Domain: tesco.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to tesco.net.
Comments · 101
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Re:Great goals
from commandline: shutdown -f -t 0
For completeness' sake :
shutdown -f -t 0 # shutdown
shutdown -f -t 0 # reboot
shutdown -h -t 0 # hibernate
shutdown -l -t 0 # logoffAt least that applies to
/c/WINDOWS/system32/shutdown.exe.PowerShell users should be happy to know they can type:
(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -ComputerName ).shutdown()
Between the dozens of third-party utilities people generally download and install (Sysinternals, among others), and Microsoft adding/subtracting what's in the various Resource Kits or generally making things up as they go along, I've always relied on Cygwin's own version of shutdown.
Here's a randomly selected page that details some of the ugliness.
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Re:Console vs. PC
button mashing:
Press a button as fast as you can to save your character.Guess you weren't a big fan of Decathlon in the good old C64 days:
http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/html/decathlon.html
I still remember the pain in my fingers, hand and wrist after the final event, the dreaded 1500 m run;-)
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Bad Idea
Every time a Japanese spacecraft gets involved, it ends up bringing back space-spores that grow unnoticed behind the repair shed and then turn into those stop-action monster-thingies that level whole cities.
Unless we hire and train a Space Patrol before the thing ever takes off, I think we should nix the whole idea.
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Re:Medical equipment
I don't know if they fixed this bug. Can't test now, I'm running Debian. I also have seen BSODs upon inserting a bog standard USB stick in diverse Windows machines. Some of them for which I absolutely know that they use the standard Microsoft USB drivers.
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One virus. Two viruses.
One virus. Two viruses.
The urge to say virii, is hypercorrection. Which is to say... wrong.
But don't take my word for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/plural-of-virus.html
So unless you are trying to be cute, the plural of virus is viruses.
And know you know!
This is when a stupid person, feeling personally hurt by learning, will whine about language changing over time. -
Re:Thunderbird is awesome on WindowsAh. You consider wikipedia an authoritative source. No, I consider it a convenient central place to link when the article describes things I otherwise know to be true. Perhaps this would be a better link.
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Why build one when you can play with an emulation?
There are plenty if you Google "Enigma Emulator" or "Enigma Simulator"/"Enigma simulation"
http://homepages.tesco.net/~andycarlson/enigma/eni gma_j.html
If you want to build something mechanical try a remote control aircraft. Much more fun. -
Re:That explains it
Okay, here's the second one.
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Re:R E A D
To be more helpful read "FUP - Fair Usage Policy" sections. This FUP (as its often referred to) on unlimited broadband offers (in the UK) specifies that if you use your connection heavily then the ISP holds the right to restrict your connection. The problem with this they don't specify what heavy usage is. A friend of mine tells me Orange's broadband unlimited plan will enforce the FUP when 2GB is used (a month) I've found that Tiscali see 4GB a month as heavy usage. 2GB and 4GB's is not 'unlimited' a few years ago these companies would just disconnect you from the network and refuse to reconnect you. Today Tiscali are better they just block all ports except FTP and HTTP ports, although I've heard of others still being permanently kicked off the system for several days.
One of the best ISP's I've ever used is Tesco's http://www.tesco.net/ They offer packages without a FUP and while not competitive as Tiscali, Bt etc.. you will always get the bandwidth you paid for, unlimited does mean unlimited with them. (note I am not currently with them but I wish I was, also I don't work for them and when I left their customer service sucked but I only used it once) -
Re:If only more ISPs added their net blocks to PBL
The Spamhaus PBL is bad for maintaining a decentralized Internet. It forces users to send mail through ISP relays, which is an unnecessary and insecure process. It does little to prevent spam as any good spammer will just relay through the ISP's server anyway.
This page goes into grater detail explaining why DULs (the old name for PBLs) are bad. -
Does it explain all the mysterious hums?
Maybe this will explain some of the many mysterious hum phenomena.
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Does google still work outside the US?
Last time I traveled it did... things may have changed, I suppose, but that seems unlikely. If it doesn't, I'm sure other countries have similar internet search engines, right? At any rate, a 15-second google search turned up a table matching grades to age ranges in the US and British school systems. HTH.
