP back-propagation from a central point (or OSPF
> or RIPv2 or...).
Actually, it's pretty simple and you don't do it in a Cisco.
The truth is that spam is not a big deal, just try some math instead
listening to the BS. The average spam message is a couple of k at
most and the average well setup site doesn't see much spam, just think
about the bandwidth overhead of www.yahoo.com. HTTP >>> SMTP nowdays
and there is a lot more crap there too. Now if you're a clueless noob
that cannot use google and take some simple steps, you deserve to be a
spammers bitch, so get off the Internet.
My firewall was reconfigured a couple hundred times a day without any
impact, since I know that real-time response is not necessary. There
are plenty of other places to stop spam, most of the BS about it is
designed to get you to fork over $$$ to some slimeball service.
From: Kalle Olavi Niemitalo
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <87hdq6zjb5.fsf@Astalo.kon.iki.fi>
··········@YahooGroups.Com (·······@Yahoo.Com) writes:
> So my idea is that the router would be configured on all but
> the last MX server to just drop packets from any IP address
> block that is a known source of spam.
Some spammers connect to the last MX first, perhaps hoping that
it's maintained by an ISP and has weaker anti-spam measures than
the recipient's own server.
On 10 Aug 2004 00:21:07 +0200, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de> writes:
>> Of course that doesn't help with your question, but I think bouncing
>> them back is a bad idea for the same reason it is a bad idea to reply
>> to any spam mail. The spammer then get's the address verified and can
>> sell it for a better price (or whatever spammers do with that).
> Indeed, the only "good" way to deal with spam, if you can afford it,
> is to slow them down while incoming. You have to classify them on the
> fly in the smtpd server, and as soon as spam is detected, slow the
> sending of TCP ack. Of course, this means that your smtp server will
> have more connection active at the same time. High volume ISP cannot
> afford this. I guess that you could also close the TCP connection as
> soon as spam is detected and rejected further connections from the
> same IP for some delay.
You can slow the sender down by making him do something that takes a
lot of work (= time), but that can be checked quickly by the receiver.
E.g., finding a partial collision for a cryptographic hash function.
See http://www.hashcash.org
Or you could make the sender pay real money -- easily accomplished
by combining http://www.rpow.net (uses hashcash currently) and
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=1099203
--
The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the
expense of everyone else. -- Fr�d�ric Bastiat
(setq reply-to
(concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(··@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug11-001@Yahoo.Com>
I've been reading the online documents and composing this response for
several hours, and it's currently up to 383 lines, 21k bytes, so I'm
going to break it into appx. 10k segments and upload each piece
successively unstead of trying to send it all at one time when I
finally finish it...
> From: Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de>
> You know of Paul Grahams nice paper, don't you?
> http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
Unfortunatley that document doesn't say clearly whether the filtering
occurs inside the SMTP server, whereby anything determined to be likely
spam is rejected with a 5yz code, or whether the filtering occurs after
the message has already been received and acknowledged by the SMTP
server and it's too late to refuse it and you're stuck with it forever
until you delete it. From my reading of the following text:
The more spam a user gets, the less likely he'll be to notice one
innocent mail sitting in his spam folder. And strangely enough, the
it appears his filter diverts already-received e-mail to a side folder.
As I've pointed out many times, this has the disadvantage that the
sender of legitimate e-mail never learns his/her e-mail was diverted
and will never been seen by the recipient. If the e-mail was urgent,
lost time waiting for the recipient to see the e-mail before giving up
and contacting the recipient some other way, can cause major cost, even
loss of life.
One question that arises in practice is what probability to assign to
a word you've never seen, i.e. one that doesn't occur in the hash
table of word probabilities. I've found, again by trial and error,
that .4 is a good number to use. If you've never seen a word before,
it is probably fairly innocent; spam words tend to be all too
familiar.
There's a very simple way any spammer can defeat such a filter: Include
thousands of pseudo-random "words". Each one biases the message by 0.4
toward being non-spam, but thousands of such tiny biases cause the spam
to be clearly recognized as non-spam. (But see later below.)
To beat Bayesian filters, it would not be enough for spammers to make
their emails unique or to stop using individual naughty words. They'd
have to make their mails indistinguishable from your ordinary mail.
Not correct. All they'd have to do is increase the fraction of random
pseudo-words so those .4 factors combine to swamp out any actual
Bayesian information. I think brand-new words never seen before should
be scored 0.51, so they weigh very slightly toward an indication of
spam, so that thousands of brand-new pseudo-words strongly indicate
spam. (But see later below.)
Spam is mostly sales
pitches, so unless your regular mail is all sales pitches, spams will
inevitably have a different character.
Except that if the sales pitch uses a different random mis-spelling of
each key word each time, none of those words will be recognized as
indications of spam, and per the .4 factor currently used will in fact
slightly bias the filter against considering it non-spam. For example:
to un4subscrib75894e cl43ick h23re
you can 32en43larg43e your 5p32enis43 with 5vi34gra432
The lack of even one clearly spam-indicating word spelled correctly,
hence not a single factor greater than .5, and all those randomly
mutated words plus thousands of totally random "words" at the end of
the message, each with that .4 factor, would falsely show the message
to be solidly non-spam. (But see just immediately below.)
But I see the filter ignores all but the 15 or 20 most significant
words, which I presume means it uses only the 15 or 20 that are most
distance from exactly 0.5 probability. If so, then the randomized spam
would have 15 or 20 factors of 0.4, and no other factors at all, so the
spam would be mistakenly recognized as non-spam, but not with
certitude. Still I see the filter putting all that randomzed spam into
your inbox, so the spammer wins, and the filter is nearly worthless.
I don't
know enough about the infrastructure that spammers use to know how
hard it would be to make the headers look innocent, but my guess is
that it would be even harder than making the message look innocent.
The key header line which can't be forged is the last-relay Received
line. If spam is sent through trojaned personal computers, each such
line will be different from any other a given victim has received
(except in a very rare chance event where the same trojaned machine
remains under control of spammers for a long time and the same part of
the 30-million e-mail address happens to be farmed out to that same
machine a second time). Except for those particular IP numbers and host
names belonging to dynamic address pools, there's nothing suspicious
about them. Given that worms have recently been calling Google and
other search engines to collect more e-mail addresses to spam, there's
nothing to stop a worm from calling Google Groups to find out what
topics a given victim has posted about and making the Subject line be
Re: whatever that victim posted about. (I've never seen any spam that
does that yet, but give the spammers a couple more weeks. It was just a
couple weeks ago when they started the search-engine method to a large
enough degree to be noticeable. Victim-customized Subject fields in
spam is the logical next step. When I start getting spam to
·······@Yahoo.Com with Subject:
Re: Salaries for Lisp engineers
in place of the current Subject fields unrelated to anything I posted:
About your home in Mt. View
Bubby Mees Do you still need help
Bubby We Need Your PERMISSI0N
Bubby, Work with eBay ... call 1-866-622-9987 x 8030
Bubby, You'll enjoy this!
Bubby, luck is in the air
Complimentary Instructions To Remove Spyware/Adware Infections
Current Critical Update
Don't Be The Last
Find other singles in your area
GREETINGS TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY
HELLO AND GOOD DAY
Hey I just read your email..
Hi, you there? 3
Kindly assist
Mail Delivery (failure ·······@yahoo.com)
Network Pack
Please contact us Bubby
Regular update and verification of the accounts (from: eBay)
The Challenges of Our Time (from: Vice President Cheney)
The Real "Heart and Soul" of America (from: President George W. Bush)
Undelivered Mail
Upgrade your career
Urgent Reply on (Business)
advice
eBay Workers Needed...Call 1-866-621-2387 x1661
i was thinking..
undeliverable mail
undeliverable message: user unknown
I'll know this has happened)
> (or other papers from http://www.paulgraham.com/antispam.html)
Let me take a look at them now:
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/spamfaq.html
Is there anything that can protect my company's server?
Most commercial server-level spam filters are still rule-based. But
there are starting to be some that use Bayesian filtering. The way to
find them is probably to search in Google.
The question to ask the salesman is, does the filter learn to
recognize spam based on the spam and nonspam mail we receive? If it
doesn't learn, it isn't Bayesian.
Bayesian filtering seems nice for single users, but for a company's
server there's a problem: It filters based on a concensus of what the
average user likes and dislikes, so that any recipient whose
preferences are different from the norm would not be filtered
appropriately, special topics only that one person likes would be
regarded as spam and he wouldn't be allowed to receive them, while
topics most people like but he hates would be crammed down his throat.
Lisp's symbol type is useful in manipulating databases of words,
because it lets you test for equality by just comparing pointers.
That is false advertising. When raw text is taken in, each word must be
"interned" i.e. convert to upper case then entered into a hash table,
and *then* any later use of the same word is found by hashtable lookup,
but EVERY instance of that word must be hashed again, not just the
first instance, because it's only after hashing that the word can be
recognized as a repeat of an already-hashed word. Since there's extra
overhead involved in creating a symbol, and problems with interning in
a specific package where the sudden presence of a particular symbol
might have semantic consequences, it'd be better to just convert to
upper case and enter into an EQUAL hash table and not make an actual
symbol out of each different word.
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/better.html
There are two kinds of spams I currently do have trouble with. One is
the type that pretends to be an email from a woman inviting you to go
chat with her or see her profile on a dating site.
If the filter can't block that, it's pretty much worthless.
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug11-002@Yahoo.Com>
Part 2 of very long reply I haven't yet finished composing:
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/sofar.html
(regarding sharing a blacklist of domains of spamvertised WebSites)
To take advantage of this kind of information, we should ideally delay
filtering as long as possible. I.e. filter when the user checks his
mail, not when it arrives at the server. By the time you check your
mail, odds are that any spam that made it into in your inbox has
already been seen by thousands of people.
So you log in, see you have 200 new messages, open your MUA, it sits
there for ten minutes checking all those messages, finally after you
are totally running out of patience because you really had only two
minutes before you wanted to get offline to free your phone line for an
important call, your MUA finally says you have no new messages, all the
200 were spam. Further, all those 200 spam are filling up your disk
space, instead of rejected by the SMTP server in the first place.
Further, one of those 200 is an important message that was mistakenly
recognized as spam and which you won't see until it's too late, and the
sender won't have any idea why you haven't responded yet.
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/ffb.html
(Regarding auto-fetching WebPage for any URL in suspected spam:)
Auto-retrieving spam filters would drive
the spammer's costs up, and his sales down: his bandwidth usage would
go through the roof, and his servers would grind to a halt under the
load, which would make them unavailable to the people who would have
responded to the spam.
