The big problem with all these schemes is the requirement for critical mass to be truely useful. There is nothing stopping spammers from implementing DK, SPF, or any of the other schemes. With throwaway domains, spammers can burn though dozens of domains a day and not break a sweat. They really don't give a damn if the domain is blacklisted in a few hours.
refusal to accept mail from a domain that hasn't yet established a track record Who establishes the track record? You? Your ISP? If I register a new domain today and send email that is not spam, does that mean you would reject it as spam? I don't see how that would be useful or workable on anything but a personal domain where you don't care about false positives. For domains that establish a negative (spamming) track record, DNSBL's would be an easy way to filter them, but the throw-away domain problem makes this much less effective.
Using the lack of DK / SPF records as a SA score modifier may be somewhat helpful, but again it's of little benefit until critical mass is reached.
Sure it is. If I buy a router based on BSD code but with vendor modifications, I have a router that I can't modify the code on and retain all the functionality.
In contrast, if I buy a linux GPL router, I get all the source including the vendor modifications since the GPL requires that the vendor release the code.
Which one is more restrictive? The original BSD code is useless as it's missing all the changes that make it work with the router hardware and featureset. Furthermore, lets say the router manufacturer stops supporting the product. With the BSD version, I'm toast. With the Linux GPL version I (or the community of router users) can take up support. This is a huge issue that can't be ignored - it's the main difference between BSD and GPL licenses.
Will will never know how advanced BSD would have been if developers were required to return improvements back to the community. BSD is much older than linux yet is about at the same point technologically. In 5 years, I expect Linux to be more more advanced where BSD gets only a modest improvement.
They shouldn't, but we all pay for it in the Universal Service Fee. The USF shouldn't be "federal", it should be 100% "State." This fix is trivial. Congress should take away the money from the FCC and give it directly to the states to administer. IMHO, the fee is way to high. Should be half at best. Frankly, there are better ways for most school districts to get connectivity and communications - wireless for example. Instead of each school getting a T1, the whole district gets a few (or fractional T3) and handles all the telecommunication.
The fact is, most districts don't have anyone that really knows technology - and this is true in Silicon Valley as well as Minnisota and Maine (although Maine is worse.) Considering what they pay, it's no wonder. Worse, most technology decisions are made by politicians and citizens (school board) who don't know jack about education OR technology. This is why I won't send my child to public school.
4) own CDs? 99% - I just burned our entire collection, some 300+ CDs
5) friends' CDs? 1% - just a couple songs that were OK - typically from bands that have one good song then disappear. I'm not going to buy an entire CD for one song. This is an area where the music industry has failed us.
Many of these songs (and many from my own collection) are no longer "in print", and not available through any legal means. I had a number of older vinyl albums and tapes that I finally got rid of - material not available on CD today either. I have no problem "sharing" these with others since the music industry is no longer interested in distributing them. Technically, this is wrong. Morally I believe it's OK since I'm not depriving anyone of money and am not profiting by it either.
As for sources like iTunes Music Store, the industry is nuts if they think I'll pay $.99 / song. Considering that there is no packaging and minimal distribution costs, the profit level has got to be double or triple that of a normal CD. 25 to 50 cents would be much more reasonable. At 99 cents each, some of my albums would cost 2 to 5 times more on a per song basis than just buying a CD.
I watch both the Daily Show and O'Reilly on a farily regular basis. In enjoy both - maybe because I'm more of a centrist leaning a little to the socially liberal side, try to be balanced between consumer and business, and tend to lean towards fiscal responsability (smaller government.)
It's very clear that John Steward and co. are fairly far left, anti-Bush. That doesn't stop him from bashing Kerry now and then however. Likewise, Bill mostly toes the Bush line, but not always. The real truth is somewhere in the middle.
I will say that the Daily Show, being comedy oriented does not need to be (and clearly isn't) fair to either side. They frequently take quotes out of context because they are funny - but that doesn't give the person watching the full story. If you are using the Daily Show as your main source of news you are not getting a true picture of what is going on in the world.
I believe O'Reilly tries to be fair, and most of the time he is spot on, but occasionally it's pretty obvious he is pushing his own adgenda without regard to reason or truth - occasionally going on rants that make me skip forward (tivo).
