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The only logical conclusion here is that I'm a perfectionist crackpot doom-sayer idiot and that you should stop reading this and catch up on some minesweeper.

So here are the minesweeper clones: xbomb,
KMines, and more (all on Freshmeat.net).

I guess I'm not the only one who will be following his suggestion.

The spambayes project has been doing all sorts of research into scoring and related techniques, and we dumped the Graham technique some time ago. It's got too many wierd magic bits of cruft in it. The current code is using chi2 - it has quite scary scary reliability. Certainly much higher than the Graham technique - see the mailing list archives for details of the testing.

There's a couple of applications available using the code now - a neat plugin for outlook users and a POP3 proxy. Mark Hammond suggested that someone who's up on XPCOM might want to look at plugging the spambayes code into Mozilla using PyXPCOM.

You'd be suprised how much you can dig out of the URLS. The spambayes project has code in there to tokenize the URLs from img type tags, and it's remarkably effective at killing these spams.

1) Decentralized database servers that communicates P2P-like to track and exchange statistics about what is spam and what is not....

Like Vipul's Razor...

2) Mail Server Plug-In/Filter that uses (1) to decide whether to deliver/mark/throw out mail based on a....

Like SpamAssassin...

3) Mail Client Plug-In/Filter that receives mail from (2) according to a level of filtering you specify. Oh, and you can also vote on the mail that does get through to ID it as spam so the rest of the system gets it's statistics updated from your misfortune.

Although this takes more effort due to the need to support a number of different mail clients it appears that this may be doable on some platforms using software that supports SpamAssassin.

That said, it looks very likely that there will be a new spellchecker architecture in 1.3 real soon now, and I will endeavour to provide a simple spellchecker for it.

Cloudmark is the commercial end of Vipul's Razor, which you can get working on Unix.

For various reasons, I prefer the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse (DCC) over Razor: I've written a HOWTO on getting the DCC working on a home Debian system (Exim/fetchmail). It catches a lot of spam.

and be a slashdot editor as well.

Can you help???

and be a slashdot editor as well.

Can you help???

and be a slashdot editor as well.

Can you help???

and be a slashdot editor as well.

Can you help???

Since a few people are posting about anti-spam methods, I thought I'd go over my idea to counter spam. Currently I am not actually using this procedure, I have just been pondering it for awhile.

First off, the core of this system relies on whitelist-confirmation. This means that first time senders are given an auto-response email which must be "confirmed" in order for their message to deliver. Once they have done this, they are whitelisted, and all email from them passes through. TMDA is what I use for this job. I leave my email address "unarmored", because no spam can get through. When I check my mail in KMail, there is no spam.

However, all is not perfect. After many many months of using TMDA, I still find myself sifting through the "pending" folder on my mail server, which keeps hold of all the mails from unconfirmed senders. I generally do this every couple of weeks, and there are often at least one or two legitimate emails that were never confirmed. There are many possible reasons: 1) they thought the confirmation request was spam, so they deleted it (either manually or through an anti-spam filter). 2) they don't like the idea of having to do a stupid confirm (although no one has actually brought this up to me yet). 3) Maybe they use a reply-to or something weird that trips up TMDA (perhaps fixable or not..)

Anyway, the point is that legit emails aren't 100% getting through. The next consideration then, is to use a word-filter (and who knows, maybe TMDA does this too), to see if legit mails can be detected by their content. Maybe this could be done using a bayesian (sp?) filter, as recently discussed here, or perhaps SpamAssassin. Emails detected as legit would be delivered directly, and the sender would be auto-whitelisted. Ambiguous emails would go through the usual whitelist-confirmation procedure. This way, the word-filter never actually throws email away. It gives the sender a second chance, by sending it through the whitelist system.

This, I think, would solve the problem completely for me, as all of the legit mails that wind up unconfirmed would very much pass the legitimacy test (they mention a software project of mine, or something else very obvious). If this were in place, I could send my pending bin to /dev/null. Ahh, a life of no spam!

Where is the onslaught of OSS Bayesian filters?