I like the idea because the counter-attack is scaled with the actual
amount of spam that goes out. Somebody innocently sending spam to 20
friends wouldn't be attacked hardly at all, but somebody sending spam
to 50 million addresses would be bit back severely if a sizeable
fraction of those victims used auto-fetching filters.
We would want to ensure that this is only done to suspected spams. As
a rule, any url sent to millions of people is likely to be a spam url,
so submitting every http request in every email would work fine nearly
all the time. But there are a few cases where this isn't true: the
urls at the bottom of mails sent from free email services like Yahoo
Mail and Hotmail, for example.
To protect such sites, and to prevent abuse, auto-retrieval should be
combined with blacklists of spamvertised sites. Only sites on a
blacklist would get crawled, and sites would be blacklisted only after
being inspected by humans.
I disagree. The auto-fetching should occur immediately upon receipt of
each individual suspected spam, so that the spammer sees the hits on
the server start to happen almost immediately after starting the spam
run, before anyone actually responds to the ad. If the spammer realizes
he's being counterattacked, he may abort the spam run. If the admin of
the spamvertized site sees the sudden influx of hits, the admin may
have time to track down the spammer while he's still online.
If Yahoo! Mail is used for sending spam, let their standard servers
advertised at the end of each regular e-mail be hit too. If there are
enough false positives that Yahoo's servers are hit badly because of
legitimate e-mail that has these bottom-of-message URLs, there can be a
white-list for such specific URLs to prevent them from being hit after
they've been in use long enough to get incorporated into the
white-list. But actually I find those advertisements on outgoing e-mail
to be abuse. I accept that if I use Yahoo! Mail, I'll have to look at
ads for Yahoo services occasionally, because that's how my free Yahoo!
Mail account is paid for, but I don't think anyone I e-mail to should
likewise have to see those ads, because Yahoo isn't providing any of
them with any service. I feel that ads attached to the bottom of e-mail
constitute unsolicited advertising, and punishing Yahoo for such ads
might actually be a good thing.
Question: Does anybody have a small program that scans a message
looking for any full URL (including the leading http:// or whatever) or
semi-URL (missing that part), and then presenting it in KWIC (KeyWord
In Context) format? I understand Perl has built-in regular-expression
utilities, so perhaps a Perl program would be best for this purpose?
For example, manually looking at the latest spam to my secret ISP
address, and manually converting to KWIC format (my e-mail address **):
<a href=3D" http://limestone.mnbasdn.info/?O1QTQ3i9zmVb4iOdope ">Windows X
r> <a href=3D" http://to.mnbasdn.info/?O1QTQ3i9zmVb4iOcirce ">Adobe - Phot
href=3D" http://armonk.mnbasdn.info/?O1QTQ3i9zmVb4iOpenitential ">Macrome
ref=3D" http://protactinium.mnbasdn.info/?O1QTQ3i9zmVb4iOjefferson ">Enter
http://sprain.mnbasdn.info/<RANDOM>······························@*****.com
Note I've put two spaces before and after each URL to separate it from
context, to make it easy to eyeball the printout. So how hard would it
be to scan my e-mail automatically to generate such a report? For
comparison, here's the same format manually-generated report for the
last five URLs in legitimate e-mail (to my secret ISP address, again):
ef=" ·····························@yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe ">R
ect to the <a href=" http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ">Yahoo! Terms of S
n your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo --0-1419467261-10875
ecurity. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail --0-1315019205-108
n your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo --0-965139806-108760
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/wfks.html
(Re spammers trying to get past Bayesian filters:)
they have to use fewer bad words. They can't use
weird spellings (e.g. "Freee" instead of "Free") because filters
quickly learn those.
Apparently Paul Graham has never heard of inserting random numbers in
and around "bad" words to make each instance a different word as seen
by the filter? 43fRe43e3 7FR579EE4367 Of course the filter can simply
remove all numbers from words to fix that trick, right? But about
randomly repeating the letters? ffreee frrre frreeee fffree ffffrrrre
Or intermixing repeated letters? frrereee efreee efffreeer
And inserting noise letters? fraee xfrre frzeee ffrea
How can the Bayesian filter possibly recognizing all those as mutations
of the same word so each isn't regarded as a brand-new non-bad word?
C1ak hear 4 f7xrre s4m9lle of v$46ra - p3n1s.comREMOVE
Hmm, I did a DNS lookup, using DIG, of that domain name, and there's
no such domain. It's such an obvious name, so I'm surprised it hasn't
yet been taken. Well, I bet within a week somebody scanning this
newsgroup will see it and register it! However a Google search for that
domain name string returned:
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010475.shtml
Oh, great: we finally get the capability to track down bin Laden by
getting access to the tracebacks from windozeupdate.com, but, when we
launch a cruise missile to take him out, instead of blowing up it
scatters leaflets urging people to visit www.b1gg3r-p3n1s.com...
Posted by: Ran Talbott on June 11, 2004 07:46 AM
I did a DIG on that full domain name too, nothing registered yet.
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug11-003@Yahoo.Com>
Part 3 of very long reply I haven't yet finished composing:
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/stopspam.html
Complaining to Spammers' ISPs
Good: Raises cost of spamming.
That one, correct.
Bad: Laborious.
Role: Partial solution, for experts.
Those two, not correct. I've automated the task of sending complaints
to the appropriate spam-complaint address based on block containing the
IP number of the last relay or the next known ISP upstream from the
last relay. Anyone using a Unix shell account to receive e-mail, and
anyone running a Macintosh or Windows or Linux system, providing that
machine has at least one decent programming/scripting system on it,
could do the same sort of thing, if the appropriate software were
available. Only one person needs write the software for millions of
spam-victims using a given class of computer system to use to
auto-complain. If a person can download and run an e-mail program, the
same person can download and run a spam-auto-complain program.
Complaining effectively is difficult. Most spammers forge the headers
of their emails to disguise their origin. You have to learn to
interpret headers to understand where a spam really came from.
No, you just need to run a program that does all that work for you,
after you train it not to complain to your own ISP due to internal
forwarding after your ISP has already received the message.
For example, here are, with annotation, the Received lines for spam
that was addressed to ················@YahooGroups.Com:
Received: from 66.218.66.81 (HELO n25.grp.scd.yahoo.com)
(66.218.66.81) by mta112.mail.re2.yahoo.com with SMTP; Wed, 04 Aug
2004 17:34:47 -0700
Received: from [66.218.66.157] by n25.grp.scd.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05
Aug 2004 00:32:19 -0000
Received: (qmail 37563 invoked from network); 5 Aug 2004 00:32:18
-0000
Received: from unknown (66.218.66.166) by m17.grp.scd.yahoo.com with
QMQP; 5 Aug 2004 00:32:18 -0000
All the above are internal forwarding after Yahoo already has received
the spam.
Received: from unknown (HELO mail38.myfreegiftcertificates.com)
(161.58.86.38) by mta5.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 5 Aug 2004
00:32:18 -0000
That's the injection point. The last-relay is 161.58.86.38
(My CTW database shows ·····@verio.net as the appropriate
spam-complaint address for that entire 161.58/16.)
Received: from win19709 ([161.58.86.40]) by
mail38.myfreegiftcertificates.com with Microsoft
SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Wed, 4 Aug 2004 20:23:32 -0400
That last line either is forged or shows internal forwarding by the
spam haven or shows injection to an open relay etc. Since the IP number
listed here is in the same /24 block as the last relay, my guess it's
internal forwarding within the spam haven, or forged by spammer using
open proxy to look like internal forwarding. I don't care. The
last-relay IP number given earlier is the correct number for looking up
to find where to complain.
Bayesian (aka Statistical) Filtering
Good: Catch 99% to 99.9% of spam, low false positives.
Bad: Have to be trained.
Role: Best current solution for individual users.
Unfortunately all such I've seen described anywhere wait until the
e-mail has already been received and *then* divert it to a side folder,
see my gripes earlier about false positives never seen for months.
Has anyone ever implemented a Bayesian filter which is hooked from
within the SMTP server to issue a 5yz refusal for any e-mail that the
filter decides is sure, and nearly certain, to be spam?
FFBs
Good: Raise cost of spamming.
Bad: Involve blacklists.
Not necessarily. Every recipient of every spam could auto-fetch every
WebPage mentionned in the spam, even if it's Yahoo etc. The real
problem would be Joe-jobbing innocent Web servers. I.e. the spam could
say "Don't use http://mail.yahoo.com, instead use http://b1gp3n1s.com",
so then Yahoo would be swamped even faster than the actual spamvertised
site would be, and when Yahoo's server gets so swamped it can't handle
connections, the FFB software would time out and not bother the actual
spamvertised site at all.
Slow Senders
Good: Raises cost of spamming.
Bad: Requires new email protocol.
Role: Speculative idea.
Spam has low response rates (on the order of 15 per million) but
spammers make up for it with high volumes, sending millions of emails
per day. If you could slow down the rate at which they send email, you
could put them out of business.
One way to do this would be to make any computer that wanted to send
you mail perform a time-consuming computation before you would accept
it.
Bad idea. Spammers can hijack millions of MicroSoft Windows systems and
perform parallel computation of whatever is needed. Only false-positive
e-mail would suffer. Better idea is for the SMTP server, upon
recognizing that incoming message is likely to be spam, to sit for a
long time before finally saying 4yz (temporary failure, try again
later) or 5yz (refuse). There are only so many processes available at
one time on a spam relay, so if thousands of SMTP servers are
simultaneously making a single open relay sit and wait, that open relay
would be out of service. Since the 500 million e-mail addresses of
victims are spread across many different SMTP servers, each of them
being tied up while deliberately delaying a spammer would not quite put
them out of service, and in any case such a SMTP server could
deliberately hold the line on spammers only until it runs out of
processes or otherwise gets overloaded and *then* begin dismissing one
spammer-connection after another until the load is back to a tolerable
level. In this case, it's the server which controls total load on
itself. And of course if connections are coming back in as soon as they
are dropped, the recipient's router (must be better than the crop that
Cisco sells so the flash memory doesn't burn out after a few uses) can
be set to reject all packets from whatever IP address blocks are
causing the excessive load at any given time.
Junk Address
Good: Cuts some spam.
Bad: Can't always use them.
Role: Use on web sites that make you register.