It's hard to get the real facts, and the full truth out of the media in general. We don't (for example) hear anything about the good things going on in Iraq. All we hear about is the bombings, kidnappings, etc. The negative stuff.
The past year? you are basing future predictions many years out based on what has happened in a 12 month period? Your entire "tracking" period of 4 years suggest that you are quite young, so I'll give you a break.
If you look back at CPU history, you see incremental improvements, then a big jump, more incrementals, a big jump, etc. As new chip technologies develop, this enables new designs in CPU's that allow for faster clock speeds, wider busses, more cache, etc. The next generation of CPU's will be multi-core. The Sun Niagara chip for example is a multi-core / multi-threaded per core design that allows up to 32 threads And has a crypto accelerator. Intel and AMD are working on similar technologies.
Look at the new G5 compared to the G4 of just a couple years ago... Massive speed boost.
Keep your pant's on. The next jump is comming soon in the Intel line too.
OK, bad joke, but that aside, I have a plea for anyone that want's to play. Before posting to the asterisk-users mailing list (it's already high-volume enough,) read the manuals, the Wiki, and the mailing list archives. 95% of questions asked have already been answered Many Many times.
If you don't know anything about Linux, Asterisk (*) is the wrong project to learn it on. If you are not comfortable compiling applications, * is not for you. If you are not willing to spend the time with google and tinkering, * is not for you. Your other option is to hire a * consultant (see the wiki.)
Yeah, doesn't help with the AOLish users including entire message digests when asking an unrelated question, or the "Me Too!" top posters that include 8 level nested mailing list footers... Now we are going to have the/. crowd all asking when the Windows port is going to happen... BAH! The Netiquette on the * mailing list is the worst I have ever seen.
I think most of the problems are due to quality of the cards, varying quality of phone lines, quality of the DSP code, etc. CallerID has been quite unreliable (external callerID devices work every time.) The stock single FXO card is just a winmodem at heart - the quality of the telco interface portion is suspect. Other FXO devices (channel bank, SIP FXO boxes, etc) may have better luck on questionable lines.
In addition, interupt conflicts are a constant plague for many newcommers. The X100P generates HUGE ammounts of interrupts:
Many people are still looking for a more affordable (but still good quality) FXO / FXS card with a higher port density. While you can get a used channel bank for not too much on ebay, new pricing is out of control ($500 for the T1 interface, $2K+ for the CB.) It should be possible to do a 4x12 card for under $1K (which is large enough for 90% of small businesses and home use) especially considering that you can get a 4x12 Voice Pro for about $500. Probably need to make them in China to keep the price down though...
While you can use low-end SIP phones, they tend to suck.
That's not altogether true. Manufacturers have different levels of features supported, or don't totally adhear to the SIP spec. Some SIP products are a bitch to get working. Most SIP phones work however.
On the asterisk mailing list, there has been discussion on how Linksys pulled the NA versions back from distributers. No clear reason why yet (although some theories have been voiced..) Good luck getting one. Basically a Sipura-2000 design.
Um, that may work in Texas, but it sure as hell wouldn't work in the north east. Spectrum has to be regulated (assigned) by power / radius like it currently is. Broadcasts very, very frequently cross state lines. This is an area that the feds have to do as it impacts the nation as a whole. In order for phones / services to work in a mobile / nation wide situation, frequencies need to be allocated according to a very specific plan.
There is nothing worse than responding to some moron who posts a question to a mailing list, and getting a C/R back. That person gets instantly blacklisted for life. Period.
Sure C/R works, that's not the point. It's the burden it places on those you want to hear from that is the problem.
With a little work, you can configure your mail server to block >99% of all spam anyway. C/R is a crappy (lazy) "solution" to the problem.
It's not code. It's a spec. MS is claiming to have some patent claims over the algorithm.
I think the bigger issue is that AOL realized that very few mail servers were going to support the spec. Unless adoption is near total, it's pretty useless. Adding the complexity to AOL probably wasn't going to be cost effective on multiple levels.
Um, my father, who is now 82, has been an editor for various journals in his field for about 40 years. He has about 20 books under his belt, worked for a non-profit (Mayo Clinic), has been president of the acadamy in his field an unprecidented 4 terms, holds professorship chairs at multiple medical schools, and is regarded as one of the most knowledgable and well respected experts in the field. To be on topic, much of his research has been funded by the NIH. In fact, at this point, he offers guidance on future spending to the NIH.