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Re:Fscking Visual Basic
Ok, upon actually reading the articles, my first paragraph is off: although the display part of MessageBox() is implemented entirely in the client side library, it may ask CSRSS to display the box instead. It's CSR that's mishandling that request in some weird circumstances. This isn't the only long standing bug of its kind in CSR. I sorta get the impression that no one at Microsoft really wants to touch the old CSR code (and may not even be competent to). The thing about "\??\" sounds like some debugging or obsolete piece of code that was written once and never read again. This is possibly a good case study for something that open source onlookers would've noticed as a bogus special case while browsing code.
My point about how apps should sanitize data from untrusted sources before passing it to internal library functions still stands, though... just not as much in this case. -
Re:Have they released a SenderID SDK?
Although I may not be a fan of M$, I am a fan of anything anti-spam
Here's my shocking intro: I'm not for just "anything" anti-spam.
I've said all this before on /., but let me explain again:
The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) so-called spam solution is being adopted all over the place without nary a complaint. But think about it. Tim Berners-Lee didn't just envision a web of equitable bandwidth, he envisioned a web of peers---a web of end points, all equally valid. What happens when my system is no longer considered a valid end point? Suddenly, we have a network of clients and servers rather than peers. When the SPF process looks to verify that the sender is the one valid smtp server for the mail address' domain (based on either MX or A records), it devalues all non-domain level systems on the web. Peers on the network become clients, fed valid packets from those servers that are approved to pass said packets. The SMTP semantic paradigm moves from Sender>Receiver to Server>Client.
But no one really cares because there is some belief that this will help reduce spam. It will, but so will turning off our mail clients. Neither is the right solution. The solution is a newer, better mail protocol, many of which have been proposed that DO NOT devalue the peers of the network. Probably one of the better known of the examples is the IM2000 protocol.
But we'd rather have a network of tiered rights, I suppose, than deal with the mess of changing a protocol for real.
In programming cicrles, this is called cruft. "What, the exosting app doesn't do all that's needed becuase we didn't think we'd need this functionality? Then just tack that functionality on it." Sometimes it makes sense to add small functional differences to an extant app. Sometimes it makes more sense to just move to an app that does what you want out of the box instead. This is an example of the second, but as a community, the Internet seems to have decided to do the first. the ISP's love it. It further adds control in their own hands (server-client models make them more powerful online) but why in God's name should we agree to use it?
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ -
Breaking SMTP not a solution
All of these solutions have flaws. I'm with deBoynePollard on this:
An interesting take is to make the sender responsible for storing mail: suggested by Dan Bernstein (DJB), the qmail guy.
There's always politics in it. Some people don't like DJB's attitude and they're anti-qmail and go for Postfix or sendmail.
Wietse Venema, the postfix guy, isn't too happy about SPF either: but he does provide plugins for Postfix.
SPAM needs a solution, but breaking SMTP isn't the way to go IMHO. I think a well configured email server, RBLs, requiring reasonable RFC compliance and such will eliminate much SPAM. Spending energy on evangelising good mail server configuration is still the best way to go.
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Breaking SMTP not a solution
All of these solutions have flaws. I'm with deBoynePollard on this:
An interesting take is to make the sender responsible for storing mail: suggested by Dan Bernstein (DJB), the qmail guy.
There's always politics in it. Some people don't like DJB's attitude and they're anti-qmail and go for Postfix or sendmail.
Wietse Venema, the postfix guy, isn't too happy about SPF either: but he does provide plugins for Postfix.
SPAM needs a solution, but breaking SMTP isn't the way to go IMHO. I think a well configured email server, RBLs, requiring reasonable RFC compliance and such will eliminate much SPAM. Spending energy on evangelising good mail server configuration is still the best way to go.
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Re:The solution is not SpamHouse, it's SPF !
I don't think so. SPF has serious technical problems:
http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/sm tp-spf-is-harmful.html
Not to mention the legal uncertainty surrounding the version hijacked by Microsoft. -
Hear Here
Hubble has taught us much because it's a big eye in the sky. Maybe if we put a big ear in the sky, we'd prove the wisdom of the old Music of the Spheres. We've already got the studio album... when will NASA release the live concert?