You could in principle avoid spam by giving a different email address
to everyone. Then you could just shut off any address that got
compromised. And, for what it's worth, you'd know who was responsible.
This of course works only if you can get tens of new e-mail addresses
any time you want at virtually no cost, which precludes most users of
regular ISPs. Only if you run your own ISP, or can find some regular
ISP or mail-forwarding service that will let you do this. If you run
Javascript and can see images etc., you could use Yahoo! Mail to make
up new accounts any time you want, although it's several minutes manual
labor every time you make a new account, and if Yahoo ever finds out
one person has several hundred e-mail addresses, you can kiss your
e-mail byebye. And it's a royal pain to have to check hundreds of
Yahoo! Mail accounts several times a day just to see if any of your
hundreds of penpals sent you new e-mail. Does anybody know of a free
mail-forwarding service that allows new e-mail addresses for a given
account to be created any time you want, and allows you to close down
old addresses that have started getting spam or for any other reason
you no longer want them to accept e-mail, and among all the currently
active addresses all e-mail is instantly forwarded to a single account
where you can check for all new e-mail in one step?
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/spamdiff.html
If spammers did reimburse you
the cost of the resources they used, would spam stop bothering you?
I've had to spend many hundreds of hours dealing with spam that flooded
my e-mailbox. If I got paid for my time, even at the Federal minimum
legal wage (appx. $9/hour, right?), that would be nice. Then I'd be
glad to deal with the remaining spam I haven't had time to deal with at
all, getting paid even more. At 200 hours per month, $1800 per month,
I'd be able to pay the rent, so I won't become homeless in just a few
more months, and start to pay off credit cards, and eventually be out
of debt and actually be able to buy some stuff I seriously need.
Even better would be if I could receive $500 for each spam I recieve. I
get several thousand per month, so that would be at least a million
dollars per month the spammers already owe me but I can't yet collect.
But if I could collect, wow!!
--> http://www.paulgraham.com/spamarchives.html
A number of far-sighted people have been saving all their spam and
have put it online. This is a valuable resource for anyone writing
Bayesian filters.
A couple years ago, I put a bunch of files of my own received (on Unix
ISP) spam online, but Yahoo Geocities deleted it all. Then I created a
Yahoo Group (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SpamCopies/messages)
where people could forward copies of any spam they get, and anyone
anywhere on the net could view it, intending to attract other people to
publish their received spam in that way, and intending myself to
forward all my spam on Yahoo! Mail to there. But Yahoo! Mail changed
their service to require Javascript for virtually all activities,
including forwarding e-mail, so I can't do that. But earlier today I
thought of a nifty hack for automatically downloading individual Yahoo!
Mail messages to file on Unix, whereupon a program could parse such a
message to create the original format (without all the advertising and
HTML etc. that Yahoo! Mail adds to it when presenting it to users). If
I get that working, maybe I could then submit all such received spam
somewhere such as the Yahoo group.
In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>, ·······@Yahoo.Com wrote:
> I've automated the task of sending complaints
> to the appropriate spam-complaint address based on block containing the
> IP number of the last relay or the next known ISP upstream from the
> last relay. Anyone using a Unix shell account to receive e-mail, and
> anyone running a Macintosh or Windows or Linux system, providing that
> machine has at least one decent programming/scripting system on it,
> could do the same sort of thing, if the appropriate software were
> available.
Have you considered selling this software you've written, in the form
of filtering email for people & allowing them to complain about spam?
Spamcop.net seems to make a decent living at it (decent enough to stay
in business, anyway).
Also, regarding some of your other computer woes:
http://www.bytemark.co.uk/index.html might be able to help you out, if
you can squeeze ~$25/month out of your budget. You get root on a full
Debian GNU/Linux install. You can do anything you want with it,
including run a business website (or several business websites).
-- Larry Clapp
A satisfied customer of both Spamcop.net & Bytemark Hosting
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug11-004@Yahoo.Com>
Part 4 of very long reply, finally back to original message:
> From: Thomas Schilling <······@yahoo.de>
> I think bouncing them back is a bad idea for the same reason it is a
> bad idea to reply to any spam mail. The spammer then get's the
> address verified and can sell it for a better price (or whatever
> spammers do with that).
My CL software makes it difficult for spammers to do that. If somebody
clicks on the remove-me link, it presumably runs a CGI script that is
tagged with the working e-mail address, and instantly adds it to the
confirmed list. But when I send complaint with copy of spam attached,
I'm not jumping through the CGI-script hoop, and none of the headers on
my complaint indicate the valid address that was spammed (the header
has YahooGroups addresses such as SpamVictims and
JoeJobReturnPathEvidence etc.). The spammer would have to look past the
e-mail header, past the formletter of complaint, to the actual body of
the spam I've sent back. Automating the process of doing this for every
different kind of spam complaint (some using MIME attachments instead
of inline text, some not even containing a copy of the spam), would be
too much work for most spammers. Also I send to the abuse address for
the whole /16 or larger block, not to the spammer himself. If some
major ISP is forwarding spam complaints back to spammers, and also the
spammer is then going to all the work to go past headers two levels
deep to find the orignal spam with my secret ISP address on it, I lose,
but in most cases a major ISP won't forward spam to the spammer, it'll
ignore the complaint (just toss it in the trash), or terminate the
spammer, or close the open relay/proxy that's allowing some
non-customer to spam through the major ISP's equipment. With most
spammers now using open relays/proxies, or using trojaned MicroSoft
Windows systems, the ISP getting my complaint is very unlikely to even
know who the spammer really is, hence be unable to forward my complaint
to the spammer even if they wanted to.
By the way, the flood of virus/worm spam:
If the message will not displayed automatically,
follow the link to read the delivered message.
:which started arriving at my secret ISP address on March 29:
+ 54 Mar 29 ·········@tnb.com. (44K) *****SPAM***** Mail Delivery (failure
:finally ended on July 29, this being the last:
+ 57 Jul 29 ········@cometacom (44K) *****SPAM***** Mail Delivery (failure
:and I've gotten only 7 spam since then:
58 Jul 29 Cliff Mora (4535) *****SPAM***** Recruitr 75% Off All Ne
59 Aug 1 ············@starf (1577) *****SPAM*****
60 Aug 2 Admin (5674) *****SPAM***** Staff Bulletin
+ 1 Aug 4 ALI MUDI (60K) *****SPAM*****
2 Aug 4 Eliseo Begay (4786) *****SPAM***** Recruitr s0ftware at in
+ 3 Aug 4 ·········@netscape (5442) *****SPAM***** please i need your help
4 Aug 6 Mitchel Painter (4900) *****SPAM***** Recruitr 75% Off All Ne
:of which only one is large enough to contain a virus/worm, that 60K
one up there, which goes like this:
FROM THE DESK OF DR.ALI MUDI
THE BRANCH MANAGER OF UNITED BANK OF AFRICA
NIGERIA. L T D.
LAGOS NIGERIA.
P.O BOX 1779 IKEJA LAGOS NIGERIAN
MY PRIVATE ·············@ZONAI.COM
..
[ Part 2, Application/OCTET-STREAM (Name: "LOVEME.txt") 53KB. ]
[ Cannot display this part. Press "V" then "S" to save in a file. ]
[ Part 3: "Attached Text" ]
I wonder if my auto-complaints about spam, concealing my e-mail address
(except in the enclosed spam copy), were effective in getting the spam
relays shut down? No more spam to my secret ISP address in five days!!
> He creates two inboxes--spam and non-spam--and builds up statistical
> filtering information. This filter is "intelligent" ...
My 40 megabytes archive of e-mail, legitimate in some files, spam in
other files, is divided into many files, not just two. Is there a CL
program that would allow me to name a few of the spam files, and a few
of the non-spam files, for training it, then name one by one additional
files where the program would tell me whether all the messages in a
file were apparent spam or all were apparent legitimate or most are one
kind but one or two are exceptions (and tell me just the exceptions)?
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <u7jsa8adu.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
>>>>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2004 11:35:17 -0700, RobertMaas ("RobertMaas") writes:
RobertMaas> Perhaps those people have the money to simply *buy*
RobertMaas> whatever they needed?
Where I live, the sidewalks are literally paved with computers.
You can obtain a complete Pentium computer system, at no cost
whatsoever, by scrounging around. People, companies, and schools
throw them out in the trash, just because they are considered obsolete.
Yoy live in a more affluent area than I do, so you should have no
problem recovering a discarded machine. The easiest place to
start would be with your decades of contacts at Stanford and similar
places; they undoubtedly dispose of such computers on a daily basis.
Although you seem to have totally ignored my previous advice that you
contact your local California employment office (where they have free
job search counseling, assistance preparing resumes, computers and other
tools for resume production, copying, faxing, and internet accesss),
you could also investigate whether there are any charity organizations
that will help you obtain a free "junk" computer.
Typical "junk" "trash" computers are much more than adequate for
running Linux, accessing the Internet, running free Common Lisp
systems such as clisp or cmucl, and doing lots of other things.
I have better computers than that. But in the past, I have actually
done $10,000 consulting projects using such a "trash" computer.
It's more expensive to dispose of them than it is to obtain them.
Nowadays, a fancy brand new computer system costs $500.
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
>
> > From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> > It's easy to setup an eMail account, there are many free eMail
> > services.
>
> Most of the Web-based services don't work without javascript and https.
> Recently Yahoo! Mail changed their service so it's not even possible to
> delete a message, nor to send a message, nor to see which messages are
> new, without javascript. Do you know of any Web-based e-mail services
> which work fine via lynx? I don't know of any currently.
...err...I was using Yahoo Mail from Lynx just yesterday,
and it seemed to work. Come to think of it, the first
thing I do with ANY browser is turn off javascript,
and I don't have problems accessing Yahoo.
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug10-001@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Ian Wild <········@eurocontrol.int>
> I was using Yahoo Mail from Lynx just yesterday, and it seemed to
> work.
Were you able to actually send an outgoing message from Yahoo! Mail
using Lynx? If so, how? When I use Yahoo! Mail from Lynx, there's a
button to compose a message, which gives a form to fill out, but
there's no submit button on that form, so no way to actually send the
message I've composed with that form. There's also no way to see which
messages are new (not-yet-read messages are no longer highlighted), and
no way to delete a message, move it to another folder, etc.
········@Yahoo.Com" wrote:
>
> Were you able to actually send an outgoing message from Yahoo! Mail
> using Lynx?
Well, yes, of course.