By they way - he is far from rich. None of those activities pays on a per hour basis anything near the hourly rate he made as a physician - which was not all that much (I know exactly how much he made). In fact, I make more than he did (inflation adusted.)
Kinda shoots a huge f-ing hole in your theory, doesn't it?
It's not that we "only use the command line", it's that the command line offers ease and flexibility that the GUI does not.
As an example: I've been working on an OS X XServe... Really nice machine. Apple has the GUI setup to administer everything. Well, not quite everything maybe half. OK, OK, maybe not half, it's only about 10%. At best. All the real basics are covered. You can web sites, administer users, select whether they can access email, etc. Unfortunately, there is no provision for spam / virus filtering on the email server, and the httpd.conf is SOOO fucked up that I dumped the Apple version and used my own. Ditto with many of the other services. The GUI was just not complete enough, and even if it was, wholesale changes are easier on the command line. The good thing about OS X is that you CAN use the command line when the GUI fails to do what you need to do.
The contrast is Windows, where the GUI is everything and the command line is almost useless. Instead of firing up an editor on a config file, you need to use RegEdit and mouse navigate to each and every element that you need to change taking MUCH longer to acomplish similar tasks (that's assuming you can find where the stuff is hidden in the first place.)
This difference is why Unix admins can administer 10 times the number of machines that Windows administrators can (a factor MS doesn't use in it's TCO calculations...)
Exactly. Email worms and spammers frequently forge the sender. The problem is clueless mail adminitrators that configure their mail relays to accept mail to anyone (even unknown users) and then generate a bounce message when it can't be delivered (user unknown...) All scanning (spam and AV) and user verification really needs to be performed at initial SMTP reception and not after the fact.
Unfortunately, older versions of Exchange are stupid in this respect, and accept pretty much anything. I believe you even have to specifically configure the newer versions of exchange too to behave correctly (someone correct me if I'm wrong here... I no longer use exchange, just read about how 2003 works...)
IMHO, if you are running an older version of exchange without a good Unix relay in front of it that can do all this validation and scanning for you, you are a big part of the problem.
Um, duct tape isn't used on ducts because it doesn't stick to ducting (which if you have ever tried, you would know...) Instead, foil tape is used - the kind with the peel off backing. Ask any heating contractor.
FYI, sparky, DUCK is a brand name of duct tape. Time to find something else to be annoyed at.
Um, they do a little more than a simple calculator. This style of register is usually networked to a backend system that handles PLU, credit authorization, etc. It's a general purpose computer that has been customized for a specific purpose. Many retailers have custom apps written that do all sorts of things, such as DB searches for mulit-store inventory, handling special orders for custom items that have tons of options, etc.
They are also designed like tanks - putting up with day in day out heavy abuse. IBM provides on-site service, and support - better than most companies can. Retailers are notoriously cheap. You would not have Safeway, Target, Walmart, Albertsons, etc. using IBM registers unless it made good business sense.
Sender-ID can incorporate SPF. It isn't a one or the other battle.
I've read through the ietf archives, and the big issues are that the license seems OK on the surface, but the details of exactly what is patented is very unclear AND The requirement that implementors and distributers get a license, even if it's free, is a huge burden. Imagine if this kind of thing happened with all the standards? A company like redhat would need to get thousands of licenses from thousands of companies. Debian would be impossible. Open source would die.
The end result is that SenderID will be mostly useless because it will not get critical mass adoption. ISP's rely heavily on opensource software. If opensource mail software does not support SenderID, only a small fraction of the world will adopt it.
To the people saying it should be worth spending thousands of bucks to save your back. Why should you have to spend thousands to do so?
Well, it's not "thousands", but it is around a thousand. because that's what good quality chairs cost.
Why are so many chairs crappy?
Because people are cheap and buy cheap chairs because they are cheap. Quality takes a back seat to price (pardon the pun.)
Why are so few people making decent chairs for decent prices?
Because good quality costs more. Sure, you can buy cheap quality stuff at high prices, but you can't buy high quality at low prices because high quality costs more - better materials, better craftsman, more time needed to do quality work. It's really very simple.
