This is exactly the unhelpful attitude I was talking about. Thank you for that perfect demonstration.
Of course someone can change their reply-to address. But the question is not what users should do. It's what they actually do that matters.
At Messagefire, we've built an anti-spam system that works by detecting lies (forged information) in message headers.
Forging the From: address is a common practice, even among innocent users. Looking for this kind of forgery alone is not a very good spam detection method.
Not realistic, and not a complete solution.
on
Spoofed From: Prevention
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Yes, having information on which SMTP servers are the expected and typical mail "emitters" for a given domain would help reduce (not eliminate) spam.
But the number of cases where users "forge" their from lines for perfectly innocent reasons is huge. Everyone here can probably think of a few cases. Here's one to get you started: "I'm working from home today about I don't want replies to my business email sent to my home account."
Of course, they've covered that in their FAQ. Their answer boils down to: "Tough noogies. You have to suffer the inconvenience and change your behavior because I don't want to suffer the inconvenience of spam."
This, alas, it typical of the disdainful, anti-user mentality that one finds in too many anti-spam efforts.
Here's a clue: want an anti-spam solution to work? Then start from the idea that it needs to make the life of the end user easier, not harder.
The question now is whether ICANN is going to defend their authority to police the names and numbers practices, or whether they want to become the UN of the Internet world, flailing about impotently or looking the other way while tyrants abuse their powers.
If Verisign does not face serious consequences for their sabotage, then every two-bit sleazoid who can hide behind a big financial warchest and a room full of lawyers will follow Verisign's lead and start demolishing what's left of the Internet.
Doesn't even make them wacky. Their beliefs were not too much different than those of the Orthodox or Hasidic Jews that we have here.
Excuse me, but did I miss the reports of Hassidim executing women in public squares? Or denying them education and medical care? Or eliminating music and cinema from public performance? Or generally killing anyone for not being like them?
Do you have any basis for this offensive generalization and idiotic comparison, or are you just a silly prejudiced prick?
OK, so who's got a GOOD book on this topic?
on
Linux Clustering
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I hate to turn this into an Ask Slashdot, but truth is I could really use a good book on Linux clustering, especially if it covers:
1. Clustering (not just replicating) MySQL databases. 2. Network attached storage. 3. Load balancing and failover. 4. Probably six other things I'm not thinking of right now.
If you had read more closely, you would have seen that I never said all Arabs were culpable for the actions of a few.
What I said was that Hollywood's cliches were at least rooted in events that have actually taken place, unlike the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is a libelous forgery intended only to incite racial hatred.
But apparently, you don't see the distinction.
And I see you've called me a bigot because you don't understand the distinction. How nice.
OK, let's try another explanation:
Even in some alternate universe where Hollywood cliches and overt hate speech occupy the same moral zip code, the answer to your original question is simple; so simple we all heard it in grade school:
How is that any worse that the usual Hollywood trash of arabs always being portrayed as evil terrorists out to get the US?
Because the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery and a libel intended to incite hatred and violence against Jews.
Whereas the assertion that Evil Islamic Arab terrorists are out to get the US is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- true.
Maybe you haven't been catching the news lately. You see, there used to be these two buildings in New York. They were destroyed by -- get this -- Arab terrorists. They killed something like 3,000 people, and afterwards, their leaders were sad that they hadn't killed even more. And they said -- wait for it -- that they wouldn't stop until America was destroyed.
Check this stuff out, it happened in September of, like, 2001 or something, man.
Apparently, in order to get Egyptian commentators to argue in favor of freedom of expression, you have to broadcast a blatantly antisemitic miniseries, complete with Jews plotting world domination with the old Russian "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" forgery.
In the blog referenced, some writers advise that one could filter out email with the phrase "with DAV" in a received line to avoid the spam generated using this exploit.
However, a quick analysis that I just did against our issues tracking database reveals a caution that's worth sharing.
Of the issues in the Messagefire database for false positive and false negative tracking, the ones showing the string "with DAV" were much more likely to have been reported as valid mail than as junk we missed.
A possibility to explain this is that our filter engine eliminated nearly all of the "with DAV" spams using a different datum. A deeper analysis would be necessary to know for sure.
But the caution is this: normal users often use this "with DAV" method, so filtering out those messages is likely to result in a non-trivial number of false positives. At present, I would not recommend that filtering method.
For those too busy to read the article summary above, here's a summary summary:
"ESR bias bad; hee-sa like capitalism-sa.
Slashdot bias good; we-sa no like capitalism-sa, we-sa liberal-sa."