> If so, how? When I use Yahoo! Mail from Lynx, there's a
> button to compose a message, which gives a form to fill out, but
> there's no submit button on that form, so no way to actually send the
> message I've composed with that form.
Down-arrow to the big text area, (optional: ^Xe into emacs), compose
message, (optional: ^X^C out of emacs), up-arrow until the cursor
is on a link called "Send", right-arrow to send.
> There's also no way to see which
> messages are new (not-yet-read messages are no longer highlighted),
Dunno about that. I don't leave stuff lying around in
my inbox - it gets either filed or binned. If you've got
one of these fancy new Lynxes that can do colour, you might
be able to tell it to show "bold link" is a different way
to "link", but I'm a B/W fan myself.
> and
> no way to delete a message, move it to another folder, etc.
Down-arrow to the checkbox(es) next to the message(s) of
interest, right-arrow to select, down-arrow to the link
called "delete", right-arrow. Or, down-arrow to the bit
saying "[choose folder]", right-arrow to open, down-arrow
to pick a folder, right-arrow to close, down-arrow until
you get to the "move" link, right-arrow to move messages
to folder.
From: ·······@Yahoo.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug14-002@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Ian Wild <········@eurocontrol.int>
> > If so, how? When I use Yahoo! Mail from Lynx, there's a
> > button to compose a message, which gives a form to fill out, but
> > there's no submit button on that form, so no way to actually send the
> > message I've composed with that form.
> Down-arrow to the big text area, (optional: ^Xe into emacs), compose
> message, (optional: ^X^C out of emacs),
That's the only part that works in Lynx.
> up-arrow until the cursor is on a link called "Send",
There's no such link. The top of the composition area and above looks like:
Mail Mail shortcuts | Addresses Address Book shortcuts | Calendar
Calendar shortcuts | Notepad Notepad shortcuts ·······@yahoo.com [Sign
Out]
[BUTTON] Send [BUTTON] Save as a Draft [BUTTON] Spell Check [BUTTON]
Cancel
Compose
Send an eCard
Insert addresses or enter nicknames (separated by commas)
To: ···········@somewhere___________________
Cc:
_________________ Bcc: _________________
Subject: Test____________________________________
I assume you're referring to that "[BUTTON] Send" thing up there?
It's not anything Lynx can put the cursor on. If I use the uparrow key
to try to move the cursor up past "Send an eCard" the cursor jumps all
the way up to "Sign Out". There's nothing between those two points
except plain text according to Lynx. The HTML source that generates the
plaintext "[BUTTON] send" is:
<button type="button" name="sendtop" id="sendtop" value="Send" title="Send Message" tabindex="6" onclick="Send_Click();">Send</button>
As you can see clearly, it's something for Javascript, not <a href...>
that Lynx could use as a link.
Hmm, I notice your IP number is 193.221.170.178 which is in Belgium.
Are you using a European version of Yahoo, which maybe hasn't yet
gotten the update we in the USA got a few months ago (100 megabytes
instead of 6-7 megabytes of storage per account, and Javascript buttons
instead of <input type="submit" ...> to send completed form)? After
logging into Yahoo! Mail, what server do you get? I get
us.f407.mail.yahoo.com
> If you've got one of these fancy new Lynxes that can do colour, you
> might be able to tell it to show "bold link" is a different way to
> "link"
I don't think there's any such thing as color in VT100 protocol.
However my VT100 emulator on my Macintosh Performa actually does show
bold as a different color: Regular text is black, bold is orange, links
are reddish purple, all on white background, and currently selected
link is reverse video i.e. white on navy blue.
I don't remember how Yahoo! Mail highlighted not-yet-seen messages,
whether it was bold (orange) or something else, but it's moot now
because since the change a few months ago new messages haven't been
bold, instead old (already seen) and new (not yet seen) messages are
distinguished:
<tr class=msgold style="background-color:#F6F6F6">
<tr class=msgnew>
which doesn't show any difference in Lynx.
> > and
> > no way to delete a message, move it to another folder, etc.
> Down-arrow to the checkbox(es) next to the message(s) of
> interest, right-arrow to select,
That's the only part that has worked for a couple years.
> down-arrow to the link called "delete"
There's no such link. Here's what appears on screen:
[ ] [reply.gif] [abook_rdex_1.gif] ···········@ yahoo.com Yahoo!
Clubs Club Masters Fri 02/09 3k
Check All - Clear All Messages 1-6 of 6First | Previous | Next | Last
[BUTTON] Delete [BUTTON] Spam [BUTTON] Mark [BUTTON] Move...
[BUTTON] Check Mail - [BUTTON] Compose - [BUTTON] Search Mail | Mail
Upgrades - Mail Options
The title of that last message, and "Mail Upgrades", are each a link,
but everything between is just plain text, totally ineffective, in
Lynx. The HTML source for "[BUTTON] Delete" is:
<button type="button" id="deletebottom" name="delete" title="Delete selected message(s)" onclick="Delete_Click();">Delete</button>
That's not a link/anchor, nothing Lynx can use.
> Or, down-arrow to the bit saying "[choose folder]"
All that shows there is "Move..." as plain text (see above).
The HTML source for that is:
<button type="button" id="movebottom" name="move" class="menubutton" title="Move selected message(s)">Move...</button>
Again nothing that Lynx can use.
When you use Lynx with Yahoo! Mail, what HTML source do you have for
submitting a composed message to send it, and for deleting or moving
selecting messages? If it's the kind of stuff I show above, then your
Lynx must be able to interpret Javascript, whereas if it's <input ...>
then it means Yahoo! Mail hasn't yet done that big change to the
European server you're using.
Oh, slight typo above: Where I said it's not <a href...> that should
read it's not <input type="submit"...>, sorry, you said "link" and
that got me confused during the first part of composing my message.
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
> > From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
> > You live in Mountain View, right? I've been there, and I can't
> > believe there aren't any print shops nearby; it's a modern city, it's
> > not like you're out in the boondocks.
>
> I live a half mile from the nearest bus service, which runs once per
> hour except during early morning and late afternoon commute hours when
> it runs half-hourly. That nearest bus stop is about a mile from the
> start of the downtown section, about 1.5 miles from El Camino Real. The
> nearest place I know of that allows printing from diskette or from the
> Web is Kinko's which is about a mile down El Camino Real.
Being European, the only place I felt a real need for a car was in the
USA, namely when I visited Silicon Valley. However, you should feel
lucky to live there.
> [...]
> > All you should need to do is go into the PPP control panel and remove
> > the phone number.
>
> I looked at Control Panels just now, and there isn't anything called
> PPP. Maybe that's one of the files I deleted (after copying to Syquest
> backup) six years ago. Someday I'll need to look where I put that stuff
> and make a list of it and ask you what needs fixing to avoid accidently
> dialing AT&T WorldNet, and what needs restoring to make IE work in
> local mode without freezing the whole computer. Is there anywhere a
> list of files that IE needs to avoid freezing the computer, so I can
> make sure I get them all restored?
IIRC, in later MacOS versions, it's named "Remote Access". You should
check the "TCP/IP" control panel too.
In any case, non-Microsoft software are better. Netscape Communicator
was nice. You should fetch the latest version available for MacOS.
> [...] I continued to use my old Macintosh Plus with MACL for
> doing LISP stuff until it died in mid-1999, and I couldn't afford to
> get it fixed, especially since it'd probably die again at the end of
> 1999 due to y2k problems, so I've had only this Mac Performa to use
> since then.
MacOS doesn't have a Y2K problem. It'll have a Y2K+40 problem.
(+ 1904 (/ (expt 2 32) (* 60 60 24 365.25)))
Hopefully, by then we'll all be running 64-bit OSes, and the Y2K+38
Damocles Sword will be put aside us.
(+ 1970 (/ (expt 2 31) (* 60 60 24 365.25)))
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> wrote in message news:<··············@thalassa.informatimago.com>...
> ··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>
> > > From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
> > > You live in Mountain View, right? I've been there, and I can't
> > > believe there aren't any print shops nearby; it's a modern city, it's
> > > not like you're out in the boondocks.
>
.....
> Being European, the only place I felt a real need for a car was in the
> USA, namely when I visited Silicon Valley. However, you should feel
> lucky to live there.
>
actually a friend of mine used to live in Mountain View and didn't
even have a driver's license.
-klaus
From: Mark Carter
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <2nh04tFpc67U1@uni-berlin.de>
> Being European, the only place I felt a real need for a car was in the
> USA,
Well, young man, you've obviously never sampled the delights of the
British public transport system. Although I'm not entirely sure that
"system" is the right word for it.
I live in a rural area of Scotland, and a car is absolutely vital for
getting around.
From: ··········@YahooGroups.Com
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2004aug08-002@Yahoo.Com>
> From: Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com>
> IIRC, in later MacOS versions, it's named "Remote Access". You should
> check the "TCP/IP" control panel too.
I checked: Neither of those exists on this Performa either. Perhaps
they were files I removed to avoid the AT&T problem.
> non-Microsoft software are better. Netscape Communicator was nice.
> You should fetch the latest version available for MacOS.
If I could be sure it wouldn't just freeze the computer because of
missing system files, I might go to that trouble, but without that
question resolved it doesn't seem worth the effort.
> MacOS doesn't have a Y2K problem.
It's my understanding that the date/time control panel, the only easy
way to set the system clock, on System 6.0.3 (what I normally ran) and
on System 6.0.5 (what I switched to when I needed to run HyperCard 2),
is not compatible with any year past 1999. I tried to find somebody who
had a modified control panel that would allow setting dates past 1999,
but never found any.
At this point, the only reason I'd want to revive the Macintosh Plus
would be to run MACL on it, which doesn't work under System 7, so
repairing the Macintosh Plus and upgrading to System 7 would be
worthless even if possible. (Does System 7 even run on a Mac Plus??)
(Note: I don't even remember what that control panel was called
on the Mac Plus, it's been 5 years since it was working.)
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: OT: writing resumes with VT100 for a Lisp job
Date:
Message-ID: <ur7qrvdgq.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
>>>>> On Sat, 31 Jul 2004 15:41:01 -0700, RobertMaas ("RobertMaas") writes:
RobertMaas> That's not really an option here. I don't have a printer,
RobertMaas> so I can't print anything except by spending an hour each
RobertMaas> way on the bus to get to the nearest Kinko's copy place.
If you're unemployed, don't you unfortunately have time to take the trip?
But that's a rhetorical question, because you don't need to go to Kinkos.
You should go to the Employment Development Department of the
state of California. They have services to help you prepare
your resume, as well as interviewing skills, networking, etc.