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Re:Very big assumptions.
They won't tell you. Like so much else at Microsoft, they use security-through-obscurity for their spam filter too. Pretty much all they do is suggest paying money and screwing around with your DNS.
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Re:Adventures Rule
I really liked the Lone Wolf series. It was quite sophisticated with you being able to keep track of your characters health and choose different powers. Sometimes you'd find a spell or item that had a number attached and at various points in the books you could add that number to your current number to pull off a hidden course of action.
But I don't think anything compared to Steve Jackson's Sorcery series. Lots of detail, lots of depth and if you didn't beat the seven serpents in book three then the villain in book four knew you were coming! Ah, happiness! -
net neutrality
I am all about Network Neutrality...the problem is that most of you aren't. There, my shocking intro is out of the way.
;-)
Seriously though, I'm only half joking. I agree that we must do everything we can to promote the vision of the Web that people like Tim Berners-Lee had at its inception. The problem is that while we want to fight for neutrality in our bandwidth, we are willing to give it up in our protocols.
For instance, the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) so-called spam solution is being adopted all over the place without nary a complaint. But think about it. Tim Berners-Lee didn't just envision a web of equitable bandwidth, he envisioned a web of peers---a web of end points, all equally valid. What happens when my system is no longer considered a valid end point? Suddenly, we have a network of clients and servers rather than peers. When the SPF process looks to verify that the sender is the one valid smtp server for the mail address' domain (based on either MX or A records), it devalues all non-domain level systems on the web. Peers on the network become clients, fed valid packets from those servers that are approved to pass said packets. The SMTP semantic paradigm moves from Sender>Receiver to Server>Client.
But no one really cares because there is some belief that this will help reduce spam. It will, but so will turning off our mail clients. Neither is the right solution. The solution is a newer, better mail protocol, many of which have been proposed that DO NOT devalue the peers of the network. Probably one of the better known of the examples is the IM2000 protocol.
But we'd rather have a network of tiered rights---as long as our bandwidth is balanced equitably we won't complain, I guess. :-\
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ -
It would not be the first time info is misleading
This site mentions a high-level I/O-processing bug that was present in csrss.exe in many versions of NT/2K/XP that could be triggered by something as simple as a opening a text file that contains a bunch of backspace characters.
"On 2002-09-24, Microsoft KnowledgeBase article ID Q311486, promised six months ago, finally appeared. Its publication date is falsified to claim that it appeared on 2001-10-26. It talks about programs that "pass invalid screen size parameters" when the sample program code that it gives for replicating the bug clearly contains nothing at all relating to screen size parameters." -
Re:Macs are not Targets.
Viruses, tard-o
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Re:lol no this is not a virus
It's spelled 'viruses'.
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Re: My xbox360 is broken!
Better watch out for those pesky backspaces!
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Re:Problems with IPV6
Also it has a problem that the choice is too simplistic, for instance there's only a place for one _webcache._tcp.and.org where most applications allow different caches for http, https and ftp
... plus exceptions.
The rest of the world solves part of that problem using split horizon and the fact that _httpproxy._tcp.example.org would be a perfectly adequate way to do it, as well as using client/login configuration scripts.
Well there's also the problem that basically zero clients do anything with it.
And exactly zero clients that can do anything with IPV6, what's your point? Basically zero is greater than exactly zero any day.
You don't think we need MX records? Hell I think you'd have a _HUGE_ problem getting rid of CNAMEs. I can sort of understand wanting SRV records for everything, but that's been around for a while too and hasn't exactly been taken up in droves.
I think we don't need, never needed, and never should have used MX records. I think CNAMEs are the bane of satan, and that DNS was designed by three monkeys trying to solve a four banana problem.
I also think that if we cannot get rid of MX records and CNAME records, we're never getting to anything even remotely close to IPV6.
Of course, I challenge the IETF to prove me wrong and actually provide a documented migration plan. -
Re: good for your computer
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Re:Microsoft's striking absence
Jeuss Christ. I'd somehow never heard of this bug, and I've been developing for Windows machines for years.