Seriously, if the editors of Slashdot bitching about someone else's editorial bias isn't an example of the pot calling the kettle black, then I have no idea what is.
Because Sun has $12Bn in market capitalization and $5.5Bn in cash on hand, I think the question isn't who's going to buy Sun, but rather who should Sun buy?
I have maintained for some time that Sun should purchase RedHat (current market cap. approx. $1Bn if my sources are correct), go whole hog into promoting Linux, move the advanced features from Solaris into Linux, and turn their hardware into the best darned high-end Linux servers and desktops you ever saw.
First of all, IBM is already trying to do this to Sun with high-end servers. New action is needed to defend that ground.
Second, putting the weight of Sun and the open source devotees behind Linux application development together can help cut into Microsoft's server market share and potentially even make some more desktop inroads.
There's probably no getting Sun out of the hardware business. But unless they harness a mass movement behind the software needed for their systems, they face the prospect of being the Apple of the UNIX server world: well-regarded but largely unused.
1. The "diplomat" is a neutral piece. To underscore this fact, it is not colored white or black, but rather blue, white, red.
2. The "diplomat" is never placed on the board. It cannot move and can have no ultimate effect on the outcome of the game.
3. The "diplomat" acts at the beginning of white's turn. The effect of the diplomat is to prevent white from moving any pieces.
4. Each time the "diplomat" acts, black gains an additional pawn, which may be placed on the board at the player's discretion.
5. Each time black receives a new pawn this way, the "diplomat" receives several million dollars from black, which it can stash in secret accounts to use to conduct it's "diplomacy" in other parts of the world. The "diplomat" may buy and keep other pieces of its own, which it may insert into other games without asking anyone's permission.
This sequence continues until white completely ignores the "diplomat" and begins moving pieces over the diplomats protestations.
But later, in a surprise decision, the Supreme Court threw out the posting, and placed George W. Bush on the Apple board instead.
Upon hearing of the stunning turn-around, Gore refused to leave the Apple board room, clinging fiercely to the furniture and sometimes hiding under the board room table.
After seven hours, Apple security guards were finally able to remove Gore from the premises and send him on his way.
Gore was visibly shaken after the defeat and called it "a dark day for America," citing the line of environmentally-friendly computers he had hoped to encourage Apple to produce by a wave of his majestic hand. "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," said Gore, "and look what has become of it. Without someone to call new environmentally-friendly computers into existence by detached fiat, what will become of the American worker?"
Sources said Gore had returned home to begin regrowing his beard through a long, arduous process of sitting on the living room sofa for weeks on end and subsisting on a diet of Cheetos.
Sure, that makes sense in the Cloud Cuckoo Land known as Liberal politics.
For many of the rest of us, the idea that you are allowed to speak your mind, but not allowed to defend your life with any tools you see fit is, well, a little nutty.
After all, there was never a criminal anywhere who said, "Uh Oh. Here comes a citizens with FULL First Amendment rights. What will I do if he yells at me?"
Feature freeze was supposed to be back at the end of October. When can we have final bits?
(Before you ask, yes, I am more than capable of running a development kernel. But I'm old enough now to have other things to do with my life. I need the tested goods.)
Inspired by this thread, I double-checked one of my systems, found that the L2 cache wasn't being picked up because of a BIOS bug, flashed the BIOS with the newest version and got an instant, free speed boost on an aging machine.
Some spammers have realized that the outrage that follows their mailings is a resource that they can use against their enemies.
They do this by forging the headers in such a way that it appears that a "white hat" has actually been responsible for the spam in some way.
Then when the zealous, but unsuspecting user examines the headers, they end up directing their perfectly understandable opprobrium towards the spammer's enemies (anti-spam groups and companies, usually) instead of the spammer themselves.
It's called a "Joe Job" and it's the new price of admission for anti-spam activists.
Supposing for a minute that it were even possible to create an identification system that could reliably identify travellers, we're still left with this problem:
When they can't compromise the ID system, we'll simply find out how depressingly easy it is to compromise the people instead.
What, you never heard of someone changing their mind? Of being bribed? Blackmailed? Deceived?
Terrorism is social engineering carried out by psychopaths.
The infinite quirks and limitless variations of human psychology will doom every static system meant to lock them down.
And, no matter how much we might want to maintain the fantasy, it simply isn't true that there are "good" people and "bad" people. There are people. Some of them carry evil intent, and sometimes they perform evil acts.
Truth is, to really tackle the problem of spam, a solution is needed that doesn't require the user to be a software engineer.