This includes seminars and workshops, as well as access to
phones, Internet, printers, fax machines, and copy machines.
http://www.edd.ca.gov/eddjs.htm
In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>, ··········@YahooGroups.Com
wrote:
> > From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
> > don't write too much
>
> Easier said than done. I have 15 years lisp programming experience, in
> a wide variety of different areas, and it seems reasonable to include
> all the major areas, not leaving anything out. If I decide to leave out
> some of the major areas I've programmed in, I have no idea which areas
> to leave out.
>
> > and structure it with tables,
>
> Do you mean HTML tables, or just plain-text arrays? I don't have access
> to HTML tables from here (lynx is the only browser available), so if I
> somehow created an HTML table I wouldn't be able to see what I was
> doing to see if I got it right at all. If you mean plain-text arrays,
> please tell me more what you have in mind.
In plain text you can do things like:
Languages: Lisp, PL/I, BASIC, Fortran
Operating systems: ITS, MS-DOS, TRS-DOS
Applications: ...
and so on
This can allow you to concisely summarize many areas of your experience.
When I lost my job in December, I spent quite a bit of time working with
a consultant, refining my resume (Level(3) paid for outplacement
consulting for everyone who was laid off). It was quite a bit of work
to fit 20+ years of experience onto 2 pages, but I eventually did it.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
> From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
> In plain text you can do things like:
> Languages: Lisp, PL/I, BASIC, Fortran
Well I basically do something like that in my *general* resume, as
opposed to my LISP-specific resume. See the ASCII version here:
http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.98B.txt
See the more recent MS-Word version of it here:
http://voyager.deanza.fhda.edu/~rm034596/Robert_Elton_Maas.doc
> It was quite a bit of work to fit 20+ years of experience onto 2 pages,
>but I eventually did it.
A lot of people have told me I have to fit it all on ONE page.
I don't know whether to go by that advice or not.
A lot of people have told me that I should omit anything I did more
than five years ago, which I think is ridiculous advice.
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
> A lot of people have told me that I should omit anything I did more
> than five years ago, which I think is ridiculous advice.
I noticed that your "paid work experience" section terminates in
September of 1992, leaving one to question: What have you been doing
since? The question is not meant to accuse you of loafing around for
the last 12 years. Rather, it's an encouragement to talk about what
you've been doing to keep your mind active, even if it wasn't paying
the rent.
An employer might be scared off by a candidate who seems, at first
blush, to have been out of work for a long time. Your reasons may be
perfectly innocuous, but, left unstated, an employer is left to fear
the worst.
--
Steven E. Harris
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
> An employer might be scared off by a candidate who seems, at first
> blush, to have been out of work for a long time. Your reasons may be
> perfectly innocuous, but, left unstated, an employer is left to fear
> the worst.
The worst? Like you entered the mafia and were a contract killer for
12 years? Or you flipped psychopath and spend the 12 last years
killing little girls in white dresses? Or you spend the last 12 years
as Saddam Hussein's torture technical consultant?
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> writes:
> The worst?
Or you were in prison, or in a coma, or that you've been desperately
trying to get work for twelve years but no other company has bitten
yet.
--
Steven E. Harris
> From: "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com>
> Or you were in prison, or in a coma,
No, neither of those.
> or that you've been desperately trying to get work for twelve years
Yes. The first two years all the agencies said there's a recession on
so nobody's hiring. After that, the agencies said that because I've
been unemployed two or more years they're not interested in me because
their clients want somebody with recent work experience and being
unemployed more than two years is a red flag.
> but no other company has bitten yet.
That's a derogatory way of putting it. No company has recognized how my
talent and skills might be of benefit to them.
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote in message news:<·················@Yahoo.Com>...
> > From: "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com>
> > Or you were in prison, or in a coma,
>
> No, neither of those.
>
> > or that you've been desperately trying to get work for twelve years
>
> Yes. The first two years all the agencies said there's a recession on
> so nobody's hiring. After that, the agencies said that because I've
> been unemployed two or more years they're not interested in me because
> their clients want somebody with recent work experience and being
> unemployed more than two years is a red flag.
USENET seems to mention your suicidal "cries for help" and social
issues. Perhaps they, as well as the 12 year unemployment stretch stem
from the same source? Reading your posts here, the wife story, etc., I
would guess it has something to do with your negativity and victim
mentality.
You want to be pitied!
My computer doesn't run X! My wife beat me! I was unemployed for 12
years and now I'm about to max out my credit cards! I don't know how
to write a resume a PHB will appreciate! I can't afford MS Word!
I'm probably asking for too much, but try to rephrase all of the above
statements into HOW-questions: ex
"My wife is abusing me!" -> "HOW do I stop my wife from abusing me?"
Consider it an exercise in POSITIVE THINKING.
Oh, BTW, I'm curious, how could you afford living in Mountain View
while being unemployed for 12 years?
···················@yahoo.com (Johnny) writes:
> My computer doesn't run X! My wife beat me! I was unemployed for 12
> years and now I'm about to max out my credit cards! I don't know how
> to write a resume a PHB will appreciate! I can't afford MS Word!
Just for the record: I purchased a 333 MHz PII with all equipment
(except a monitor) for about 30 EUR, not to mention the Windows 2k
partition (with Word on it) that I promptly deleted...
Regards,
--
____________________________
Julian Stecklina / _________________________/
________________/ /
\_________________/ LISP - truly beautiful
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>> or that you've been desperately trying to get work for twelve years
>
> Yes. The first two years all the agencies said there's a recession on
> so nobody's hiring. After that, the agencies said that because I've
> been unemployed two or more years they're not interested in me because
> their clients want somebody with recent work experience and being
> unemployed more than two years is a red flag.
That's a wicked form of "musical chairs" -- get stuck once and you're
out of the game. One could argue that the best or at least the most
desperate candidates would have found some way to forestall two years
of unemployment, and that a candidate who couldn't has been sifted to
the bottom of the pile by other would-be employers'
rejections. Missing from that argument is acknowledgment that unusual
life events (again, a coma) could have precluded eligibility for work.
>> but no other company has bitten yet.
>
> That's a derogatory way of putting it.
But you just proved my point above. These companies may be scared to
hire you because no other company has employed you recently. When
I wrote "bitten yet," I didn't mean "suckered" or some suggestion that
they'd hire you only by way of deception.
> No company has recognized how my talent and skills might be of
> benefit to them.
And that's probably their loss too. At this point, distanced as your
resume is from their current expectations, the burden is on your to
show them this benefit. You have to help them overcome theses
suspicions and doubts. How do you sell yourself in a cover letter?
Have you considered integrating some "cover-letter-style selling" into
the resume itself?
--
Steven E. Harris
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
>
> That's a derogatory way of putting it. No company has recognized how my
> talent and skills might be of benefit to them.
IMO, resumes do not work. You have to meet people face to face. Get them
to know you on a personal level. Some suggestions 1) put your foot in the door
and ask them to hang around the shop and learn some things, or help out. (for
free) Bring baked goods, be friendly and helpful. 2) Join some computer societies
and clubs, attend meetings, make friends. You probably remember back when you were
working full-time. Remember how it was from a social standpoint. Everybody needs
assurances that others are good people to have around, whatever good is defined as.
People (aka companies) want to hire good people, people who will fit in, be
productive and supportive.
Do not put emphasis on your resume as an initial contact. Nor put _what_ the
company does as high on the list.
Wade
In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, Pascal Bourguignon <····@thalassa.informatimago.com> transmitted:
> "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
>> An employer might be scared off by a candidate who seems, at first
>> blush, to have been out of work for a long time. Your reasons may be
>> perfectly innocuous, but, left unstated, an employer is left to fear
>> the worst.
>
> The worst? Like you entered the mafia and were a contract killer
> for 12 years? Or you flipped psychopath and spend the 12 last years
> killing little girls in white dresses? Or you spend the last 12
> years as Saddam Hussein's torture technical consultant?
The "worst" scenario for their purposes is that you have spent the
last 12 years unable to convince anyone else to employ you.
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="cbbrowne.com" in name ^ ·@" ^ tld;;
http://cbbrowne.com/info/
"In the free software world, a rising tide DOES lift all boats, and
once the user has tasted Unix it's easy for them to switch between
Unices."
-- david parsons
> From: "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com>
> I noticed that your "paid work experience" section terminates in
> September of 1992, leaving one to question: What have you been doing
> since? The question is not meant to accuse you of loafing around for
> the last 12 years. Rather, it's an encouragement to talk about what
> you've been doing to keep your mind active, even if it wasn't paying
> the rent.
Helping take care of my two little children, and protect them from an
abusive wife, looking for employment and building up several megabytes
of documentation of my employment search, getting a domestic violence
restraining order against my wife and taking care of two young children
all by myself while still looking for employment, programming various
applications/utilities for myself and children on my Macintosh using
HyperCard and CL, helping newcomers to the net learn how to do things
properly (news.newusers.questions), fighting spam, moving to motel when
we lost our section-8 housing and were looking for new section-8
housing, going through court to try to get my children back after they
were taken away even though I had found a place for us to move to,
programming various applications/utilities on Unix using C and CL,
overcoming shyness by talking to random strangers, helping people deal
with emotional problems, taking classes in C (prerequisite for C++) and
Visual Basic and Java to qualify for jobs that require them.
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
> Helping take care of my two little children,
[...]
That was painful to read, though surely not nearly as painful as
living through it. There are activities and pursuits mentioned that
could qualify as volunteer work, especially in education.
Perhaps if you fill in the missing time on your resume with some
positive activities, such as part-time volunteer teaching and
educational software development, you could forestall the question I
asked and guide discussion toward your strengths. Maybe you're a good
teacher and mentor. Maybe you exhibit an unusually healthy "work-life
balance." Spin it thusly: Life's obligations kept you away from
full-time employment as a software developer for a while, but you've
been honing your skills all along and are now ready to commit
full-time again.
--
Steven E. Harris
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>> From: "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com>
>> I noticed that your "paid work experience" section terminates in
>> September of 1992, leaving one to question: What have you been doing
>> since? The question is not meant to accuse you of loafing around for
>> the last 12 years. Rather, it's an encouragement to talk about what
>> you've been doing to keep your mind active, even if it wasn't paying
>> the rent.