Take a good close at the construction of a good quality chair and an "office max" chair. It's the grade and thickness of plastic used, the thickness of steel, the quality of the welds, the quality of the foam, fabric, the design and engineering, etc. Look very closely at a Stealcase Leap chair that goes for $1,000, and an officemax $250 "manager's chair". That Leap chair may cost $250 to manufacture, but you can bet that Officemax didn't pay more than $25 for that pile-of-crap "manager's" chair. For my money, quality chairs like the Leap are a bargain if you are willing to look beyond price alone as the deciding factor.
Have you actually done this? The chairs at all these warehouse style office supply places (Office Max, Reliable, Staples, etc.) SUCK. They are all very cheaply made, use foam that compresses to paper thickness (too low density), have ZERO back support, etc. These stores don't even carry nice chairs as stock items. Some better models are availbale from the catalog, but most of those suck too.
What you really need to do is go to a dedicated office furniture dealer where they carry quality stuff with good warrenties and try them. Good furniture costs a lot more than junk. I'm in the market for a new chair too, and have been looking at them closely.
Along similar lines, I went to Walmart and Home Depot and looked at the patio furniture - It's all cheap. Most of the demo units were already damaged, bent, scratched, had crappy welds, thin metal - junk. This is the stuff that lasts no more than 2 seasons. An entire set of tables and chairs go for $350. I went to a local store that carried patio furniture. I found a set made in Germany that runs about $250 per chair. It's made of heavy galvenized steel (the legs are solid, not hollow) and has a durable nylon coating. Not only do they look 10 times better than the walmart garbage, but they will probably last longer than I will - they have a 10 year no-rust warranty. I went for the good stuff.
Oh, I know all about the rolls of tape, etc. Wasn't born yesterday. You can always tell though because there will be two layers of tape, or you can tell where the old tape is ripped off. Furthermore, many items have special factory tape, or seal stickers.
If you can't tell on the outside, the inside is usually obvious - ripped bags, etc. You can always return it if you nitice, and complain. Anyway, I've stopped patronizing BB.
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The big problem with all these schemes is the requirement for critical mass to be truely useful. There is nothing stopping spammers from implementing DK, SPF, or any of the other schemes. With throwaway domains, spammers can burn though dozens of domains a day and not break a sweat. They really don't give a damn if the domain is blacklisted in a few hours.
refusal to accept mail from a domain that hasn't yet established a track record Who establishes the track record? You? Your ISP? If I register a new domain today and send email that is not spam, does that mean you would reject it as spam? I don't see how that would be useful or workable on anything but a personal domain where you don't care about false positives. For domains that establish a negative (spamming) track record, DNSBL's would be an easy way to filter them, but the throw-away domain problem makes this much less effective.
Using the lack of DK / SPF records as a SA score modifier may be somewhat helpful, but again it's of little benefit until critical mass is reached.
Sure it is. If I buy a router based on BSD code but with vendor modifications, I have a router that I can't modify the code on and retain all the functionality.
In contrast, if I buy a linux GPL router, I get all the source including the vendor modifications since the GPL requires that the vendor release the code.
Which one is more restrictive? The original BSD code is useless as it's missing all the changes that make it work with the router hardware and featureset. Furthermore, lets say the router manufacturer stops supporting the product. With the BSD version, I'm toast. With the Linux GPL version I (or the community of router users) can take up support. This is a huge issue that can't be ignored - it's the main difference between BSD and GPL licenses.
Will will never know how advanced BSD would have been if developers were required to return improvements back to the community. BSD is much older than linux yet is about at the same point technologically. In 5 years, I expect Linux to be more more advanced where BSD gets only a modest improvement.
That's VERY interesting. I did not know that. She's my senator. Sounds like we need to have a little chat.
They shouldn't, but we all pay for it in the Universal Service Fee. The USF shouldn't be "federal", it should be 100% "State." This fix is trivial. Congress should take away the money from the FCC and give it directly to the states to administer. IMHO, the fee is way to high. Should be half at best. Frankly, there are better ways for most school districts to get connectivity and communications - wireless for example. Instead of each school getting a T1, the whole district gets a few (or fractional T3) and handles all the telecommunication.