Just search through sourceforge. You'll find lots of open source student administrative software projects. Many of them will be in the "planning" stage, which means they aren't bloated with legacy code! Also, some of them even have cool websites, and nicknames for the project leaders

It should be noted that Cloudmark is the newly commercialized version of Vipuls Razor, open source and originally developed for Linux/UNIX systems. It works by having a P2P network of reporting servers and a large number of people reporting spam. It then matches your incoming messages against that incoming spam. I think soon they're going to roll out more advanced "fuzzy" algorithms that can detect spam even when it's been subtly altered. It's not 100% effective but it's not too bad, and it's more satisfying to drop spam into the "SPAM Pending" folder, and watch it get reported than simply deleting it. I'd guess it's cut down my spam by about 60-70%. The best thing about the Razor is that a) it can be setup server side, so you don't even see the spam as it's filtered by your mail client and b) it's not easily defeated.

I've heard reports that some spammers are fine tuning their emails to just miss the SpamAssasin regexs, and stuff like the Mozilla bayesian mail filters only react to what you get, the Razor reacts to what 180,000+ people get.

and be a slashdot editor as well.

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and be a slashdot editor as well.

Can you help???

and be a slashdot editor as well.

Can you help???

The future of programming

The future of programming

Why not try giFT with the included openFT plugin.

This uses a own network based on the Fasttrack design, and has lot's of nice sharing users on it.

Recomended.

True, Flash can make downloads of, say, navigation bars smaller by using vectors rather than bitmaps. But there is an easier way: Use text in your navigation bars!

The Art of Illusion page is an example of what I'm talking about. When it was being renovated, they made the logo smaller so that you could see the content easily while still seeing the logo. Then the nav bars on the top and bottom were added. It's a nice clean design, very compatible with other browsers, even though it isn't much to look at if you associate pretty pictures with quality.

You want giFT.

It currently only has the OpenFT protocol as plugin, but you're free (or anybody else for that matter) to write a Gnutella2 plugin or whatnot, and it still connects via the same nice GUI of choice!

I don't know, but I'd love to. I'd also like to be able to have mozilla hand off MAGNET links to Lime, gtk-gnutella or the like.

I've run this by one of the gtk-gnutella developers, who's said that this seems like a good idea.

it's partially open source (there is a key component kept secret for security reasons, the one flaw in thes protocols is that they require trusted clients unfortunately)

That's not true anymore. Since emule, anonther edonkey client, released its source code, the mldonkey author decided to open-source the remaining code.

But when will the communicator be able to play King's Quest III? How difficult is it to make a port?

that is, create the NT user whenever you add a new LDAP user.

Have a OpenLDAP replica running on your Win2k box. Include a Perl trigger, that parses ldapadds and creates a local Win2k user whenever a new LDAP user gets added.

Perl can be used to synchronize the passwords as well, so you don't need Winbind.

checkout http://acctsync.sf.net/ For more info.

http://acctsync.sf.net - It's difficult to deploy, but it works.

There are other such products, like PSych and NDS, which may be easier to work with.

Using this ensures that you don't have to rely on a Win2k LDAP network for authentication services ( read Win2k license for every AD replica, additional CALs )

But you can alternatively deploy an OpenLDAP set of replicas and have all your services/computers authenticate against them ( read free, their don't care how many you deploy or what you put into them ).

Microsoft not having Win2k play nice with others is having the beneficial side-effect of increasing their Win2k sales.

Hmmm... Hey! You think that was their plan to begin with?

Check out Efisto if you are interested in providing your users with an easy-to-use solution to sending files. The project is still in its early stages but already quite useful. Basically, you upload a file onto your personal space on a server via a special client and then tell the server to send these files to your recipient. The server will then generate a unique session id and email a link to that session in the server to the recipient. Meanwhile the server readies a .zip-file that the user can download from the server using the link that was sent to him.

Saw this a few weeks back... Spam filter in Python using Naive Bayes.

faggots like to play shit like this and pirate all their games! Blame the linux zealotz, introduce Padalium and let their open shit die!

(This post is score 5, informative, anything else and the modertor is ON CRACK!)

