Unfortunately a lot of businesses out there use exchange to send email...
But how many of them are running Exchange on Windows 98?
I agree that this may be a bit extreme for an ISP/business mail server, but I am doing this for my own personal domain. For a commercial server, you could use the fingerprinting to add a X-HostFingerprint header, and use that in your existing spam filtering to increase the spam score.
I'm still in the process of collecting statistics on this, before I flick the switch. But as I said, the only false positives I've seen so far are some Windows 2003 Server machines.
I will also be providing a method for servers to be whitelisted. The rejection will include a link to a page explaining the reason for rejection, and offering to whitelist legitimate servers by emailing postmaster.
Since all this extra spam is coming from botnets running on Windows, just block all email coming directly from a Windows box. I've been experimenting with host fingerprinting using p0f
From this I can see that almost all spam comes from Windows. I'm in the process of configuring my postfix server so it will just reject any mail from a Windows box.
The only false positives I've seen so far, is a handful of legitimate emails that come from Windows Server 2003, so I may exempt that...
Note: I'm not advocating blocking email from Windows users, just email coming directly from a Windows box. If a windows user sends email through their ISP's mail server, it will get thrugoh just fine.
Insane specs? The Specs for Vista are the same as last release of OSX. Actually less when you consider Vista will run on 800mhz machines with 512mb of RAM quite well. (Yes we test it on this configuration.)
I have Tiger running on a 400MHz PowerBook with 384MB of memory. I am amazed by how well it performs. Sure by today's standards it's slow. You wouldn't want to do a lot of number crunching on it, or try playing a FPS, but for everyday tasks (Safari, iTunes, iPhoto,...), it works fine.
The thing with Mac OS X is that successive versions actually get faster on old hardware http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/13/ 0030219/ as the code gets more and more optimised, so my 4.5 year old machine actually performs better than it did when I bought it. You can't say that about Windows...
Unless France is like England, where truth is not a defense against defamation (of which libel & slander are subset
IANAL but I believe (at least here in Australia) that truth by itself is not a defence against defamation. In addition to being true, what you say must also be in the public interest.
In this case I'm sure you'd find plenty of people willing to argue both sides of that. Should keep some lawyers busy for a while...
They can do that now, depending on what tools you use to store your information. All of the better browsers have some kind of password memory.
I don't know how other browsers/platforms implement this, but Safari on Mac OS X stores all password info in the Keychain. So the info is only available if you can get into that.
The default Keychain is unlocked when you log in, but you can create any number of other Keychains and keep them locked. Move the password data stored by Safari into a different keychain that you keep locked, and it's pretty secure.
Howabout Div 3 of Part III of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth)? - scroll down to the appropriate point on this page http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/0/244/to p.htm and have a read as to what is permitted as "fair dealing" under Australian law.
Australia does not have Fair Use. What we have is Fair Dealing. Read the above link for all the details, but in summary, Fair Dealing sets out specific cases where copying is allowed:
Research or study
Criticism or Review
Reporting News
How do any of the above allow you to burn a copy of a CD?
The PDF format is a particularly good example of this. The file contains a set of atoms, and finally at the end of the file is an index that selects which atoms to include and in what order.
Multiple indexes can be included, and the last one found is used.
This means that you can actually save, and update a PDF file, by just appending to the end. You can even save the file on a WORM device that allows multiple sessions.
Doing this also maintains a full file history too. You can retrieve any version of the file by selecting one of the many indexes.
Of course, whether any programs do this is another matter...
If you don't think the timing of this is highly opportunistic and manipulative then there is something wrong with you. That is your problem
I like conspiracy theories as much as the next person, but couldn't the timing just be due to the fact that WWDC is on at the moment. I'd expect a few more announcements this week too...
At least not the Mac version of IE. Here in Australia, one of the big four banks, the CBA no longer supports IE on Mac. On their FAQ page they say:
I could previously use Internet Explorer with an Apple MAC, why can't I now?
NetBank no longer supports Internet Explorer with Apple MAC. It is recommended that you upgrade your browser to a supported version for NetBank.
They still recommend IE or Netscape for Windows and Netscape for Mac, but mention that Firefox, Safari and Mozilla should all work.
No mention of Opera though...
When a machine is in the 'panic' state writing to the local disks, or sending stuff across the network isn't usually feasible. (True some people have done it but its a hard problem - because you can't actually rely upon the kernel to do anything correctly when it's mid-panic).
