Content-based filtering uses *exponentially* more resources than RBLs. RBLs just cause the mail server to close the connection; no further negotiation, no downloading of mail, no wasted port connections, no storage and memory overhead, no cpu overhead and all other resources necessary to examine the mail content.
Content-based filtering is a privacy issue as well.
The way I run my mail servers is with the utmost respect for the sanctity of our users' e-mail. We do not read their mail, even for the purpose of filtering spam. I consider this unethical personally, but not everyone thinks e-mail should be private.
When self-proclaimed pundits do these studies, they should also factor into account the exponential increase in resources needed to accept and filter the mail's content. This results in more memory, faster machines, slower mail service and more deferred mail and reduced performance overall of everything else that might be done on that server.
Contrast this with the effectiveness of RBLs, which block spam based on the source and immediately cut off the huge resource requirement needed by these "filters".
By my analysis, at BEST, there is little more than a 1-2% difference in spam-catching ability between a well-tweaked RBL setup, and a content-based system. With the exception of the content based system consuming tremendously more resources and further delaying mail service.
It seems to me, if you have unlimited resources and you also want to employ content-based filtering for other means, that's the way to go. For everyone else on the planet who wants fast, reliable mail service without having to spend a fortune in hardware to handle traffic you shouldn't have, a well-selected set of RBLs is the superior approach.
Seriously, anyone with an AOL account already feels like every spammer on the planet knows their screen name. What difference would it make?
How valuable would such a list be anyway? Every account has multiple screen names, and every conceivable permutation of names and common words has been taken. If there's one domain name-guessing probably works on, it's AOL.com.
That being said, lock him up and throw away the key, but be sure to also nail the sleazebags he worked with.
I used to exhibit at Comdex in the late 80s and early 90s and it was fun back then, with the exception of the facist Interface Group organization that used to run the thing and would take advantage of everyone they could. Exhibitors would pay years in advance to get a good space and then other people would show up at the last minute with cash and IG would give them premium exhibit space. It was a huge sham. I stopped attending years ago when it got so big that you needed a passport to get from one side of the convention to the other.
I'm sure locals in Vegas are probably thrilled. Most of them hated Comdex anyway.
Let them pump broadband wherever they want. It just means they connect to my mail server a little faster before I refuse to accept their mail and hang up on 'em. SBC has been one of the largest sources of spam in the last year.
They'd be wise to spend some of their resources to stop the huge flow of spam across their network first and foremost. Or their broadband customers will be further alienated from the Internet proper and all that bandwidth won't make a difference.
Here's a Very cool site which uncovers the connection between corporate donations and think tanks. It would be really interesting to see a similar graphical map of Microsoft's influence. The designer of this site came up with an innovative way to visualize special interest connections.
All mail admins out there take note. Rejecting connections from blacklisted open relays saves spammers money! Whereas accepting mail from blacklisted relays means the spammer has to pay!
If you believe that, I have this amazing penis enlargement cream that will add 14"!
Get real. None of the companies here are legitimate. There is no honor among thieves. I wouldn't assume that any of their claims are proper.
For those who haven't figured it out already, the web is not an advertising medium. Yes, you can find people who will pay for advertising, but it's a peripheral and unimportant element of the service.
Hasn't the dot-com-bust taught us anything? Revenue models based on advertising are not going to work except for the rare few who have market share and a steady stream of gullible businesses that want to cheat and try to buy an audience instead of building one.
Anyone who needs to know how many people are on his/her site and their nature, will already know, and will already have things in place to measure and qualify this. The most obvious of which is sales of their products/services. Traffic reports are amusing but otherwise irrelevent unless you're in the business of selling traffic reports (like Nielsen - another bottom feeder that is providing a crutch to businesses in an effort to continue to perpetuate the myth that online advertising is worthwhile).
I love the little flash advertisement which is attached to this article, claiming Microsoft outperforms Linux by a factor of 276%. They must be talking about worm propagation efficiency.
I second this. The likelihood of getting nailed behind a Linksys while you're patching the system is pretty slim. Just set up a VPN and start patching. It's a more realitic approach than all the other singing and dancing.