The flag icon for Slashdot's 'United States' section is missing its first stripe - the stripe that represents Delaware, the first state admitted to the Union. While a simple oversight could be forgiven, it should be known from here on out that Slashdot is in fact aware of the missing stripe, and even worse, refuses to do anything about it!

This vulgar flag desecration and rabid anti-Delawarism must be put to a stop. Let the Slashdot crew know that we will not accept a knowingly mutilated flag or the insinuation that Delawarians deserve to be cut out of the union. I ask you, what has Delaware done to deserve this insolence, this wanton disregard, this bigotry?

This intentional disregard of a vital national symbol is unpatriotic. Why, the flippant remarks CmdrTaco made about our flag border on terrorism! I urge you to join the protest in each 'United States' story. Sacrifice your karma for your country by pointing out this injustice. Let's all work together to get our flag back. Can you give your country any less?

And when are we going to stop giving a damn about consumer gizmos running embedded linux, as long as the actual interesting functions are in some closed application running in the box? The interesting gadgets are the ones that are fully hackable, so the application code comes with source and is easy to customize. Freevo might be a start at a hackable PVR.

Oh, you fucking idiot. The real world runs on real software, not fucked up wanna-be SourceForge shit. "Oh, how I wish I could get a paying job as a programmer," these kids say. "Since I can't, I'll post my hobby projects-- with which I've since gotten bored, and that I'm incapable of finishing by myself-- on SourceForge.net by OSDN and wait for the love to pour in. Then I can put 'respected open-source community member' on my resume. I'm sure to get a job, then... and maybe I can even meet a girl! Girls like guys who give back to the community, right?"

What-the-fuck-ever, dude.

Just because the OS runs there, it doesn't mean that the applications run there as well.

Then go to SourceForge.net by OSDN, get the source code for your applications, and recompile it. Easy.

None of what I said in the preceding paragraph applies if your enterprise relies on proprietary application software.

Maxima is a GPL'd symoblic algebra system.

...since the dawn of time (read: "when I began using it"), as well as auto-logging.

Try SoresForge for starters.

I guess I made the false assumption that everyone already knows what Jabber is, yet aren't using it. That was actually very stupid of me, considering what I was arguing :)

Jabber is an open IM system, which uses an XML-based protocol for interconnecting servers and clients. Your Jabber ID (or JID) is in the form "user@host", obviously following in the footsteps of other common internet protocols (most notably email, but also ftp, http, etc). Jabber also supports SSL in the core protocol.

Because the protocol is open, there are numerous server and client implementations, all designed to interoperate. Anyone can run a server, and there is no such thing as an "official client" (that would be as absurd as an official email client). The world of Jabber is much more friendly than that of closed IM, as the Jabber Software Foundation encourages developer participation.

Let the linking commence!

Jabber Software Foundation - The "JSF" handles all of the core protocol decision-making. There are members, council, and an enhancement proposal system. The website is also a nice hub for information, as there are links to guides, programming info, client software, server software, public server lists, etc. Start here.

Some nice clients:
Psi* - powerful and minimal cross-platform Jabber client (Windows/Mac/Unix), looking like Licq.
Gabber - a full featured GNOME Jabber client.
Exodus - a very featureful Windows client. Has a strange UI in my opinion, but lots of people like it.
Gaim - mentioned 100 times already in the comments area. This program is nice because it natively supports AIM (and other protocols), which can make your transition to Jabber easier.

Other areas of interest:
User guide - a good read for newbies.
jabberd - home of the popular open source jabber server.
Jabberd Admin guide - Read this if you want to run your own server.
Jogger - a Jabber-based blog.

*Note - I am the author of Psi. Please forgive the plug :)

I guess I made the false assumption that everyone already knows what Jabber is, yet aren't using it. That was actually very stupid of me, considering what I was arguing :)

Jabber is an open IM system, which uses an XML-based protocol for interconnecting servers and clients. Your Jabber ID (or JID) is in the form "user@host", obviously following in the footsteps of other common internet protocols (most notably email, but also ftp, http, etc). Jabber also supports SSL in the core protocol.