Other have pointed out that Mac OS X can save panic info to NVRAM or send it to a panic server.
It's also possible to remotely attach to the paniced machine and run gdb on it.
Apple makes available a KernelDebugKit that contains debug versions of the kernel and drivers containing full symbolic info, and useful gdb macros, such as "showallstacks" which gives a complete stack dump of all kernel threads.
Much more useful than a BSOD containing some short cryptic message.
I've heard that Tiger will be delivered only in DVDs. Machines without DVD won't be able to upgrade
It's easy to boot, and install from an external Drive. And if you don't have an external DVD drive, then you can use any Mac with Firewire in Target Disk Mode. I have done this on an old TiBook with a busted optical drive. It was actually much faster since the TiBook's drive was only single speed.
I don't know about 10.4 (and if I did know I wouldn't be allowed to say) but I'm guessing that it's not that much different to the way iSync works now in 10.3.
You can sync between one Mac, your phones, iPods, Palms, etc. without requiring a.Mac subscription. However for Mac to Mac syncing you do need.Mac
However, if you have access to your own server somewhere, it is possible to fake it to look like.Mac Here are some instructions on how to do that.
The problem with using tabs is that although they work fine for indenting code, they do not work well for continuation lines.
Consider the following simple example, coded with spaces and 2 character indent.
public class Foo {
void methodName(int arg1, int arg2,
int arg3, int arg4) {
return;
} }
Now suppose, I had used tabs instead. With 2 character tabs, it would look the same.
But, someone else who prefers 4 character tabs, opens the source in their editor, and gets:
public class Foo {
void methodName(int arg1, int arg2,
int arg3, int arg4) {
return;
} }
If you're going to standardise on using tabs for indentation, you need to distinguish between indentation and alignment and use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment
So in my exmaple, you would need to write:
public class Foo { <tab>void methodName(int arg1, int arg2, <tab>________________int arg3, int arg4) { <tab><tab>return; <tab>} }
It's hard enough sometimes to get programmers to follow coding standards where the difference is visible to them, but trying to enforce a mixture of tabs and spaces like this when the editor does not make it easy to differentiate between them is almost impossible.
It's much easier to just standardise on spaces everywhere.
In his three volume work Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter, Geoffrey Sonnabend departed from all previous memory research with the premise that memory is an illusion. Forgetting, he believed, not remembering is the inevitable outcome of all experience. From this perspective,
$ blog.seanalexander.com 25 Trying 66.226.14.131... Connected to blog.seanalexander.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220 dedi312 Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.211 ready at Sat, 8 Jan 2005 17:12:10 -0800 helo 250 dedi312 Hello [203.45.93.121] MAIL From: bill@microsoft.com 250 2.1.0 bill@microsoft.com....Sender OK RCPT To: test@xxxxxx.com 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for test@xxxxxx.com
A good example of the benefits of Apple's approach using distinct applications, open standards and documented APIs is crm4mac
I don't actually use it because Contact Management is not a big thing for me, but when I first saw it, I was impressed with the screenshots etc, and downloaded it to have a go.
What it does is use all the existing Apple applications (Mail, iCal, AddressBook) for storing all your data, but ties them all together nicely, using the open standards and published APIs provided by these Apps.
You can view all the same info in crm4mac or in any of Apple's Apps. You can even use the 30 day free trial to enter all your contact info, and if you decide at the end of the trial that its not for you, you just delete it and all the info you entered is there in the standard Apple Apps (minus the extra linking that crm4mac provides)
Here is an example of a 3rd party seeing that Apple's integration was not as good as it could be, and providing a better solution. But rather than having to start from scratch, they could build upon what Apple provided. Less bloat, more useful features, more stable code base.
Plus, as Apple improves their Apps, they automatically get all the improvements without having to play catch up.
Ideally all confi files would follow the same format and syntax (god no please don't say XML).
Yep, they even publish a DTD for them.
http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd
You may not like XML, but it's pretty good for config files. It provides a good balance between human readability (editability) and strictness for machine validation/parsing.
Ideally there would be a uniform way for programs to retrieve configuration information from a centrallized location.
Yep, its called CFPreferences. There's also a command line interface to it called defaults. See the man page
Ideally local users and machines would be able to merge their prefs and config with the master to override certain prefs.
Yep, it provides several "domains" including user, application and host. They are searched in order such that users can override settings.
Ideally the hierarcy of administrators would be able to prevent entitities under them from overriding certain configuration options.