You better be real careful how you do this. Once they get footage from you, and you make them angry, they can screw you up in a hundred different ways and they will.
That goes both ways. I could turn the whole thing into a very lucrative defamation suit, which would probably be summarily settled out of court and allow me to get that nice Italian sports car I've always wanted.
That's the kind of attitude that cowards who live in fear that if they say what they really think, someone will come and get them.
I don't blame you, like most of the ACs of the world who are afraid to speak their minds, for beliving this BS, but just because you don't have any balls, doesn't mean everybody else is in the same boat.
I'd go on the show in a New York second, and I'd have a lot of fun. If they got the better of me, so be it. It's certainly a better use of a few hours of the day than what the lamers are doing, sitting there cowering in fear that they'll lose their job if they take any risks.
The next, more influential iteration of leaders in every industry will be those that aren't a bunch of insecure pussies.
So if you Viacom weenies are watching this thread, drop me a line and I'll be happy to participate. I'd probably be a much more informed and TV-friendly personality anyway. Look at my history of posts on this board. I know more about spam than the Weinstein chick and I'm in the trenches dealing with it. No matter what you set up, I'll have fun with it and will make it fun and entertaining and you can make fun of me all you want. Not all tech people are wet noodles!
host: Please welcome an expert in ruining joke TV shows, mabu!
Thank you very much! It's a pleasure to be here.
[applause, shot of mabu's face sitting there saying nothing.]
host: mabu, it's been said you like to ruin TV shows because you regularly wetted your bed until you were 18. Do you have anything to say against this accusation?
"Well, it seems that unbeknowst to me, the act of washing my bed sheets each day caused an increase in wastewater flow into the sewerage system from which the writers and producers of this TV show congregated and propagated their ideas. I had no idea they were down there in the sewer. [shrug]"
shot of mabu's face sitting there saying nothing. Laughter]
host: mabu, I understand that you're well on your way to become a psychotic sociopath who can't stand still for more than a second at time. Are you doing anything to fix this problem?
"I am making a conscious effort to avoid Viacom programming, which I'm confident will make the difference."
One, you have a show which endeavors to entertain people on a most shallow level, at the expense of those who have spent years becoming an expert in their respective fields. Let's characterize people who have a passion as being single-minded to the point of being easily misled by those less intelligent, and therefore discredit the entire concept of having passion over an issue or discipline.
The other side being, this is the world we live in, where people are so reactive and ADD in their behavior that they need sensationalism and anti-social-oriented entertainment in order to maintain their attention span. If there wasn't a market for this garbage, it wouldn't be worth noting, but there obviously is, and this segment of the populace seems to be growing (de-evolving) at an alarming rate. You can either choose to ignore this evermore-influential group, or you can seek to understand the dynamics at play and try to find a way to pander to the (admittedly sophmoric) means by which people seem to pay attention.
So you're an expert in your field. You've spent years becoming a leader and are passionate about your work. It's demoralizing to even contemplate playing a part in the ridiculous circuses that the major media invites you to. Your work and your passion should not be the butt of pedantic ridicule.
At the same time, you can't get funding for your projects. Nobody seems to care. You can't find good people in your field anymore who are as passionate and dedicated. It seems the populace doesn't think "computer security technology" is "exciting". What do you do?
And we wonder why the most prominent political, idological and scientific icons in the mainstream media are rarely the most respected in the hardcore communities they claim to represent? I believe it's because if you lose the ability to adapt and communicate with your audience, which includes those beyond your scientific circle, you alienate yourself from those who could feed you and your efforts in one way or another.
I'd like to see more of our truly-respected leaders in various fields making more of an effort to reach the masses. If someone could actually appear on a show like this, and survive the childish attempt to make fun of them and come out still making a point, it would be a huge strive ahead for everyone. If not, then they'll find some ignorant bonehead "expert" to fill the bill. If you can rebuild a kernel, or understand general relativity, it shouldn't be that much of a stretch to appear on a stupid talk show, even one out to get you, and make even a minute positive contribution.
God forbid any working professionals have a sense of humor, the f*cking world might collapse.
AMEN!