How on earth was such a basic and low-level bug ignored for so long? It doesn't seem like rocket-science to fix it with a small bounds-checking if statement! -
Re:Monolithic design of CSRSS is to blame here...
If i recall this is the same bug. Details can be had here http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoynePollard/FGA
/ csrss-backspace-bug.html/ This has been around since NT 3.51 and is directly related on how the console handles High-level I/O. -
Transfer limit
An account with no download limit with tesco.net in the UK costs £17.97 per month, according to their website. How much are you currently paying?
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More specific?
Could you be a bit more specific on the following items?
5) Breaks well-known and understood UNIX standards.
Which standards are these? Are you talking about the errno fiasco?
6) Security through lack-of-functionality.
What sort of functionality is provided by, say, postfix, that qmail simply won't do?
7) Not really secure despite the claims.
How's that? Do you have $500? If not, what's the security vulnerability that the author refuses to acknowledge?
Which of these problems that you enumerate are not addressed by netqmail?
--grendel drago -
Re:Brilliant Move Microsoft. I salute you!
"Anyone who makes statements like this truely doesn't understand the purpose of SPF." Did I say spf was designed to stop spam? uhh, nope. SPF breaks things, and fixes nothing. A primer on some broken things; http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/
s mtp-spf-is-harmful.html As to me not understanding, that's an assumption on your part. I spent a lot of time in the marid working group. I thought this was a very interesting concept. I paid attention, I participated. I, as in *I* decided, that for my users, it held no value. I am certainly not at all alone in this point of view. -
Re: What do you mean MS doesn't do tabs?
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MAPS is evil (not to mention in felony violation..
of US law.
1) MAPS is ineffective and inefficient. Spammers simply jump around, especially with the proponderance of spam virii. This breaks any system based on the simplistic view that there is a meaningful correlation between IP addresses and spam.
2) MAPS is demonstrably error prone. They simply don't care that their system produces false positives.
3) MAPS DUL is illegal, at least in the US. It's in violation of "18 U.S.C. 1030 -Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Computers", because it knowingly transmits information which impairs the availability of systems to protected computers. http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/m aps-dul-is-wrong.html -
Re:the sound is unbearable
Hi, I'm the same AC as the one who posted about hearing radio once and I found a very good site talking about "the hum" here:
http://homepages.tesco.net/~John.Dawes2/page1.htm
I haven't had the time to read through the entirety of the site nor to try to confirm the contents but considering how easy it is to make all kinds of really strange theories about stuff like this it looks good and rational.
It is extremely interesting to me that it draws comparison between the symptoms of CFS/ME and the hum (on the description page) as the MRs I told about were taken in ongoing evalution pertaining to diagnosing me with medium severe ME.
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Don't forget the Sinclair QL ran a different QDOS.
Sinclair also had a computer out in the 1980's called the QL (Quantum Leap) which used an operating sytem also called QDOS. The QL was based on the Motorola 68008.
http://homepages.tesco.net/dilwyn.jones/aboutql/ab outql.html
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Re:Internet Mail 2000Hmm...they discuss its effect on spam here, but their analysis doesn't really make sense to me. They say, "recipients no longer bear the costs of receiving and storing unwanted mail." Well, all they're really proposing is reducing the amount of resources consumed on the recipient's machine, but resources will still be used. Since spam is capable of growing exponentially, I don't see the point of reducing the recipient's costs by some constant factor. They also seem to be taking this entirely from the point of view of the ISP. As a user of their scheme, I'd still have an inbox with hundreds of subject lines offering viagra.
They seem to be expecting the world to redesign the whole e-mail infrastructure from scratch, simply for a gain in performance and no permanent elimination of spam. If we could redesign the infrastructure from scratch, we could actually eliminate spam completely. For instance, we could have a system where e-mails have to be signed with a public key, each public key could have a public reputation for not sending spam, and public keys that didn't have much of a track record could have their e-mail flow throttled back.
Redesigning the system isn't that hard. What's hard is convincing everybody to start using the new design.
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Re:Yet another challenge/response system: *yawn*
That's what SPF is for. Take a look over at http://spf.pobox.net for details.