The fact is, most districts don't have anyone that really knows technology - and this is true in Silicon Valley as well as Minnisota and Maine (although Maine is worse.) Considering what they pay, it's no wonder. Worse, most technology decisions are made by politicians and citizens (school board) who don't know jack about education OR technology. This is why I won't send my child to public school.
4) own CDs?
99% - I just burned our entire collection, some 300+ CDs
5) friends' CDs?
1% - just a couple songs that were OK - typically from bands that have one good song then disappear. I'm not going to buy an entire CD for one song. This is an area where the music industry has failed us.
Many of these songs (and many from my own collection) are no longer "in print", and not available through any legal means. I had a number of older vinyl albums and tapes that I finally got rid of - material not available on CD today either. I have no problem "sharing" these with others since the music industry is no longer interested in distributing them. Technically, this is wrong. Morally I believe it's OK since I'm not depriving anyone of money and am not profiting by it either.
As for sources like iTunes Music Store, the industry is nuts if they think I'll pay $.99 / song. Considering that there is no packaging and minimal distribution costs, the profit level has got to be double or triple that of a normal CD. 25 to 50 cents would be much more reasonable. At 99 cents each, some of my albums would cost 2 to 5 times more on a per song basis than just buying a CD.
I watch both the Daily Show and O'Reilly on a farily regular basis. In enjoy both - maybe because I'm more of a centrist leaning a little to the socially liberal side, try to be balanced between consumer and business, and tend to lean towards fiscal responsability (smaller government.)
It's very clear that John Steward and co. are fairly far left, anti-Bush. That doesn't stop him from bashing Kerry now and then however. Likewise, Bill mostly toes the Bush line, but not always. The real truth is somewhere in the middle.
I will say that the Daily Show, being comedy oriented does not need to be (and clearly isn't) fair to either side. They frequently take quotes out of context because they are funny - but that doesn't give the person watching the full story. If you are using the Daily Show as your main source of news you are not getting a true picture of what is going on in the world.
I believe O'Reilly tries to be fair, and most of the time he is spot on, but occasionally it's pretty obvious he is pushing his own adgenda without regard to reason or truth - occasionally going on rants that make me skip forward (tivo).
It's hard to get the real facts, and the full truth out of the media in general. We don't (for example) hear anything about the good things going on in Iraq. All we hear about is the bombings, kidnappings, etc. The negative stuff.
The past year? you are basing future predictions many years out based on what has happened in a 12 month period? Your entire "tracking" period of 4 years suggest that you are quite young, so I'll give you a break.
If you look back at CPU history, you see incremental improvements, then a big jump, more incrementals, a big jump, etc. As new chip technologies develop, this enables new designs in CPU's that allow for faster clock speeds, wider busses, more cache, etc. The next generation of CPU's will be multi-core. The Sun Niagara chip for example is a multi-core / multi-threaded per core design that allows up to 32 threads And has a crypto accelerator. Intel and AMD are working on similar technologies.
Look at the new G5 compared to the G4 of just a couple years ago... Massive speed boost.
Keep your pant's on. The next jump is comming soon in the Intel line too.
What have we become?!
OK, bad joke, but that aside, I have a plea for anyone that want's to play. Before posting to the asterisk-users mailing list (it's already high-volume enough,) read the manuals, the Wiki, and the mailing list archives. 95% of questions asked have already been answered Many Many times.
If you don't know anything about Linux, Asterisk (*) is the wrong project to learn it on. If you are not comfortable compiling applications, * is not for you. If you are not willing to spend the time with google and tinkering, * is not for you. Your other option is to hire a * consultant (see the wiki.)
Yeah, doesn't help with the AOLish users including entire message digests when asking an unrelated question, or the "Me Too!" top posters that include 8 level nested mailing list footers... Now we are going to have the /. crowd all asking when the Windows port is going to happen... BAH! The Netiquette on the * mailing list is the worst I have ever seen.