And you wonder why the general populace has so little regard for intellectuals?
At least there are some in their respective fields who didn't take themselves so seriously. One person that comes to mind is Albert Einstein.
This is what really bothers me. In my history at school and college, it was always the teachers who weren't afraid of poking fun at themselves who the most influential. People were more receptive to hearing what they had to say when they weren't perched so high up on their pedestals.
Well, it wasn't being filmed live, but disregarding that, one could always show up and inform the other guests whats going on, and then leave before the show starts. Let the legitimate guests in on the secret before they're embarassed...
Whether it's live is irrelevant. Obviously it wouldn't be live.
But if they're paying you $200 to make a fool out of you, imagine how much it probably cost them to set up and produce that show. If you showed up and made every bit of your footage unuseable, it would probably cost them thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
People harping about them editing you out of context to look like an idiot is much ado about nothing. If you refused to speak, what's the worse they could do? Or if you wore some t-shirt under another shirt that you took off once they set everything up, that had some message that they couldn't broadcast (maybe a Slashdot.org t-shirt or the logo of their competitors). They could block it out but it wouldn't be too difficult to make it hard for them to use any of the footage... you could move around making the camera people go nuts trying to keep you in frame. There are lots of things.
I think spreading the word about the show among the expert community will help, but it wouldn't hurt them as bad as spoiling an entire episode they had meticulously set up.
It doesn't matter. The studio audience would be LIVE.
If I were in that situation and I felt it was a trap, I'd say F*CK every other word. Let them try to edit that out.
You could pull a "Tim Robbins" and wear a t-shirt that says "This TV show is a SHAM" or some other really nasty image/saying. Let them try to edit that out!
You could call up the local obnoxious radio morning crew and tell them of the plan and work with them to cook up a dirty counter-trick. There's a pair of those sleazeballs in every area that live for this kind of stuff.
ENDLESS POSSIBILITY FOR FUN... and it was all blown.... too bad.
Even if the whole thing was a fraud, it should have been an experience to participate. Having known it was a setup, this would have been a great opportunity to spin things back on the hosts and have some fun.
I would have loved an opportunity like this. I would have actually showed up and pretended once they started taping, that I was actually an anti-SPAM (the food from Hormel) advocate, or something equally goofy. At least you could have stood up in front of the studio audience and made a nice speech denouncing the quality of tv programming and how out of touch Viacom is with honest and decent programming.
Instead you just bowed out... hell you didn't even let them send the car. Think of the potential. You could have called up an enemy and sent him on the show, or found a homeless guy and told him he could get a free meal and a ride for participating. The possibilities were endless.
If you sign up for Spymac mail or Rediffmail you don't have the backing of a major corporation that has an infrastructure in place to support future growth, investors looking for the company to *not* fold, and a dedicated staff just for your data. Any fly-by-night place can buy a massive hard drive and start offering 1 free GB of mail, but if they run out of cash and fold then what happens to all of your mail in their old system?
I know you're trolling, but try to separate the actions of the military, and the actions of civilian workers who went there afterwards to *help* build and rebuild.
I'm not trolling. There are people here who are politicized heavily on both ends of the spectrum that apparently don't like looking at the situation over there from anyone else's point of view other than the extremely narrow, politically-correct vantage point.
Until I read this thread, I would have thought that civilians working on reconstruction over there would be acceptable and lauded by both sides of the political spectrum, both pro and anti-war.
It's a nice idea in theory and I appreciate that, but IMO, which seems to be backed up by an overwhelming majority of reports and actions (a great source of real perspective can be found watching MOSAIC, LinkTV's daily broadcasts of Middle Eastern news reports) indicate that not unlike how mainstream America seems to generalize that all Muslims are "evil-doers", the Muslims pretty much consider all Westerners the same. You can go over there with good intentions, but like most, these people base their impression on you off of actions, and most of the actions perpetrated in that region are not logical, nor moral.
This to me is analagous to going into a neighborhood from far away, announcing that the neighborhood is infested with termites and, without any discussion, burning the neighborhood to the ground and destroying peoples' homes. Then you want to come in and rebuild the neighborhood? Do you honestly think the people who have had their houses destroyed by this aggressive invader really want those that did the initial destruction to come in and rebuild?