Except that SPF is badly broken in several different ways.
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Re:forward and reverseFuck them, reverse lookup is part of the RFC for SMTP.
Wrong, so fuck all the rabid reverse lookup for EHLO/HELO client address assholes
RFC 2821 section 4.1.4 say:An SMTP server MAY verify that the domain name parameter in the EHLO command actually corresponds to the IP address of the client. However, the server MUST NOT refuse to accept a message for this reason if the verification fails: the information about verification failure is for logging and tracing only.
eg: (tcp connect from IP4w.x.y.z to you at your port 25)
220 mailin.rfc2821compliant.com ESMTP CRLF
So that says the forward lookup not matching the IP of the connecting address cannot even be used to refuse a connection, much less some fucking goofy reverse lookup crap.
ehlo mailout.example.com CRLF
250 mailin.rfc2821compliant.com welcomes mailout.example.com and realizes anything in your ehlo line is meaningless and even though mailoutexample.com resolves to a.b.c.d, not w.x.y.z, RFC 2821, 4.1.4 says I can't refuse the connection CRLF
MAIL FROM:<suckit@dns-and-ehlo-are-linked.cult-members. com> CRLF
If you want to say that you think it should match great that is your opinion but check the less than straight forward examples like the one above about friendfinder.com. And don't say the RFC says so unless you can post the specifics - if you can, I'll eat my words, because it will be the first I've heard about it.
Some radicals even think simple connections should not require EHLO/HELO at all. I rather that become common practice, so that people quit bitching about what appears in the EHLO line. -
Re:frist?
Sorry about the void main(void). C is not my first language. (You wouldn't've wanted me to use the MS language I usually work with. =)
Anyways, to make up for this, here are discussions on void main(void):
http://users.aber.ac.uk/auj/voidmain.shtml
http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/l egality-of-void-main.html
- a.c. -
Re:Wait a minute
Is it as good as the StarWars txt version?
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Re:A little OT...The ISP lock-in is BS, too. ISPs can allow people to submit mail via SASL-authenticated connections to their mailserver's smtp or (better yet) submission port. Then you can roam anywhere in the world and still send mail through your proper ISP.
SPF is useless for entire classes of people is the same reason. It's still wrong no matter how many times he says it.
The rant about third-class citizens is the same reason again.
The "wrong problem" bit is completely wrong. Worms submit forged email through an entirely different mechanism than legitimate email - they never use their own credentials and they always connect directly to the other side's ISP. SPF addresses this problem well. As for not stopping unsolicited commercial email...well, it was never meant to, except in that it makes it easier for you to use blacklists. The SPF people will tell you as much.
The Verisign complaint is just hysteria. They got shut down for their wildcard stuff. They won't be setting up SPF entries on blank domains. It wouldn't accomplish anything if they did, anyway.
The DNS security section is wrong. If the "attacker" owns the sending domain...well, it's not an attacker. By definition, the owner of the sending domain is the person who decides if any mail from it is forged or not. They can permit everything if they so please.
That's most of his "reasons" right there. I'm sure I could tear the others apart similarly, but I'm tired now.
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Re:A little OT...The ISP lock-in is BS, too. ISPs can allow people to submit mail via SASL-authenticated connections to their mailserver's smtp or (better yet) submission port. Then you can roam anywhere in the world and still send mail through your proper ISP.
SPF is useless for entire classes of people is the same reason. It's still wrong no matter how many times he says it.
The rant about third-class citizens is the same reason again.
The "wrong problem" bit is completely wrong. Worms submit forged email through an entirely different mechanism than legitimate email - they never use their own credentials and they always connect directly to the other side's ISP. SPF addresses this problem well. As for not stopping unsolicited commercial email...well, it was never meant to, except in that it makes it easier for you to use blacklists. The SPF people will tell you as much.
The Verisign complaint is just hysteria. They got shut down for their wildcard stuff. They won't be setting up SPF entries on blank domains. It wouldn't accomplish anything if they did, anyway.
The DNS security section is wrong. If the "attacker" owns the sending domain...well, it's not an attacker. By definition, the owner of the sending domain is the person who decides if any mail from it is forged or not. They can permit everything if they so please.