>
> Helping take care of my two little children, and protect them from an
> abusive wife, looking for employment and building up several megabytes
> of documentation of my employment search, getting a domestic violence
> restraining order against my wife and taking care of two young children
> all by myself while still looking for employment, programming various
> applications/utilities for myself and children on my Macintosh using
> HyperCard and CL, helping newcomers to the net learn how to do things
> properly (news.newusers.questions), fighting spam, moving to motel when
> we lost our section-8 housing and were looking for new section-8
> housing, going through court to try to get my children back after they
> were taken away even though I had found a place for us to move to,
> programming various applications/utilities on Unix using C and CL,
> overcoming shyness by talking to random strangers, helping people deal
> with emotional problems, taking classes in C (prerequisite for C++) and
> Visual Basic and Java to qualify for jobs that require them.
To put a more positive spin on it you could put in something about
being a single parent, and coping! (for whichever period that applies)
and then for those periods you put in "Caring for my children and
taking care of our home". Also put in something under a heading like
"Voluntary work" (i.e. newsgroups/teaching). The cover letter should
of course emphasise that you now are eager to get back into
professional programming after making sure your children get the best
possible nurturing and protection during their formative years :-)
In Norway a CV can contain sections like "Personal information" and
"Interests and leisure activities". These things are not just to show
that you are a person, but lots of stuff one would get paid for can
never come out of a class. These "extra" headings usually come after
the headings "Education" "Professional experience" and "Certifications
and courses". If the CV runs up to two pages plus addenda, you might
want to put the "Personal Information" section first to make sure
people see it. On the other hand maybe not. Make some drafts and try
them out on people. Contact whatever public services are available in
your area for job-hunters, and get caseworkers and fellow sufferers to
give you feedback.
--
H�kon Alstadheim, stay-at-home-dad. (yes, I'm eating my own dog-food)
> From: "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com>
> I noticed that your "paid work experience" section terminates in
> September of 1992, leaving one to question: What have you been doing
> since?
Yeah. That's the trouble with any standard resume format where you're
only allowed to include paid work, nothing unpaid. My nine-page C.V.
includes everything I thought was significant as work experience,
whether paid or unpaid. I checked yesterday and saw it was up-to-date
as of early last year, so I then included that last 1.3 years and
rearranged some items that continued from before to maintain the
reverse chronological sequence per ending date, and uploaded it. So you
can see it all now:
http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/RESUME.REM.txt
So does anyone have any idea how to condense nine pages to one or two
pages, so that I can get all that info in a form some potential
employer might actually have time/energy to read or even quick-scan?
··········@YahooGroups.Com (·······@Yahoo.Com) writes:
> > From: "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com>
> > I noticed that your "paid work experience" section terminates in
> > September of 1992, leaving one to question: What have you been doing
> > since?
>
> Yeah. That's the trouble with any standard resume format where you're
> only allowed to include paid work, nothing unpaid. My nine-page C.V.
> includes everything I thought was significant as work experience,
> whether paid or unpaid. I checked yesterday and saw it was up-to-date
> as of early last year, so I then included that last 1.3 years and
> rearranged some items that continued from before to maintain the
> reverse chronological sequence per ending date, and uploaded it. So you
> can see it all now:
> http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/RESUME.REM.txt
>
> So does anyone have any idea how to condense nine pages to one or two
> pages, so that I can get all that info in a form some potential
> employer might actually have time/energy to read or even quick-scan?
Here's what I would do:
Refocus your employment objectives. Instead of
Computer software developer (conceive, design and implement new
algorithms; preferably using LISP; especially for data-compression
information-retrieval computer-assisted instruction or utilities),
customer-support via electronic mail, mathematics research,
tutoring or teaching, technical proofreader, HTML author,
electronic-mail secretary, or other job in a similar field --
ideally 1/2 time (20 hours/week),
try
Software development in data compression, information retrieval,
and related areas of database and mathematical software. Available
full-time or on consulting basis.
All the other stuff you're probably overqualified for. If you want to
go for customer assistance, etc., build a different resume.
Get rid of descriptions of training classes. Summarize your software
and hardware experience just as lists:
Programming languages: Java, C, Lisp, CGI, HTML. . .
Platforms: VAX/VMS, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, . . .
Dump stuff like
helping the InterNet community fight network abuse, especially
spam, especially UBE (Unsolicited Bulk E-mail), mostly by
discussing topics on news.admin.net-abuse.email, by personally
complaining about any spam that arrives in my e-mailbox, and by
collecting and publishing information about sources of spam and
ways to fight spam.
If a hiring manager reads this, he either won't understand it or will
get a bad impression (e.g., complaining about *any* spam looks like
obsessiveness, which may be the case, but an impression to avoid.)
Generalize all of your project descriptions. First, take out all
technical detail, leaving in only summaries in the modern vernacular,
such as "developed data compression algorithms", "developed data
conversion algorithms", "wrote image processing routines", etc.
Second, emphasize the well-known places you've worked, e.g., Stanford
AI Lab, MIT, or whatever, names that people will recognize and
respect. Third, emphasize not what you did specifically on those
projects, but what kind of projects they were and what kind of impact
they had, e.g., "part of a team that built the earliest intelligent
tutoring systems." You want to give the impression (correct, one
would hope) that you were part of teams that did great things.
Exactly what you did can come out in interviews, but is irrelevant,
except for grand ideas and descriptions, in your resume.
Make sure your "former supervisors who could be contacted at one time"
can still be contacted and still remember you. What happens if
someone actually shows interest, and your references all fall through?
(A couple of your former supervisors are quite famous in academic
circles, by the way, which is a good thing.)
You seem to need to account for a decade or so of recent unemployment.
Is there a way to cast your experience as having worked toward
founding a dot-com start-up company that has now failed, even if you
never got to the incorporation stage? People in that kind of
situation don't have much more of a history than you do, though
they're probably much younger. Alternatively, you might cast yourself
as an open source programmer who has recently been living off savings,
altruistically contributing to the online community, but you've now
decided to re-enter industry in a more conventional way. Or maybe
you've done enough volunteer work that you can find someone to give
you a reference, ideally a technical one? I'm suggesting spin rather
than dishonesty, of course, in case you're wondering.
In general, think about what a hiring manager might want to see when
scanning through a resume in 30 seconds or less. If you don't already
know, check out other people's resumes online, maybe focusing on those
doing consulting--they have to know how to attract the right
attention.
Best of luck.
--
Rob St. Amant
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~stamant
In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>,
··········@YahooGroups.Com (·······@Yahoo.Com) wrote:
> > From: "Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com>
> > I noticed that your "paid work experience" section terminates in
> > September of 1992, leaving one to question: What have you been doing
> > since?
>
> Yeah. That's the trouble with any standard resume format where you're
> only allowed to include paid work, nothing unpaid. My nine-page C.V.
> includes everything I thought was significant as work experience,
> whether paid or unpaid.
I went back into a salaried job nearly two years ago, after half a
decade of being self-employed, and I recently changed jobs. It doesn't
seem to have been a problem.
Two years ago I was made an offer during the interview at the second
place I tried (and the first was a government department that I didn't
particuarly want to interview at but took as practise). This year I
felt like a move and sent out two emails (with resumes) to friends.
Both eventually turned into job offers.
I have a short section in my resume listing employment history, and then
a much longer section listing "selected projects", some paid, some not.
I don't think working on open source software (Gwydion Dylan) or
personally-obtained one man projects has hurt me. I am quite sure that
my small success in the ICFP programming contest (captain of 2nd place
team in 2001 and Judges' Prize team in 2003) has been viewed very
favourably by potential employers, especially as I am over forty, which
is supposed to be death for programmers.
I agree entirely with the people who advise to steer clear of the
standard HR process. If you think you might want to work somewhere then
find out who already works there and get to know them well enough that
they will recommend you.
-- Bruce
> I agree entirely with the people who advise to steer clear of the
> standard HR process. If you think you might want to work somewhere then
> find out who already works there and get to know them well enough that
> they will recommend you.
Indeed. That is how I obtained my job. My best friend works there, and
he put a good word in about me, so they called me in for an interview.
I'm now a Sys Admin using Linux, which is the type of job I have
wanted for a few years now :-)
> -- Bruce
--
May the Source be with you.
neo88 (Philip Haddad)
> From: Bruce Hoult <·····@hoult.org>
> I went back into a salaried job nearly two years ago, after half a
> decade of being self-employed
Are you using the term "self-employed" in the IRS-jargon sense, of
getting paid for your work but without any deductions, and then you
compute your own taxes and make payments to IRS afterward? Logically
"self-employed" makes no sense, because logically that would mean you
do work for yourself and pay yourself for that work, which means the
amount you pay and the amount you receive are the same, so there's no
net income whatsoever.
> This year I felt like a move and sent out two emails (with resumes)
> to friends. Both eventually turned into job offers.
Sigh, I don't have any friends.
> I have a short section in my resume listing employment history, and
> then a much longer section listing "selected projects", some paid,
> some not.
So how did employers react to six years of not being employed by any
company hence nothing in the employment history for six years in that
section? I tried listing what I was doing when not employed by any
company, right in sequence with paid work, but people complained that I
needed to list the name of the company I was working for (when I was in
fact just working for myself), so that attempt fizzled. Should I try
that approach again, but this time with your advice how to make such a
self-employment history acceptable to employers?
> I agree entirely with the people who advise to steer clear of the
> standard HR process.
Does that include all employment agencies/recruiters, including
temporary agencies such as Manpower, not worth the effort of even
registering with any of them?
> If you think you might want to work somewhere then find out who
> already works there and get to know them well enough that they will
> recommend you.
I have no idea what specific company I would like to work for. There
are some kinds of programming projects I'd like to work on, but I'm not
aware of any company whatsoever that is hiring anyone to work on those
kinds of projects. For example, I'd like to develop Web-based (CGI)
educational software that actually servos toward the student achieving
competence, but all the educational software companies seem to be
oriented toward shrinkwrap babysitting with flashing video and sounds
and animated cartoons while allowing the student to aimlessly explore
for some sort of alleged "enrichment", so Johnny still can't read after
years of such playing on the computer.
In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>,
··········@YahooGroups.Com (·······@Yahoo.Com) wrote:
> > From: Bruce Hoult <·····@hoult.org>
> > I went back into a salaried job nearly two years ago, after half a
> > decade of being self-employed
>
> Are you using the term "self-employed" in the IRS-jargon sense, of
> getting paid for your work but without any deductions, and then you
> compute your own taxes and make payments to IRS afterward?
Well over here it's the IRD not the IRS, and it's technically called
"sole trader", which has essentially the same rules as a partnership
except that there is only one of you.