That's really a ridiculous assumption.
Do you want the Dentist who screwed up your teeth to fix it? Do you call the plumber back in that messed up your pipes? No, you don't trust someone who comes into your home with one plan, then changes the plan and terribly inconsistent and hypocritical in terms of their actions & objectives.
The Americans came into Iraq with the idea of dethroning Saddam. Well he's long gone. They say they want to give Iraq back to the people, but they went into the country based on lies, and the things they promised have proven to not come to pass. Why should the Iraqis trust Americans? If the tables were turned, I doubt any Americans would want the invaders of their country sticking around to help rebuild it.
So if you want to go over there to make some money, you're taking a real big risk walking into a region where you are not wanted and not liked. What you think is irrelevant. It's what they think. It's their community.
The drug dealer analogy holds true in my opinion. I don't see much moral usefulness walking into that hornet's nest, at least not hand-in-hand with defense contractors and super large corporations who are profiting from all the death and destruction over there. If you want to help, I'd recommend donating resources and time to organizations that are outside of the military industrial complex, and those that are sanctioned by the Iraqis themselves.
You want to make big money fast? Why not just become a drug dealer in your neighborhood? It's just as immoral in my book, and most of the world considers the activities the US has perpetrated in Iraq just as illegal. So if all you care about is money and you want to take a risks while you install things to oppress the populace, you don't need to travel to a foreign country. Just get yourself a big bag of heroin or cocaine, cut it up and start selling.
Thanks for the excellent info! It seems that for mission-critical apps, the non-IDE is the way to go? I take it some of these require a card in the host PC? Have you used the native SCSI systems that can simply plug in to a SCSI port on a host computer?
Slashdot Mirror
Content-based filtering uses *exponentially* more resources than RBLs. RBLs just cause the mail server to close the connection; no further negotiation, no downloading of mail, no wasted port connections, no storage and memory overhead, no cpu overhead and all other resources necessary to examine the mail content.
Content-based filtering is a privacy issue as well.
The way I run my mail servers is with the utmost respect for the sanctity of our users' e-mail. We do not read their mail, even for the purpose of filtering spam. I consider this unethical personally, but not everyone thinks e-mail should be private.
When self-proclaimed pundits do these studies, they should also factor into account the exponential increase in resources needed to accept and filter the mail's content. This results in more memory, faster machines, slower mail service and more deferred mail and reduced performance overall of everything else that might be done on that server.
Contrast this with the effectiveness of RBLs, which block spam based on the source and immediately cut off the huge resource requirement needed by these "filters".
By my analysis, at BEST, there is little more than a 1-2% difference in spam-catching ability between a well-tweaked RBL setup, and a content-based system. With the exception of the content based system consuming tremendously more resources and further delaying mail service.
It seems to me, if you have unlimited resources and you also want to employ content-based filtering for other means, that's the way to go. For everyone else on the planet who wants fast, reliable mail service without having to spend a fortune in hardware to handle traffic you shouldn't have, a well-selected set of RBLs is the superior approach.
Seriously, anyone with an AOL account already feels like every spammer on the planet knows their screen name. What difference would it make?
How valuable would such a list be anyway? Every account has multiple screen names, and every conceivable permutation of names and common words has been taken. If there's one domain name-guessing probably works on, it's AOL.com.
That being said, lock him up and throw away the key, but be sure to also nail the sleazebags he worked with.
I used to exhibit at Comdex in the late 80s and early 90s and it was fun back then, with the exception of the facist Interface Group organization that used to run the thing and would take advantage of everyone they could. Exhibitors would pay years in advance to get a good space and then other people would show up at the last minute with cash and IG would give them premium exhibit space. It was a huge sham. I stopped attending years ago when it got so big that you needed a passport to get from one side of the convention to the other.
I'm sure locals in Vegas are probably thrilled. Most of them hated Comdex anyway.
Let them pump broadband wherever they want. It just means they connect to my mail server a little faster before I refuse to accept their mail and hang up on 'em. SBC has been one of the largest sources of spam in the last year.