Because the protocol is open, there are numerous server and client implementations, all designed to interoperate. Anyone can run a server, and there is no such thing as an "official client" (that would be as absurd as an official email client). The world of Jabber is much more friendly than that of closed IM, as the Jabber Software Foundation encourages developer participation.

Let the linking commence!

Jabber Software Foundation - The "JSF" handles all of the core protocol decision-making. There are members, council, and an enhancement proposal system. The website is also a nice hub for information, as there are links to guides, programming info, client software, server software, public server lists, etc. Start here.

Some nice clients:
Psi* - powerful and minimal cross-platform Jabber client (Windows/Mac/Unix), looking like Licq.
Gabber - a full featured GNOME Jabber client.
Exodus - a very featureful Windows client. Has a strange UI in my opinion, but lots of people like it.
Gaim - mentioned 100 times already in the comments area. This program is nice because it natively supports AIM (and other protocols), which can make your transition to Jabber easier.

Other areas of interest:
User guide - a good read for newbies.
jabberd - home of the popular open source jabber server.
Jabberd Admin guide - Read this if you want to run your own server.
Jogger - a Jabber-based blog.

*Note - I am the author of Psi. Please forgive the plug :)

I guess I made the false assumption that everyone already knows what Jabber is, yet aren't using it. That was actually very stupid of me, considering what I was arguing :)

Jabber is an open IM system, which uses an XML-based protocol for interconnecting servers and clients. Your Jabber ID (or JID) is in the form "user@host", obviously following in the footsteps of other common internet protocols (most notably email, but also ftp, http, etc). Jabber also supports SSL in the core protocol.

Because the protocol is open, there are numerous server and client implementations, all designed to interoperate. Anyone can run a server, and there is no such thing as an "official client" (that would be as absurd as an official email client). The world of Jabber is much more friendly than that of closed IM, as the Jabber Software Foundation encourages developer participation.

Let the linking commence!

Jabber Software Foundation - The "JSF" handles all of the core protocol decision-making. There are members, council, and an enhancement proposal system. The website is also a nice hub for information, as there are links to guides, programming info, client software, server software, public server lists, etc. Start here.

Some nice clients:
Psi* - powerful and minimal cross-platform Jabber client (Windows/Mac/Unix), looking like Licq.
Gabber - a full featured GNOME Jabber client.
Exodus - a very featureful Windows client. Has a strange UI in my opinion, but lots of people like it.
Gaim - mentioned 100 times already in the comments area. This program is nice because it natively supports AIM (and other protocols), which can make your transition to Jabber easier.

Other areas of interest:
User guide - a good read for newbies.
jabberd - home of the popular open source jabber server.
Jabberd Admin guide - Read this if you want to run your own server.
Jogger - a Jabber-based blog.

*Note - I am the author of Psi. Please forgive the plug :)

There's some things Trillian sucks at [trillian.cc], for everything else there's...erm, well what was there again?


GAIM!
The best (IMHO) instant messaging client out there.
gaim sourceforge site

Well if you get to post your favorite, I get to post mine.

I think everyone should know about Gaim, a UNIX instant messenging client supporting a wide variety of protocols.

All of the protocols Trillian supports:
ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC
plus:
Jabber, Zephyr, and (not that it's much use) Napster.

MPlayer plays WMA on Unix. You need the Windoze DLLs though, but the MPlayer page can probably point you to the sources if you don't have the pleasure of Windows already.

Well of course anything which used libdvdcss under *nix already gets RPC2-agnostic CSS software-decoding. I, personally, have never set the region-code on my one-year-old drive and watch films quite happily using the wonderful players available.

Tetrinet isn't that hard. I can normally win like 1/2 of the time when not playing with cheaters. Personally, now I'm into TetriFAST it's like tetrinet.. only well.. fast (no block delay). The best players can drop like 140ppm(peices per minute) at SNS (Sticks 'n' Squares). I can only do like 80-90 at SNS but I can still win like 1/4th of the time.