That's most of his "reasons" right there. I'm sure I could tear the others apart similarly, but I'm tired now.
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Re:A little OT...The ISP lock-in is BS, too. ISPs can allow people to submit mail via SASL-authenticated connections to their mailserver's smtp or (better yet) submission port. Then you can roam anywhere in the world and still send mail through your proper ISP.
SPF is useless for entire classes of people is the same reason. It's still wrong no matter how many times he says it.
The rant about third-class citizens is the same reason again.
The "wrong problem" bit is completely wrong. Worms submit forged email through an entirely different mechanism than legitimate email - they never use their own credentials and they always connect directly to the other side's ISP. SPF addresses this problem well. As for not stopping unsolicited commercial email...well, it was never meant to, except in that it makes it easier for you to use blacklists. The SPF people will tell you as much.
The Verisign complaint is just hysteria. They got shut down for their wildcard stuff. They won't be setting up SPF entries on blank domains. It wouldn't accomplish anything if they did, anyway.
The DNS security section is wrong. If the "attacker" owns the sending domain...well, it's not an attacker. By definition, the owner of the sending domain is the person who decides if any mail from it is forged or not. They can permit everything if they so please.
That's most of his "reasons" right there. I'm sure I could tear the others apart similarly, but I'm tired now.
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Re:A little OT...The ISP lock-in is BS, too. ISPs can allow people to submit mail via SASL-authenticated connections to their mailserver's smtp or (better yet) submission port. Then you can roam anywhere in the world and still send mail through your proper ISP.
SPF is useless for entire classes of people is the same reason. It's still wrong no matter how many times he says it.
The rant about third-class citizens is the same reason again.
The "wrong problem" bit is completely wrong. Worms submit forged email through an entirely different mechanism than legitimate email - they never use their own credentials and they always connect directly to the other side's ISP. SPF addresses this problem well. As for not stopping unsolicited commercial email...well, it was never meant to, except in that it makes it easier for you to use blacklists. The SPF people will tell you as much.
The Verisign complaint is just hysteria. They got shut down for their wildcard stuff. They won't be setting up SPF entries on blank domains. It wouldn't accomplish anything if they did, anyway.
The DNS security section is wrong. If the "attacker" owns the sending domain...well, it's not an attacker. By definition, the owner of the sending domain is the person who decides if any mail from it is forged or not. They can permit everything if they so please.
That's most of his "reasons" right there. I'm sure I could tear the others apart similarly, but I'm tired now.
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Re:A little OT...The ISP lock-in is BS, too. ISPs can allow people to submit mail via SASL-authenticated connections to their mailserver's smtp or (better yet) submission port. Then you can roam anywhere in the world and still send mail through your proper ISP.
SPF is useless for entire classes of people is the same reason. It's still wrong no matter how many times he says it.
The rant about third-class citizens is the same reason again.
The "wrong problem" bit is completely wrong. Worms submit forged email through an entirely different mechanism than legitimate email - they never use their own credentials and they always connect directly to the other side's ISP. SPF addresses this problem well. As for not stopping unsolicited commercial email...well, it was never meant to, except in that it makes it easier for you to use blacklists. The SPF people will tell you as much.
The Verisign complaint is just hysteria. They got shut down for their wildcard stuff. They won't be setting up SPF entries on blank domains. It wouldn't accomplish anything if they did, anyway.
The DNS security section is wrong. If the "attacker" owns the sending domain...well, it's not an attacker. By definition, the owner of the sending domain is the person who decides if any mail from it is forged or not. They can permit everything if they so please.
That's most of his "reasons" right there. I'm sure I could tear the others apart similarly, but I'm tired now.
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Re:A little OT...The ISP lock-in is BS, too. ISPs can allow people to submit mail via SASL-authenticated connections to their mailserver's smtp or (better yet) submission port. Then you can roam anywhere in the world and still send mail through your proper ISP.
SPF is useless for entire classes of people is the same reason. It's still wrong no matter how many times he says it.
The rant about third-class citizens is the same reason again.