They'd be wise to spend some of their resources to stop the huge flow of spam across their network first and foremost. Or their broadband customers will be further alienated from the Internet proper and all that bandwidth won't make a difference.
I'd pick "willfully ignorant", or perhaps "in denial of reality", or maybe even, "closed minded and passive-aggressive"
Here's a Very cool site which uncovers the connection between corporate donations and think tanks. It would be really interesting to see a similar graphical map of Microsoft's influence. The designer of this site came up with an innovative way to visualize special interest connections.
All mail admins out there take note. Rejecting connections from blacklisted open relays saves spammers money! Whereas accepting mail from blacklisted relays means the spammer has to pay!
If you believe that, I have this amazing penis enlargement cream that will add 14"!
Get real. None of the companies here are legitimate. There is no honor among thieves. I wouldn't assume that any of their claims are proper.
Logs tell you numbers but you need the visitors themselves to tell you who they really are and how often they visit your site.
My feeling is, if you are running any type of commercial entity and you don't know who your target market is, you shouldn't be in business.
For those who haven't figured it out already, the web is not an advertising medium. Yes, you can find people who will pay for advertising, but it's a peripheral and unimportant element of the service.
Hasn't the dot-com-bust taught us anything? Revenue models based on advertising are not going to work except for the rare few who have market share and a steady stream of gullible businesses that want to cheat and try to buy an audience instead of building one.
Anyone who needs to know how many people are on his/her site and their nature, will already know, and will already have things in place to measure and qualify this. The most obvious of which is sales of their products/services. Traffic reports are amusing but otherwise irrelevent unless you're in the business of selling traffic reports (like Nielsen - another bottom feeder that is providing a crutch to businesses in an effort to continue to perpetuate the myth that online advertising is worthwhile).
I love the little flash advertisement which is attached to this article, claiming Microsoft outperforms Linux by a factor of 276%. They must be talking about worm propagation efficiency.
I second this. The likelihood of getting nailed behind a Linksys while you're patching the system is pretty slim. Just set up a VPN and start patching. It's a more realitic approach than all the other singing and dancing.
You better be real careful how you do this. Once they get footage from you, and you make them angry, they can screw you up in a hundred different ways and they will.
That goes both ways. I could turn the whole thing into a very lucrative defamation suit, which would probably be summarily settled out of court and allow me to get that nice Italian sports car I've always wanted.
That's the kind of attitude that cowards who live in fear that if they say what they really think, someone will come and get them.
I don't blame you, like most of the ACs of the world who are afraid to speak their minds, for beliving this BS, but just because you don't have any balls, doesn't mean everybody else is in the same boat.
I'd go on the show in a New York second, and I'd have a lot of fun. If they got the better of me, so be it. It's certainly a better use of a few hours of the day than what the lamers are doing, sitting there cowering in fear that they'll lose their job if they take any risks.
The next, more influential iteration of leaders in every industry will be those that aren't a bunch of insecure pussies.
So if you Viacom weenies are watching this thread, drop me a line and I'll be happy to participate. I'd probably be a much more informed and TV-friendly personality anyway. Look at my history of posts on this board. I know more about spam than the Weinstein chick and I'm in the trenches dealing with it. No matter what you set up, I'll have fun with it and will make it fun and entertaining and you can make fun of me all you want. Not all tech people are wet noodles!
host: Please welcome an expert in ruining joke TV shows, mabu!
Thank you very much! It's a pleasure to be here.
[applause, shot of mabu's face sitting there saying nothing.]
host: mabu, it's been said you like to ruin TV shows because you regularly wetted your bed until you were 18. Do you have anything to say against this accusation?
"Well, it seems that unbeknowst to me, the act of washing my bed sheets each day caused an increase in wastewater flow into the sewerage system from which the writers and producers of this TV show congregated and propagated their ideas. I had no idea they were down there in the sewer. [shrug]"
shot of mabu's face sitting there saying nothing. Laughter]
host: mabu, I understand that you're well on your way to become a psychotic sociopath who can't stand still for more than a second at time. Are you doing anything to fix this problem?