In addition, interupt conflicts are a constant plague for many newcommers. The X100P generates HUGE ammounts of interrupts:
Many people are still looking for a more affordable (but still good quality) FXO / FXS card with a higher port density. While you can get a used channel bank for not too much on ebay, new pricing is out of control ($500 for the T1 interface, $2K+ for the CB.) It should be possible to do a 4x12 card for under $1K (which is large enough for 90% of small businesses and home use) especially considering that you can get a 4x12 Voice Pro for about $500. Probably need to make them in China to keep the price down though... While you can use low-end SIP phones, they tend to suck.
That's not altogether true. Manufacturers have different levels of features supported, or don't totally adhear to the SIP spec. Some SIP products are a bitch to get working. Most SIP phones work however.
On the asterisk mailing list, there has been discussion on how Linksys pulled the NA versions back from distributers. No clear reason why yet (although some theories have been voiced..) Good luck getting one. Basically a Sipura-2000 design.
Um, that may work in Texas, but it sure as hell wouldn't work in the north east. Spectrum has to be regulated (assigned) by power / radius like it currently is. Broadcasts very, very frequently cross state lines. This is an area that the feds have to do as it impacts the nation as a whole. In order for phones / services to work in a mobile / nation wide situation, frequencies need to be allocated according to a very specific plan.
There is nothing worse than responding to some moron who posts a question to a mailing list, and getting a C/R back. That person gets instantly blacklisted for life. Period.
Sure C/R works, that's not the point. It's the burden it places on those you want to hear from that is the problem.
With a little work, you can configure your mail server to block >99% of all spam anyway. C/R is a crappy (lazy) "solution" to the problem.
It's not code. It's a spec. MS is claiming to have some patent claims over the algorithm.
I think the bigger issue is that AOL realized that very few mail servers were going to support the spec. Unless adoption is near total, it's pretty useless. Adding the complexity to AOL probably wasn't going to be cost effective on multiple levels.
Not to mention that dissing MS is great PR.
Um, my father, who is now 82, has been an editor for various journals in his field for about 40 years. He has about 20 books under his belt, worked for a non-profit (Mayo Clinic), has been president of the acadamy in his field an unprecidented 4 terms, holds professorship chairs at multiple medical schools, and is regarded as one of the most knowledgable and well respected experts in the field. To be on topic, much of his research has been funded by the NIH. In fact, at this point, he offers guidance on future spending to the NIH.
By they way - he is far from rich. None of those activities pays on a per hour basis anything near the hourly rate he made as a physician - which was not all that much (I know exactly how much he made). In fact, I make more than he did (inflation adusted.)
Kinda shoots a huge f-ing hole in your theory, doesn't it?
It's not that we "only use the command line", it's that the command line offers ease and flexibility that the GUI does not.
As an example: I've been working on an OS X XServe... Really nice machine. Apple has the GUI setup to administer everything. Well, not quite everything maybe half. OK, OK, maybe not half, it's only about 10%. At best. All the real basics are covered. You can web sites, administer users, select whether they can access email, etc. Unfortunately, there is no provision for spam / virus filtering on the email server, and the httpd.conf is SOOO fucked up that I dumped the Apple version and used my own. Ditto with many of the other services. The GUI was just not complete enough, and even if it was, wholesale changes are easier on the command line. The good thing about OS X is that you CAN use the command line when the GUI fails to do what you need to do.
The contrast is Windows, where the GUI is everything and the command line is almost useless. Instead of firing up an editor on a config file, you need to use RegEdit and mouse navigate to each and every element that you need to change taking MUCH longer to acomplish similar tasks (that's assuming you can find where the stuff is hidden in the first place.)
This difference is why Unix admins can administer 10 times the number of machines that Windows administrators can (a factor MS doesn't use in it's TCO calculations...)
Exactly. Email worms and spammers frequently forge the sender. The problem is clueless mail adminitrators that configure their mail relays to accept mail to anyone (even unknown users) and then generate a bounce message when it can't be delivered (user unknown...) All scanning (spam and AV) and user verification really needs to be performed at initial SMTP reception and not after the fact.
Unfortunately, older versions of Exchange are stupid in this respect, and accept pretty much anything. I believe you even have to specifically configure the newer versions of exchange too to behave correctly (someone correct me if I'm wrong here... I no longer use exchange, just read about how 2003 works...)
IMHO, if you are running an older version of exchange without a good Unix relay in front of it that can do all this validation and scanning for you, you are a big part of the problem.