Yep, this is done with standard UNIX permissions for local files, and Netinfo database for server based domains
Ideally all of that could be done with plain text files which are automatically checked into a version control repository so you can roll back any change in a jiffy.
Not done automatically, but nothing stopping you from doing this. The config files are found in pretty obvious places (/System/Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Preferences) You could stick the entire directory under CVS
Also on the Mac, there has always been a pretty strong sense that preferences are optional and that an application should work out of the box with absolutely no configuration. The first aid for an application that doesn't seem to be working properly is to delete the preferences and restart it. Much simpler than having to reinstall, and a whole lot safer than having to fiddle with registries etc.
Slashdot Mirror
But how many of them are running Exchange on Windows 98?
I agree that this may be a bit extreme for an ISP/business mail server, but I am doing this for my own personal domain. For a commercial server, you could use the fingerprinting to add a X-HostFingerprint header, and use that in your existing spam filtering to increase the spam score.
I'm still in the process of collecting statistics on this, before I flick the switch. But as I said, the only false positives I've seen so far are some Windows 2003 Server machines.
I will also be providing a method for servers to be whitelisted. The rejection will include a link to a page explaining the reason for rejection, and offering to whitelist legitimate servers by emailing postmaster.
Since all this extra spam is coming from botnets running on Windows, just block all email coming directly from a Windows box. I've been experimenting with host fingerprinting using p0f
http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/p0f.shtml
From this I can see that almost all spam comes from Windows. I'm in the process of configuring my postfix server so it will just reject any mail from a Windows box.
The only false positives I've seen so far, is a handful of legitimate emails that come from Windows Server 2003, so I may exempt that...
Note: I'm not advocating blocking email from Windows users, just email coming directly from a Windows box. If a windows user sends email through their ISP's mail server, it will get thrugoh just fine.
I have Tiger running on a 400MHz PowerBook with 384MB of memory. I am amazed by how well it performs. Sure by today's standards it's slow. You wouldn't want to do a lot of number crunching on it, or try playing a FPS, but for everyday tasks (Safari, iTunes, iPhoto,
The thing with Mac OS X is that successive versions actually get faster on old hardware http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/13
IANAL but I believe (at least here in Australia) that truth by itself is not a defence against defamation. In addition to being true, what you say must also be in the public interest.
In this case I'm sure you'd find plenty of people willing to argue both sides of that. Should keep some lawyers busy for a while...
I don't know how other browsers/platforms implement this, but Safari on Mac OS X stores all password info in the Keychain. So the info is only available if you can get into that.
The default Keychain is unlocked when you log in, but you can create any number of other Keychains and keep them locked. Move the password data stored by Safari into a different keychain that you keep locked, and it's pretty secure.
Australia does not have Fair Use. What we have is Fair Dealing. Read the above link for all the details, but in summary, Fair Dealing sets out specific cases where copying is allowed:
How do any of the above allow you to burn a copy of a CD?
The PDF format is a particularly good example of this. The file contains a set of atoms, and finally at the end of the file is an index that selects which atoms to include and in what order.
Multiple indexes can be included, and the last one found is used.
This means that you can actually save, and update a PDF file, by just appending to the end. You can even save the file on a WORM device that allows multiple sessions.
Doing this also maintains a full file history too. You can retrieve any version of the file by selecting one of the many indexes.
Of course, whether any programs do this is another matter...
The fact that it knew it was a word doc is promising. Looks like Pages will support it too...
Amongst our tribes will be such diverse races as French, English, Evolved, Unevolved...
When a machine is in the 'panic' state writing to the local disks, or sending stuff across the network isn't usually feasible. (True some people have done it but its a hard problem - because you can't actually rely upon the kernel to do anything correctly when it's mid-panic).
Other have pointed out that Mac OS X can save panic info to NVRAM or send it to a panic server.
It's also possible to remotely attach to the paniced machine and run gdb on it.
Apple makes available a KernelDebugKit that contains debug versions of the kernel and drivers containing full symbolic info, and useful gdb macros, such as "showallstacks" which gives a complete stack dump of all kernel threads.
Much more useful than a BSOD containing some short cryptic message.
Yes cron is still launched by launchd for compatibility. If you want to run cron you still can.
However the OS ships with no cron jobs installed. All these have been moved to be launched by launchd directly.
If you can't wait for the developer's fix, you can patch the Info.plist file so it will load in the new Safari.