"I am making a conscious effort to avoid Viacom programming, which I'm confident will make the difference."
[cut to commercial]
I see two sides to this story basically:
One, you have a show which endeavors to entertain people on a most shallow level, at the expense of those who have spent years becoming an expert in their respective fields. Let's characterize people who have a passion as being single-minded to the point of being easily misled by those less intelligent, and therefore discredit the entire concept of having passion over an issue or discipline.
The other side being, this is the world we live in, where people are so reactive and ADD in their behavior that they need sensationalism and anti-social-oriented entertainment in order to maintain their attention span. If there wasn't a market for this garbage, it wouldn't be worth noting, but there obviously is, and this segment of the populace seems to be growing (de-evolving) at an alarming rate. You can either choose to ignore this evermore-influential group, or you can seek to understand the dynamics at play and try to find a way to pander to the (admittedly sophmoric) means by which people seem to pay attention.
So you're an expert in your field. You've spent years becoming a leader and are passionate about your work. It's demoralizing to even contemplate playing a part in the ridiculous circuses that the major media invites you to. Your work and your passion should not be the butt of pedantic ridicule.
At the same time, you can't get funding for your projects. Nobody seems to care. You can't find good people in your field anymore who are as passionate and dedicated. It seems the populace doesn't think "computer security technology" is "exciting". What do you do?
And we wonder why the most prominent political, idological and scientific icons in the mainstream media are rarely the most respected in the hardcore communities they claim to represent? I believe it's because if you lose the ability to adapt and communicate with your audience, which includes those beyond your scientific circle, you alienate yourself from those who could feed you and your efforts in one way or another.
I'd like to see more of our truly-respected leaders in various fields making more of an effort to reach the masses. If someone could actually appear on a show like this, and survive the childish attempt to make fun of them and come out still making a point, it would be a huge strive ahead for everyone. If not, then they'll find some ignorant bonehead "expert" to fill the bill. If you can rebuild a kernel, or understand general relativity, it shouldn't be that much of a stretch to appear on a stupid talk show, even one out to get you, and make even a minute positive contribution.
God forbid any working professionals have a sense of humor, the f*cking world might collapse.
AMEN!
And you wonder why the general populace has so little regard for intellectuals?
At least there are some in their respective fields who didn't take themselves so seriously. One person that comes to mind is Albert Einstein.
This is what really bothers me. In my history at school and college, it was always the teachers who weren't afraid of poking fun at themselves who the most influential. People were more receptive to hearing what they had to say when they weren't perched so high up on their pedestals.
Well, it wasn't being filmed live, but disregarding that, one could always show up and inform the other guests whats going on, and then leave before the show starts. Let the legitimate guests in on the secret before they're embarassed...
Whether it's live is irrelevant. Obviously it wouldn't be live.
But if they're paying you $200 to make a fool out of you, imagine how much it probably cost them to set up and produce that show. If you showed up and made every bit of your footage unuseable, it would probably cost them thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
People harping about them editing you out of context to look like an idiot is much ado about nothing. If you refused to speak, what's the worse they could do? Or if you wore some t-shirt under another shirt that you took off once they set everything up, that had some message that they couldn't broadcast (maybe a Slashdot.org t-shirt or the logo of their competitors). They could block it out but it wouldn't be too difficult to make it hard for them to use any of the footage... you could move around making the camera people go nuts trying to keep you in frame. There are lots of things.
I think spreading the word about the show among the expert community will help, but it wouldn't hurt them as bad as spoiling an entire episode they had meticulously set up.
I guess $200 is the market value for a person's dignity according to Viacom.
That must be a nice company to work for.
It doesn't matter. The studio audience would be LIVE.
If I were in that situation and I felt it was a trap, I'd say F*CK every other word. Let them try to edit that out.
You could pull a "Tim Robbins" and wear a t-shirt that says "This TV show is a SHAM" or some other really nasty image/saying. Let them try to edit that out!
You could call up the local obnoxious radio morning crew and tell them of the plan and work with them to cook up a dirty counter-trick. There's a pair of those sleazeballs in every area that live for this kind of stuff.
ENDLESS POSSIBILITY FOR FUN... and it was all blown.... too bad.