IF you want to play tetriNET/FAST on linux see the CVS version of gtetrinet if you want to play on windows check out the original. I normally play on downstack.com

Ian

Did you introduce him to fink? By default, the Mac comes with the entire GNU toolchain, plus perl, python, and a ton of other utilities. If he needed newer versions of perl or python, or if he something else (Ruby, MySQL, PostreSQL, X window, Ant, OCaml, LaTeX, even KDevelop and KDE for Pete's sake!) he just types in

fink install python

for example, and, after five to twenty minutes (depending on the package), he's got whatever he needed. It's as easy as apt-get and it's fully OS X native. Check out the link; there are 1600 packages so far and going up literally daily. So my question is, how experienced was your developer?

Another nice thing is plugging your mac on any network, hit the "connect" menu and instantly see:

• all the samba shares on your network
• all the apple shares on your network
• all the unix nfs shares on your network

find ./code/java/net -name "*Factory*java" | xargs bbedit
bbedit *.xml

Vim is also available as a native OS X application.

Many more open-source *nix-flavored packages can be easily installed via Fink, they already have well over 600 packages. I've got X11, Gnome and Gimp running in OS X on my old 400mhz TiBook.

If you ask me, such a set-up beats the *crap* out of using cygwin in windows. It also beats running linux on a laptop.

Oh ... one more thing. Aside from CPU clock speed considerations (as in, you spec two laptops with the fastest cpu available for each vendor, knowing that *yes* pentiums will give you slightly more bang), if you are comparison-shopping for a dependable high-end laptop to do serious work, if you add to a PC laptop all the features that come standard on Apple powerbooks, you'll see that both systems come at about the same price. Oh and the PC laptop will be thicker and heavier. If they are lighter it means they're missing a cd/dvd/rw combo drive. I'm not sure about the Porsche one.

Hey i'm not a zealot. I used macs for years, at work and at home, then i used windows NT on some 500mhz P3 dell laptop at work which i then upgraded to windoz 2k, it served its purpose for a while, cygwin was, after all, a very good compromise ... Until Mac OS 10.1 came out, i no-longer needed to compromise and i switched. And it has been fun ever since.

X installation has always been a bitch for me irregardless of the distribution Linux or BSD. It seems that it's something that always needs tinkering. I did get this going fairly quick after some help from my BSD admin guru--thank the Gods for buddies!

Little known fact: if you install mdetect, discover and read-edid before X, then it will automatically detect your monitor your video card and your mouse. It's documented in the install docs somewhere...

I still don't have sound working, but I haven't given it the one two punch!

Have you added yourself to the `audio' group? That's one of the most common issues people seem to have on IRC.

I probably haven't looked in the right place or good documentation doesn't exist. And I'm lazy? :S

apm worked fine for me out of the box. apt-get install apmd.

Let's face it, I think that once most people get their configuration working they don't think about giving back to the community. Something that should definately be reconsidered.

Have a look at both Debian QuickReference and the NewbieDoc guides. I've heard good things about them.

Aggravating. I don't want to sit and select then download and install 200M of software after I get it installed, but I DO want an easy way to get back to package management once I hastily exit out if it. I want my cake and I want to eat it too.

Then quit from dselect and let it install just the base system. If you want to add packages later, then run aptitude or dselect. Easy.

X installation has always been a bitch for me irregardless of the distribution Linux or BSD. It seems that it's something that always needs tinkering. I did get this going fairly quick after some help from my BSD admin guru--thank the Gods for buddies!

Little known fact: if you install mdetect, discover and read-edid before X, then it will automatically detect your monitor your video card and your mouse. It's documented in the install docs somewhere...

I still don't have sound working, but I haven't given it the one two punch!

Have you added yourself to the `audio' group? That's one of the most common issues people seem to have on IRC.

I probably haven't looked in the right place or good documentation doesn't exist. And I'm lazy? :S

apm worked fine for me out of the box. apt-get install apmd.

Let's face it, I think that once most people get their configuration working they don't think about giving back to the community. Something that should definately be reconsidered.

Have a look at both Debian QuickReference and the NewbieDoc guides. I've heard good things about them.

Aggravating. I don't want to sit and select then download and install 200M of software after I get it installed, but I DO want an easy way to get back to package management once I hastily exit out if it. I want my cake and I want to eat it too.

Then quit from dselect and let it install just the base system. If you want to add packages later, then run aptitude or dselect. Easy.