Australia's Largest ISP Redefines Spam

cpudney writes "According to this article in NEWS.com.au, Telstra BigPond, Australia's largest ISP will monitor its customers' e-mails and suspend the accounts of users suspected of sending spam, viruses or denial-of-service attacks. Under changes to its Acceptable Use Policy, BigPond will investigate cable and ADSL Internet customers sending more than 20 e-mails in a 10-minute period, and BigPond management "may suspend the (user's) account while the customer is contacted" if they are suspected of sending spam. Previously, BigPond's definition of spam was held to be 400 messages sent over a 15-minute period and now it's changed to 20 e-mails over 10 minutes. Internet Society of Australia president Tony Hill said BigPond's new definition of spam was very restrictive and he was concerned the limit had been set too low for legitimate e-mail users."

Slashdot style

[GQuon]

Great..a slashdot style limit on time between posts.
Now Telstra's customers are just missing the lameness filter and the moderation. The occasional dupe happens in email allready.
Hm. There's a chance a lot of my work on Healthcare Informatics would be modded -1 Redundant and never reach my professor.

I would have commented on this story sooner...

[Black Parrot]

...if not for Slashdot's 2-minute delay policy.

Stability of their email

[a.koepke]

Oh this will be brilliant.

Picture this: Telstra Bigpond email systems die again (just give it another week) and you cannot send out your email. You have 20 messages in your outbox waiting to be sent. Finally their systems come back on-line (for now) and you send all the emails only to get flagged as a spammer and denied to email again.

You end up back where you started.

To say nothing of

[FearTheFrail]

When I'm sending e-mails to my disproportionately large extended family while drinking cans and cans of Red Bull.

Re:Honest question

[bersl2]

I opened a super-sized can of worms with a (NULL, Dumbass) of a question... damn brain cramp...

"Virii" DOES NOT EXIST. BZZZT. defcon4

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the Plural of `Virus'? What's the Plural of `Virus'? The plural of virus is neither viri nor virii, nor even vira nor virora. It is quite simply viruses, irrespective of context. Here's why.

Sections in this document:

• English Inflections [slashdot.org]
• Classical Inflections [slashdot.org] and References [slashdot.org]
• Journey Into the Fourth Declension [slashdot.org] (new)
• Other Latin Resources [slashdot.org]
• ASM News [slashdot.org]
• ASM News Update [slashdot.org] (new)
• Footnotes [slashdot.org]

English Inflections First off, the OED [oed.com] gives nothing but viruses for the plural. Here's its abbreviated entry:

Etymology: a. L.

virus slimy liquid, poison, offensive odour or taste. Hence also Fr., Sp., Pg. virus.

1 Venom, such as is emitted by a poisonous animal. Also fig.

2 Path. a A morbid principle or poisonous substance produced in the body as the result of some disease, esp. one capable of being introduced into other persons or animals by inoculations or otherwise and of developing the same disease in them. Now superseded by the next sense.

b Pl. viruses. An infectious organism that is usu. submicroscopic, can multiply only inside certain living host cells (in many cases causing disease) and is now understood to be a non-cellular structure lacking any intrinsic metabolism and usually comprising a DNA or RNA core inside a protein coat (see also quot. 1977). [ Formerly referred to as filterable viruses, their first distinguishing characteristic being the ability to pass through filters that retained bacteria. ]

Other sources that support viruses include Birchfield (n Fowler :-) in Modern English Usage [train4publishing.co.uk] (3rd Edition), and also the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language [train4publishing.co.uk]. Classical Inflections While one would hope that the authoritative sources cited above would suffice, some writers prefer to maintain the classical inflections on some English words, particularly in technical writing. For example, conflicting indexes/indices and minimums/minima are both easily found, depending on the intended audience and use. In that case, what's the classical plural of virus?

The simple answer is that there wasn't one. The longer answer follows.

Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.

Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular[1] [slashdot.org], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.

This apparently invariant use of virus as a genitive singular may als

Re:"Virii" DOES NOT EXIST. BZZZT. defcon4

[Eskarel]

This may be both off topic, posted by an anonymous coward, and insanely long, but it should be modded up just so that the general slashdot population isn't denied the pleasure of witnessing the worlds most anal retentive pedant in action.

I've seen grammar nazis before but this is the most incredible thing I've personally ever witnessed.

Re:Oh telstra you dorks

[-Maurice66-]

As long as they don't mention they just went out to get their viagra they should not have a real problem there ;-]

Cheers,

M

Re:"Virii" DOES NOT EXIST. BZZZT. defcon4

[Andy_R]

So, the modern usage should be
j00 h@\/e \/1ru5e5 f001!!!!!!111111233
not
j00 h@\/e \/1r111111 f001!!!!!!!!!11112
?

Re:Sounds familiar -- and not even bad

[Anonymous Coward]

To protect both the ISP and the innocent, they could implement a feature where after 20 mails in 10 minutes, mails would only be processed at the speed of, say, one mail per 30 seconds, and maybe slowing progressively after each 100 mails. When the mail pipe has been silent for a given amout of time, say ten minutes, the "mail slower" would be reset.

That won't work.

What happens when one ISP sends legit email to another ISP? It's very likely to have a sustained rate of 1 email per second. If you throttle the connection, email will take several days/weeks to arrrive.

Oh wait, maybe some idiot at Telstra actually implemented this idea!

They redefined spam?

[Trejkaz]

They redefined "Spam"? That's nothing. Those guys already redefined "Unlimited Broadband".