The "wrong problem" bit is completely wrong. Worms submit forged email through an entirely different mechanism than legitimate email - they never use their own credentials and they always connect directly to the other side's ISP. SPF addresses this problem well. As for not stopping unsolicited commercial email...well, it was never meant to, except in that it makes it easier for you to use blacklists. The SPF people will tell you as much.
The Verisign complaint is just hysteria. They got shut down for their wildcard stuff. They won't be setting up SPF entries on blank domains. It wouldn't accomplish anything if they did, anyway.
The DNS security section is wrong. If the "attacker" owns the sending domain...well, it's not an attacker. By definition, the owner of the sending domain is the person who decides if any mail from it is forged or not. They can permit everything if they so please.
That's most of his "reasons" right there. I'm sure I could tear the others apart similarly, but I'm tired now.
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Re:A little OT...
I'd actually like to hear a proponent of SPF deal with the complaints made about it here.
I'm not exactly a proponent, but I can respond to most of his points;
* SPF breaks pre-delivery forwarding.
SPF doesn't break pre-delivery forwarding at all, you just need to include the machine forwarded to in your SPF record.
post-delivery forwarding is a problem, but at least in theory, it can be solved by only checking SPF records at the first receipt point,
or by having a smart checker that knows about your forwarding.
I.e. if Alice is sending to Bob, then there's a point at which the message leaves Alice's control, and enters Bobs.
Before that point, Alice can adjust her SPF record to include all possible point of egress.
After that point, Bob needs to check based only on the IP that entered his realm of control.
This may be hard for Bob to do, or beyond his understanding, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
* SPF hijacks existing DNS mechanisms.
Bullshit. SPF uses TXT records.
It's even RFC 1464 compliant, so it won't interfere with other TXT records (unless someone's already created the "v" tag)
It could have been made less likely to collide by using "spf1=" instead, but it doesn't hijack anything.
* SPF gives ISPs a "lock-in" weapon against their customers.
This one baffles me.
If you're using the address bob@example.com, then example.com already has you by the balls.
If you're using bob@vanitiydomain.tld then you are in control of your own SPF record, and can switch it to anything you like.
* SPF is useless for several entire classes of people.
That would be anyone who sends direct-to-mx email from random IPs.
Those people will have to change.
Sorry, sucks to be you.
The percentage of people in this class is very near zero.
* SPF relies upon DNS for security, but DNS isn't a security service.
Yeah, so?
No one said SPF was perfect, they said it was better than what we currently have (nothing.)
Spoofing DNS, while possible, is considerably harder than forging a from address.
If this were really a concern, we'd already have adopted one of the many "secure" dns alternatives.
* SPF is vulnerable to race conditions during database changes.
Yeah, so?
So is email in general.
* SPF creates new categories of third class citizenship.
Sheese - time to break out the tin foil hat.
The purpose is to discriminate against people who forge addresses.
I suppose some people will try and push all kinds of crap into, around, and on to SPF - but it's really innocuous as these things go.
* SPF doesn't actually address unsolicited bulk mail at all.
That is correct.
SPF is a tool against forgeries only.
It doesn't directly prevent email delivery at all.
* SPF hands Verisign its next unwelcome "innovation" on a platter.
If that's the worst thing you can think of for Verisign to do when they have complete control of the DNS system, then I have no respect for your imagination.
Verisign could create SPF records for existing domains.
Verisign could make resolving TXT records a "premium" service which costs money.
Hell, Verisign could just raise the fees for owning a domain name in .com.
Yes, Verisign is an evil monopoly with near total control over the domain name system, and they can fuck you over at any time.
Get over it.
SPF didn't make them that way, nor will it contribute to their general evilness.
-- should you question authority? -
A little OT...
This is a little OT... I'd actually like to hear a proponent of SPF deal with the complaints made about it here.
I myself have no opinion. I haven't admined a mail server in over 2 years and I am woefully not up on this subject. -
so .. would that IM2000 system work? (better?)
followed through from someone's link to http://spf.pobox.com/objections.htm,
I read about the IM2000 stuff @ http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoynePollard/Prop osals/IM2000/
sounds tres sexy? I wonder if it would work?
somebody wanna rip it to shreds for our amusement (and further learning of course)...