Um, duct tape isn't used on ducts because it doesn't stick to ducting (which if you have ever tried, you would know...) Instead, foil tape is used - the kind with the peel off backing. Ask any heating contractor.
FYI, sparky, DUCK is a brand name of duct tape. Time to find something else to be annoyed at.
It can if the server is running on the same machine.
In any case, web browsers don't make a good interface. POS applications need a lot more interaction between various peripherals and the display.
Um, they do a little more than a simple calculator. This style of register is usually networked to a backend system that handles PLU, credit authorization, etc. It's a general purpose computer that has been customized for a specific purpose. Many retailers have custom apps written that do all sorts of things, such as DB searches for mulit-store inventory, handling special orders for custom items that have tons of options, etc.
They are also designed like tanks - putting up with day in day out heavy abuse. IBM provides on-site service, and support - better than most companies can. Retailers are notoriously cheap. You would not have Safeway, Target, Walmart, Albertsons, etc. using IBM registers unless it made good business sense.
Sender-ID can incorporate SPF. It isn't a one or the other battle.
I've read through the ietf archives, and the big issues are that the license seems OK on the surface, but the details of exactly what is patented is very unclear AND The requirement that implementors and distributers get a license, even if it's free, is a huge burden. Imagine if this kind of thing happened with all the standards? A company like redhat would need to get thousands of licenses from thousands of companies. Debian would be impossible. Open source would die.
The end result is that SenderID will be mostly useless because it will not get critical mass adoption. ISP's rely heavily on opensource software. If opensource mail software does not support SenderID, only a small fraction of the world will adopt it.
To the people saying it should be worth spending thousands of bucks to save your back. Why should you have to spend thousands to do so?
Well, it's not "thousands", but it is around a thousand. because that's what good quality chairs cost.
Why are so many chairs crappy?
Because people are cheap and buy cheap chairs because they are cheap. Quality takes a back seat to price (pardon the pun.)
Why are so few people making decent chairs for decent prices?
Because good quality costs more. Sure, you can buy cheap quality stuff at high prices, but you can't buy high quality at low prices because high quality costs more - better materials, better craftsman, more time needed to do quality work. It's really very simple.
Take a good close at the construction of a good quality chair and an "office max" chair. It's the grade and thickness of plastic used, the thickness of steel, the quality of the welds, the quality of the foam, fabric, the design and engineering, etc. Look very closely at a Stealcase Leap chair that goes for $1,000, and an officemax $250 "manager's chair". That Leap chair may cost $250 to manufacture, but you can bet that Officemax didn't pay more than $25 for that pile-of-crap "manager's" chair. For my money, quality chairs like the Leap are a bargain if you are willing to look beyond price alone as the deciding factor.
Have you actually done this? The chairs at all these warehouse style office supply places (Office Max, Reliable, Staples, etc.) SUCK. They are all very cheaply made, use foam that compresses to paper thickness (too low density), have ZERO back support, etc. These stores don't even carry nice chairs as stock items. Some better models are availbale from the catalog, but most of those suck too.
What you really need to do is go to a dedicated office furniture dealer where they carry quality stuff with good warrenties and try them. Good furniture costs a lot more than junk. I'm in the market for a new chair too, and have been looking at them closely.
Along similar lines, I went to Walmart and Home Depot and looked at the patio furniture - It's all cheap. Most of the demo units were already damaged, bent, scratched, had crappy welds, thin metal - junk. This is the stuff that lasts no more than 2 seasons. An entire set of tables and chairs go for $350. I went to a local store that carried patio furniture. I found a set made in Germany that runs about $250 per chair. It's made of heavy galvenized steel (the legs are solid, not hollow) and has a durable nylon coating. Not only do they look 10 times better than the walmart garbage, but they will probably last longer than I will - they have a 10 year no-rust warranty. I went for the good stuff.
Oh, I know all about the rolls of tape, etc. Wasn't born yesterday. You can always tell though because there will be two layers of tape, or you can tell where the old tape is ripped off. Furthermore, many items have special factory tape, or seal stickers.
If you can't tell on the outside, the inside is usually obvious - ripped bags, etc. You can always return it if you nitice, and complain. Anyway, I've stopped patronizing BB.