I nfo.plist" change the MaxBundleVersion from "146" to "312"
In the file "/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/PithHelmet.bundle/Contents/
It seems to load and work without any problems for me
It's easy to boot, and install from an external Drive. And if you don't have an external DVD drive, then you can use any Mac with Firewire in Target Disk Mode. I have done this on an old TiBook with a busted optical drive. It was actually much faster since the TiBook's drive was only single speed.
After a closer read of that site, I see that iSync support is missing. He points at another site with initial investigation into getting that working.
I don't know about 10.4 (and if I did know I wouldn't be allowed to say) but I'm guessing that it's not that much different to the way iSync works now in 10.3.
You can sync between one Mac, your phones, iPods, Palms, etc. without requiring a .Mac subscription. However for Mac to Mac syncing you do need .Mac
However, if you have access to your own server somewhere, it is possible to fake it to look like .Mac Here are some instructions on how to do that.
Note: I haven't actually tried it myself (yet)
Consider the following simple example, coded with spaces and 2 character indent.Now suppose, I had used tabs instead. With 2 character tabs, it would look the same.
But, someone else who prefers 4 character tabs, opens the source in their editor, and gets:If you're going to standardise on using tabs for indentation, you need to distinguish between indentation and alignment and use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment
So in my exmaple, you would need to write:It's hard enough sometimes to get programmers to follow coding standards where the difference is visible to them, but trying to enforce a mixture of tabs and spaces like this when the editor does not make it easy to differentiate between them is almost impossible.
It's much easier to just standardise on spaces everywhere.
You do realise that the original just includes file names, and the XOP version actually includes the serialised data, don't you!
$ blog.seanalexander.com 25
Trying 66.226.14.131...
Connected to blog.seanalexander.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 dedi312 Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.211 ready at Sat, 8 Jan 2005 17:12:10 -0800
helo
250 dedi312 Hello [203.45.93.121]
MAIL From: bill@microsoft.com
250 2.1.0 bill@microsoft.com....Sender OK
RCPT To: test@xxxxxx.com
550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for test@xxxxxx.com
A good example of the benefits of Apple's approach using distinct applications, open standards and documented APIs is crm4mac
I don't actually use it because Contact Management is not a big thing for me, but when I first saw it, I was impressed with the screenshots etc, and downloaded it to have a go.
What it does is use all the existing Apple applications (Mail, iCal, AddressBook) for storing all your data, but ties them all together nicely, using the open standards and published APIs provided by these Apps.
You can view all the same info in crm4mac or in any of Apple's Apps. You can even use the 30 day free trial to enter all your contact info, and if you decide at the end of the trial that its not for you, you just delete it and all the info you entered is there in the standard Apple Apps (minus the extra linking that crm4mac provides)
Here is an example of a 3rd party seeing that Apple's integration was not as good as it could be, and providing a better solution. But rather than having to start from scratch, they could build upon what Apple provided. Less bloat, more useful features, more stable code base.
Plus, as Apple improves their Apps, they automatically get all the improvements without having to play catch up.
Mac OS X is sounding like a pretty good fit...
Ideally all confi files would follow the same format and syntax (god no please don't say XML).Yep, they even publish a DTD for them.
You may not like XML, but it's pretty good for config files. It provides a good balance between human readability (editability) and strictness for machine validation/parsing.
Ideally there would be a uniform way for programs to retrieve configuration information from a centrallized location.Yep, its called CFPreferences. There's also a command line interface to it called defaults. See the man page
Ideally local users and machines would be able to merge their prefs and config with the master to override certain prefs.Yep, it provides several "domains" including user, application and host. They are searched in order such that users can override settings.
Ideally the hierarcy of administrators would be able to prevent entitities under them from overriding certain configuration options.Yep, this is done with standard UNIX permissions for local files, and Netinfo database for server based domains
Ideally all of that could be done with plain text files which are automatically checked into a version control repository so you can roll back any change in a jiffy.Not done automatically, but nothing stopping you from doing this. The config files are found in pretty obvious places (/System/Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Preferences) You could stick the entire directory under CVS
Also on the Mac, there has always been a pretty strong sense that preferences are optional and that an application should work out of the box with absolutely no configuration. The first aid for an application that doesn't seem to be working properly is to delete the preferences and restart it. Much simpler than having to reinstall, and a whole lot safer than having to fiddle with registries etc.
You should be able to see the redirecting page here