> > This year I felt like a move and sent out two emails (with resumes)
> > to friends. Both eventually turned into job offers.
>
> Sigh, I don't have any friends.
How strange.
> > I have a short section in my resume listing employment history, and
> > then a much longer section listing "selected projects", some paid,
> > some not.
>
> So how did employers react to six years of not being employed by any
> company hence nothing in the employment history for six years in that
> section?
No one mentioned it. The employment history for that period said "self
employed". There were a number of projects listed during that period
(in the other section). I do mention in the resume the benefits of
having proven I can take a project from instigation to completion and
later support.
Basically the employment history section is continuous (in fact
self-employment overlaps with salaried or contract employment at the
ends and several places in the middle for several months at a time).
The "selected projects" part is discontiguous.
> > I agree entirely with the people who advise to steer clear of the
> > standard HR process.
>
> Does that include all employment agencies/recruiters, including
> temporary agencies such as Manpower, not worth the effort of even
> registering with any of them?
In my experience, but that's the only data point in have. One problem
is that I'm far from being a cookie-cutter programmer, especially by US
standards where people tend to specialize incredibly narrowly.
> > If you think you might want to work somewhere then find out who
> > already works there and get to know them well enough that they will
> > recommend you.
>
> I have no idea what specific company I would like to work for. There
> are some kinds of programming projects I'd like to work on, but I'm not
> aware of any company whatsoever that is hiring anyone to work on those
> kinds of projects.
That's a problem, but surely you can research it on the web? For
example, one of the people I sent my resume to this time is a well known
Lisp/Scheme/Dylan hacker with a blog that is quite frequently linked to
from e.g. LambdaTheUltimate. What he'd been writing about in his blog
recently looked interesting, the company turned out to be interested in
having more than one person capable of understanding what he was doing,
and they made me an offer (which as it happened I eventually turned down
in favour of an offer from the other place).
-- Bruce
Bruce Hoult <·····@hoult.org> wrote:
+---------------
| ··········@YahooGroups.Com (·······@Yahoo.Com) wrote:
| > Are you using the term "self-employed" in the IRS-jargon sense, of
| > getting paid for your work but without any deductions, and then you
| > compute your own taxes and make payments to IRS afterward?
|
| Well over here it's the IRD not the IRS, and it's technically called
| "sole trader", which has essentially the same rules as a partnership
| except that there is only one of you.
+---------------
In the USA, the actual IRS term is "sole proprietor", which sounds
a lot like "sole trader", doesn't it? ;-}
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
> From: Bruce Hoult <·····@hoult.org>
> Well over here it's the IRD not the IRS, and it's technically called
> "sole trader", which has essentially the same rules as a partnership
> except that there is only one of you.
Over here in USA, IIRC, that specific sub-category is called "sole
proprietorship". But I was referring to the more general category,
which includes partnerships and other small businesses, where the
general term is "self employed", or at least it was in 1992 when I had
to fill out Schedule C etc. IIRC. Since then I heard a rumor that IRS
has tightened their rules so self-contracting as I did back then is no
longer even legal. But I haven't been offered any 1099 self-contracting
work since then, so I haven't had to check if the rumor is true.
> The employment history for that period said "self employed".
I've been trying to pin you down: When you say "self employed", do you
mean the logical meaning of those words, i.e. you were just working for
yourself, not getting any money for your work, just working to perform
services or create products that you yourself or your family personally
needed, or do you mean the IRS/IRD meaning, where you were
self-contracting to customers who purchased your products or services
directly from you and paid money directly to you, and then you figured
your own taxes and paid the IRD voluntarily?
> Basically the employment history section is continuous (in fact
> self-employment overlaps with salaried or contract employment at the
> ends and several places in the middle for several months at a time).
When there's major overlap, how do you arrange the employment history
in chronological order? In my monster CV, I have things arranged in
reverse chronological order per ending date, and in case of tie they
are sequenced by starting date. I wish I could instead draw a
time-graph showing the overlap visually, but (1) I don't have
facilities for making such a graph in any reasonable format, and (2) I
doubt employers would accept such a format. The idea in crude text form
is like this:
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004..
[CL on Unix... ........]
[Helping fight InterNet spam........... .........]
[H]
[J]
[C....]
[WAP]
[VB]
[PeerCoun]
..Macintosh programming (CL, HC) ........]
[Cvt to HTML]
[Help new IntNet]
[SJI]
[MaasInfo indexes]
[HT2]
[C*ix]
[TS]
..SU]
As you can see, trying to draw that in ASCII is illegible. But color
coded bars with diagonal lines connecting them to legends would be
almost legible.
> I'm far from being a cookie-cutter programmer, especially by US
> standards where people tend to specialize incredibly narrowly.
I too am totally out of the standard box. I basically "hack" in the
sense of devising algorithms to solve new problems nobody else (AFAIK)
has ever solved before, using whatever tools are available that can be
adapted to accomplish the task. Unfortunately I haven't been able to
find any company that wants anybody except straight in-the-box rigid
specialized in more than ten areas simultaneously (VB, Java,
JavaScript, C++, VB, Perl, COBOL, Fortran, Oracle, Sybase, DB2, SQL,
Excel, HTML, at least 5 years consecutive fulltime paid experience with
each, which means the earliest of those fulltime jobs must have started
70 years ago before *any* of those languages existed, before the first
stored-program electronic digital computer was ever built, and also a
security clearance).
> > I'm not
> > aware of any company whatsoever that is hiring anyone to work on those
> > kinds of projects.
> That's a problem, but surely you can research it on the web?
My Web access is limited to text only, which makes it difficult to
judge the Web sites of companies, difficult to browse them at all in
many cases. Also I have no idea how to find companies in the local area
which are interested in working on specific kinds of new projects I'm
interested in. Finding anything via a search engine requires specific
keywords, and I don't know what keywords would refer to my specific
ideas for projects instead of thousands of other things in the general
field which would just waste my time and energy browsing.
·······@Yahoo.Com <··········@YahooGroups.Com> wrote:
+---------------
| Since then I heard a rumor that IRS has tightened their rules so
| self-contracting as I did back then is no longer even legal. But
| I haven't been offered any 1099 self-contracting work since then,
| so I haven't had to check if the rumor is true.
+---------------
Not true! It's still legal, but the tests for whether you're
actually an independent contractor or "really an employee"
(but without witholding or benefits, etc., which can get the
employer in trouble) has tightened up so far that some employers
won't even deal with 1099 contractors at all. [They force you to
go through one of the "W2 services", basically a paper-pushing tax.]
But there is still *some* plain ol' 1099 contracting work out there...
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>, ··········@YahooGroups.Com
wrote:
> > From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
> > In plain text you can do things like:
> > Languages: Lisp, PL/I, BASIC, Fortran
>
> Well I basically do something like that in my *general* resume, as
> opposed to my LISP-specific resume. See the ASCII version here:
> http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.98B.txt
> See the more recent MS-Word version of it here:
> http://voyager.deanza.fhda.edu/~rm034596/Robert_Elton_Maas.doc
>
> > It was quite a bit of work to fit 20+ years of experience onto 2 pages,
> >but I eventually did it.
>
> A lot of people have told me I have to fit it all on ONE page.
> I don't know whether to go by that advice or not.
All the resume advice I got said 2 pages is the max.
If you'd like, I can send you the packet of sample resumes that my
consultant gave me. Send me email with your postal address.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Barry Margolin wrote:
> All the resume advice I got said 2 pages is the max.
The funny thing is, when I once created a 2-page CV, I was told that I
should expand it, because employers like to see details.
So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Mark Carter <···········@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> Barry Margolin wrote:
>
> > All the resume advice I got said 2 pages is the max.
>
> The funny thing is, when I once created a 2-page CV, I was told that I
> should expand it, because employers like to see details.
>
> So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
And damned if you do don't! Try to produce an expanded version upon
such a request!
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
>>The funny thing is, when I once created a 2-page CV, I was told that I
>>should expand it, because employers like to see details.
> And damned if you do don't! Try to produce an expanded version upon
> such a request!
How about a concertina'd CV? That way, a "course-grained" employer can
just see the bare bones, whereas a "fine-grained" employer can pull the
CV from the top and bottom to reveal much more detailed information.
Oh, but wait a minute, now I'm just being silly.
In article <··············@uni-berlin.de>,
Mark Carter <···········@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Barry Margolin wrote:
>
> > All the resume advice I got said 2 pages is the max.
>
> The funny thing is, when I once created a 2-page CV, I was told that I
> should expand it, because employers like to see details.
Was it a CV or a resume? My understanding is that CV's are typically
used for researchers in academia, and in that area details often are
important. Resumes are used when applying for jobs in commercial
industries, and they should emphasize the results you achieved for
previous employers.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Barry Margolin wrote:
>>The funny thing is, when I once created a 2-page CV, I was told that I
>>should expand it, because employers like to see details.
> Was it a CV or a resume?
I'm from Britain. We don't have "resumes", we call everything a CV. You
can have a look-see at my html-ised version here:
http://www.markcarter.me.uk/employment/mcarter.html
"Barry Margolin" <······@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
·································@comcast.dca.giganews.com...
> In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>, ··········@YahooGroups.Com
> wrote:
>
> > > From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
> > > In plain text you can do things like:
> > > Languages: Lisp, PL/I, BASIC, Fortran
> >
> > Well I basically do something like that in my *general* resume, as
> > opposed to my LISP-specific resume. See the ASCII version here:
> > http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.98B.txt
> > See the more recent MS-Word version of it here:
> > http://voyager.deanza.fhda.edu/~rm034596/Robert_Elton_Maas.doc
> >
> > > It was quite a bit of work to fit 20+ years of experience onto 2
pages,
> > >but I eventually did it.
> >
> > A lot of people have told me I have to fit it all on ONE page.
> > I don't know whether to go by that advice or not.
>
> All the resume advice I got said 2 pages is the max.
Mine told me two pages but then you can have a "resume addendum," e.g. with
your papers, patents and book chapters. That can be another two pages max.
Mine ran one.
But as I pointed out in the book I referred to in my last post; sometimes
sending a diary works - the key is to write it such that an employer can
quickly figure out if you aren't who he's looking for.
Remember that the resume is just a tool to get an interview. Expect to
specialize it for each and every submission. General ones are only good for
the various job sites, and that's where the two pages of mostly buzzwords is
best.
The more you post, the better. But networking is the #1 way to find your
next job.