Even if the whole thing was a fraud, it should have been an experience to participate. Having known it was a setup, this would have been a great opportunity to spin things back on the hosts and have some fun.
I would have loved an opportunity like this. I would have actually showed up and pretended once they started taping, that I was actually an anti-SPAM (the food from Hormel) advocate, or something equally goofy. At least you could have stood up in front of the studio audience and made a nice speech denouncing the quality of tv programming and how out of touch Viacom is with honest and decent programming.
Instead you just bowed out... hell you didn't even let them send the car. Think of the potential. You could have called up an enemy and sent him on the show, or found a homeless guy and told him he could get a free meal and a ride for participating. The possibilities were endless.
Can someone post a bit torrent link for these files?
Dammit Jim, the web server's dead!
If you sign up for Spymac mail or Rediffmail you don't have the backing of a major corporation that has an infrastructure in place to support future growth, investors looking for the company to *not* fold, and a dedicated staff just for your data. Any fly-by-night place can buy a massive hard drive and start offering 1 free GB of mail, but if they run out of cash and fold then what happens to all of your mail in their old system?
Someone mod this guy funny.
I know you're trolling, but try to separate the actions of the military, and the actions of civilian workers who went there afterwards to *help* build and rebuild.
I'm not trolling. There are people here who are politicized heavily on both ends of the spectrum that apparently don't like looking at the situation over there from anyone else's point of view other than the extremely narrow, politically-correct vantage point.
Until I read this thread, I would have thought that civilians working on reconstruction over there would be acceptable and lauded by both sides of the political spectrum, both pro and anti-war.
It's a nice idea in theory and I appreciate that, but IMO, which seems to be backed up by an overwhelming majority of reports and actions (a great source of real perspective can be found watching MOSAIC, LinkTV's daily broadcasts of Middle Eastern news reports) indicate that not unlike how mainstream America seems to generalize that all Muslims are "evil-doers", the Muslims pretty much consider all Westerners the same. You can go over there with good intentions, but like most, these people base their impression on you off of actions, and most of the actions perpetrated in that region are not logical, nor moral.
This to me is analagous to going into a neighborhood from far away, announcing that the neighborhood is infested with termites and, without any discussion, burning the neighborhood to the ground and destroying peoples' homes. Then you want to come in and rebuild the neighborhood? Do you honestly think the people who have had their houses destroyed by this aggressive invader really want those that did the initial destruction to come in and rebuild?
That's really a ridiculous assumption.
Do you want the Dentist who screwed up your teeth to fix it? Do you call the plumber back in that messed up your pipes? No, you don't trust someone who comes into your home with one plan, then changes the plan and terribly inconsistent and hypocritical in terms of their actions & objectives.
The Americans came into Iraq with the idea of dethroning Saddam. Well he's long gone. They say they want to give Iraq back to the people, but they went into the country based on lies, and the things they promised have proven to not come to pass. Why should the Iraqis trust Americans? If the tables were turned, I doubt any Americans would want the invaders of their country sticking around to help rebuild it.
So if you want to go over there to make some money, you're taking a real big risk walking into a region where you are not wanted and not liked. What you think is irrelevant. It's what they think. It's their community.
The drug dealer analogy holds true in my opinion. I don't see much moral usefulness walking into that hornet's nest, at least not hand-in-hand with defense contractors and super large corporations who are profiting from all the death and destruction over there. If you want to help, I'd recommend donating resources and time to organizations that are outside of the military industrial complex, and those that are sanctioned by the Iraqis themselves.
You want to make big money fast? Why not just become a drug dealer in your neighborhood? It's just as immoral in my book, and most of the world considers the activities the US has perpetrated in Iraq just as illegal. So if all you care about is money and you want to take a risks while you install things to oppress the populace, you don't need to travel to a foreign country. Just get yourself a big bag of heroin or cocaine, cut it up and start selling.
Thanks for the excellent info! It seems that for mission-critical apps, the non-IDE is the way to go? I take it some of these require a card in the host PC? Have you used the native SCSI systems that can simply plug in to a SCSI port on a host computer?