>
> If you'd like, I can send you the packet of sample resumes that my
> consultant gave me. Send me email with your postal address.
>
> --
> Barry Margolin, ······@alum.mit.edu
> Arlington, MA
> *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
The world rejoiced as Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article <·················@Yahoo.Com>, ··········@YahooGroups.Com
> wrote:
>
>> > From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
>> > In plain text you can do things like:
>> > Languages: Lisp, PL/I, BASIC, Fortran
>>
>> Well I basically do something like that in my *general* resume, as
>> opposed to my LISP-specific resume. See the ASCII version here:
>> http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.98B.txt
>> See the more recent MS-Word version of it here:
>> http://voyager.deanza.fhda.edu/~rm034596/Robert_Elton_Maas.doc
>>
>> > It was quite a bit of work to fit 20+ years of experience onto 2 pages,
>> >but I eventually did it.
>>
>> A lot of people have told me I have to fit it all on ONE page.
>> I don't know whether to go by that advice or not.
>
> All the resume advice I got said 2 pages is the max.
There are cases where >>2 pages is sensible; that's when hiring in
academia where there needs to be, amongst other things, a verbose list
of published papers.
That's appropriate to hiring a professor; not a programmer...
--
wm(X,Y):-write(X),write(·@'),write(Y). wm('cbbrowne','cbbrowne.com').
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/sgml.html
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
> From: Barry Margolin <······@alum.mit.edu>
> If you'd like, I can send you the packet of sample resumes that my
> consultant gave me.
I don't believe that would be of any value to me. I've looked through
packets of sample resumes several times in the past, and none of the
sample resumes have been suitable for my situation, except for the
"functional" resume which employers generally hate. Specifically when I
created "functional" resumes:
http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.91C.txt
http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.928.txt
they didn't result in any employment except those 2.5 weeks in 1992.
The problem is that more than half my professional-quality work has
been unpaid. All the standard resume formats, except "functional",
emphasize time-chronology of paid work, which shoots me in the foot.
There's no place on a paid-chronology resume to show most of what I've done.
>>>>> On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 10:24:23 -0700, RobertMaas ("RobertMaas") writes:
RobertMaas> The problem is that more than half my professional-
RobertMaas> quality work has been unpaid.
You did the work for someone, even if it was just for yourself.
Put that work on your resume.
How about using latex to format the text. Or even troff.
You don't need graphics to uses therse and peaple with a
modern computer can display the output graphically.
On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 09:05:13 -0700, <··········@YahooGroups.Com> wrote:
>> From: Frank Buss <··@frank-buss.de>
>> don't write too much
>
> Easier said than done. I have 15 years lisp programming experience, in
> a wide variety of different areas, and it seems reasonable to include
> all the major areas, not leaving anything out. If I decide to leave out
> some of the major areas I've programmed in, I have no idea which areas
> to leave out.
>
>> and structure it with tables,
>
> Do you mean HTML tables, or just plain-text arrays? I don't have access
> to HTML tables from here (lynx is the only browser available), so if I
> somehow created an HTML table I wouldn't be able to see what I was
> doing to see if I got it right at all. If you mean plain-text arrays,
> please tell me more what you have in mind.
>
>> bigger fonts for titles, subtitles etc.
>
> I have no access to fonts at all here. My access to the net is via
> VT100 emulator into Unix shell. That's single-monospaced-font only,
> except that alternate colors (locally on Macintosh) are used to
> represent links and bold etc. So if I converted the resume from plain
> ASCII text to HTML, the best I could do is <b>title</b>, no large font
> etc.
>
>> You can use free HTML editor like Netscape Composer (don't know if it
>> is included in Mozilla), if you don't want to write raw HTML.
>
> From the name, I would guess that requires a GUI interface to the net,
> wouldn't work over VT100 dialup into Unix shell, so I can't use it.
>
> For posting to newsgroups such as ba.jobs.resumes, plain text is needed.
> For posting on Web site, lynx-compatible text-only HTML is only a slight
> improvement over plain text, and is the best I have access to here.
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
··········@YahooGroups.Com writes:
>> bigger fonts for titles, subtitles etc.
>
> I have no access to fonts at all here. My access to the net is via
> VT100 emulator into Unix shell. That's single-monospaced-font only,
> except that alternate colors (locally on Macintosh) are used to
> represent links and bold etc. So if I converted the resume from plain
> ASCII text to HTML, the best I could do is <b>title</b>, no large font
> etc.
You do realize that properly written HTML involves semantic markup
rather than display markup, correct? And that most UAs provide
reasonable default markup for such things as headings, description
lists, and other things which make a r�sum� extremely more pleasant to
read?
--
vsync
http://quadium.net/
Great, that's all we need: a society where all the builders sit inside
all day fondling their special tools with true skill -- *and no one
builds my house*
-- http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/7/3/93812/20676/96#96
<··········@YahooGroups.Com> wrote in message
······················@Yahoo.Com...
> > From: "David E. Young" <·······@nospampoboxnospam.com>
> > Does anyone have a feel for the "average" salaries experienced Lisp
> > developers are receiving in the U.S?
>
> The median is zero, because more than half are either unemployed or
> working in some other area because there are no LISP jobs available...
Well, I certainly don't know this for a fact. There must be enough Lisp
developers (and positions) around to support three commercial Lisp
companies.
Look, I didn't want this to be hard. I'm just curious. It's valuable
information to me. I was hoping someone who had hired Lisp developers
recently might offer an answer.
That's all.
David.
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, David E. Young spake thusly:
> Well, I certainly don't know this for a fact. There must be enough
> Lisp developers (and positions) around to support three commercial
> Lisp companies.
>
> Look, I didn't want this to be hard. I'm just curious. It's valuable
> information to me. I was hoping someone who had hired Lisp
> developers recently might offer an answer.
>
> That's all.
hehe .. I guess half the Lisp programmers dont get paid for doing
Lisp, and the rest get paid a lot. The first half crib, and the
second half keep mighty silent.
:-)
--
quasi
Utopia Unlimited!
quasi <·············@yahoo.com> writes:
> hehe .. I guess half the Lisp programmers dont get paid for doing
> Lisp, and the rest get paid a lot. The first half crib, and the
> second half keep mighty silent.
Paul Graham hasn't exactly been silent.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
David Steuber wrote:
> quasi <·············@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>
>>hehe .. I guess half the Lisp programmers dont get paid for doing
>>Lisp, and the rest get paid a lot. The first half crib, and the
>>second half keep mighty silent.
>
>
> Paul Graham hasn't exactly been silent.
>
IIRC, he was until he had Won Big with Lisp.
kt
--
Cells? Cello? Celtik?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"David E. Young" wrote:
> Look, I didn't want this to be hard. I'm just curious. It's valuable
> information to me. I was hoping someone who had hired Lisp developers
> recently might offer an answer.
So far, it seems one person said that s/he has a salary of $0.
Here is another data point, hopefully it will raise the average that
you are looking for: My recent salary is the equivalent in local
currency of about US$ 10K/year. This is in an poor/underdeveloped/developing
part of the world, so it is actually relatively quite high.
I wonder how many would be willing to move to Third World in exchange
for the freedom to use Lisp or whatever language/tools/OS you want
in a relatively high paying $10K/year job.
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote in message news:<·················@Yahoo.Com>...
> > From: "David E. Young" <·······@nospampoboxnospam.com>
> > Does anyone have a feel for the "average" salaries experienced Lisp
> > developers are receiving in the U.S?
>
> The median is zero, because more than half are either unemployed or
> working in some other area because there are no LISP jobs available.
> But you asked about average, which I assume you mean to be arithmetic
> mean, so I suggest you take a poll here and add up all the info and
> divide by the number. In my case, it's zero. I have 15 years LISP
> programming experience, 22 years total programming experience, but that
> isn't enough to qualify for any job at all currently. If somebody wants
> to hire me, I'm still available, and not yet homeless for another
> couple months or so.
> http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.921-LISP.txt
I'll wait until you are homeless. It will be easier to negotiate your
salary and benefits then. Seriously, your resume could be improved.
> From: ···················@yahoo.com (Johnny)
> I'll wait until you are homeless. It will be easier to negotiate your
> salary and benefits then.
I'm already willing to work at the Federal minimum wage with no benefits.
Are you saying you won't even pay mininum wage, and expect me to
violate the law by working below the legal minimum wage, and you figure
when I'm homeless I'll be willing to do that?
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote in message news:<·················@Yahoo.Com>...
> > From: ···················@yahoo.com (Johnny)
> > I'll wait until you are homeless. It will be easier to negotiate your
> > salary and benefits then.
>
> I'm already willing to work at the Federal minimum wage with no benefits.
I didn't know.
> From: ···················@yahoo.com (Johnny)
> > > I'll wait until you are homeless. It will be easier to negotiate your
> > > salary and benefits then.
> > I'm already willing to work at the Federal minimum wage with no benefits.
> I didn't know.
So now that you know, will you hire me while I still have housing?
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote:
> So now that you know, will you hire me while I still have housing?
Dude. Seriously. Think of it this way - paint yourself as a charity case
and... people will believe you.
Why would you hire someone who self-identifies as unemployable? Even if
you're living out of a dumpster, price yourself a little higher!
··········@YahooGroups.Com wrote in message news:<·················@Yahoo.Com>...
> > From: "David E. Young" <·······@nospampoboxnospam.com>
> > Does anyone have a feel for the "average" salaries experienced Lisp
> > developers are receiving in the U.S?
>
> The median is zero, because more than half are either unemployed or
> working in some other area because there are no LISP jobs available.
> But you asked about average, which I assume you mean to be arithmetic
> mean, so I suggest you take a poll here and add up all the info and
> divide by the number. In my case, it's zero. I have 15 years LISP
> programming experience, 22 years total programming experience, but that
> isn't enough to qualify for any job at all currently. If somebody wants
> to hire me, I'm still available, and not yet homeless for another
> couple months or so.
> http://members.tripod.com/~MaasInfo/SeekJob/Resume.921-LISP.txt
I think I see why you're having trouble getting employment. In your
list of work, change "urinary Nim" to "unary Nim".
"Steve" <·········@juno.com> wrote, to Robert Maas:
> I think I see why you're having trouble getting employment. In your
> list of work, change "urinary Nim" to "unary Nim".
I think he really does mean "urinary". See <·················@Yahoo.Com>,
an article about something else entirely but which sheds some light
on the nature of the game.
--
Gareth McCaughan
.sig under construc