Plus, another problem with rolling out a Bayesian filter for a large collection of users is that each individual user needs their very own filter database. The statistical analysis of my mail would be nearly useless for anyone else.
OK, cards on the table: I am working on a new solution that will be useful for the general public and overcomes these problems.
Those who care to learn more can sign up to be notified when it becomes available.
This summer, I had the opportunity to help officate at a debate held at the Oxford University Student Union. This was for an XML course that was developed by a consulting firm that was presented at the University. During the summer, Oxford hosts a significant number of for-profit and non-profit organizations holding conferences, seminars, and the like.
The city of Oxford and the University are stunning. If you've never seen them, you're missing out.
The debating hall is laid out similarly to the House of Commons, which us 'mericans sometimes get a glimpse of on TV.
At the head of the room is the debate chairman, who presides over the debate and makes sure that the rules are followed. To his left and right are the Union treasurer and librarian. Since this wasn't an "official" Oxford Union debate, all three of those roles were held by participants in the XML summer course. I sat to the left of the chairman, and helped decide matters of debate procedure and scope. (Don't laugh; there actually was one matter to review.:)
On the main floor of the debate chamber is the Secretary's desk. The Secretary likewise assures debate procedure is followed and assists the chairman in doing so.
On either side of the Secretary's table are the proposer of the motion, and the opposer. Each of them leads a particular side of the debate.
Around all of them are the seats for the participants, arranged on both the main floor and a balcony surrounding everything.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the debate hall are the doors. On the way in, they look like simple double doors. Only when you are inside can you see that over the right door reads a sign saying "Yeses", and over the left door "Noes." At the end of the debate all participants file out through those doors, their numbers counted by the Secretary as they pass. Then everyone files back in to hear the results read.
The Oxford Union is one of the oldest free speech organizations in the world, and certainly deserving of respect on that basis. The debating hall is a monument to civil society and free speech. The Union is also a completely private institution: a true union of, by, and for Oxford students.
Now, having said all of that, the fact remains that a debate at the Oxford Union is just a debate. It's not a UN Security Council resolution or a Supreme Court judgment. It's just the opinion of a bunch of people who happened to be in the hall at the time as to whether the proposer or the opposer made a better case for their side.
It's all good fun, and much needed at that. But let's not get all worked up about it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly the unhelpful attitude I was talking about. Thank you for that perfect demonstration.
Of course someone can change their reply-to address. But the question is not what users should do. It's what they actually do that matters.
At Messagefire, we've built an anti-spam system that works by detecting lies (forged information) in message headers.
Forging the From: address is a common practice, even among innocent users. Looking for this kind of forgery alone is not a very good spam detection method.
Yes, having information on which SMTP servers are the expected and typical mail "emitters" for a given domain would help reduce (not eliminate) spam.
But the number of cases where users "forge" their from lines for perfectly innocent reasons is huge. Everyone here can probably think of a few cases. Here's one to get you started: "I'm working from home today about I don't want replies to my business email sent to my home account."
Of course, they've covered that in their FAQ. Their answer boils down to: "Tough noogies. You have to suffer the inconvenience and change your behavior because I don't want to suffer the inconvenience of spam."
This, alas, it typical of the disdainful, anti-user mentality that one finds in too many anti-spam efforts.
Here's a clue: want an anti-spam solution to work? Then start from the idea that it needs to make the life of the end user easier, not harder.
Of course, I'm biased. See my sig.
The question now is whether ICANN is going to defend their authority to police the names and numbers practices, or whether they want to become the UN of the Internet world, flailing about impotently or looking the other way while tyrants abuse their powers.
If Verisign does not face serious consequences for their sabotage, then every two-bit sleazoid who can hide behind a big financial warchest and a room full of lawyers will follow Verisign's lead and start demolishing what's left of the Internet.
It's put up or shut up time, folks.
Then you really haven't been paying much attention to France, Russia, or China lately, have you?
Excuse me, but did I miss the reports of Hassidim executing women in public squares? Or denying them education and medical care? Or eliminating music and cinema from public performance? Or generally killing anyone for not being like them?
Do you have any basis for this offensive generalization and idiotic comparison, or are you just a silly prejudiced prick?
I hate to turn this into an Ask Slashdot, but truth is I could really use a good book on Linux clustering, especially if it covers:
1. Clustering (not just replicating) MySQL databases.
2. Network attached storage.
3. Load balancing and failover.
4. Probably six other things I'm not thinking of right now.
Anyone got any suggestions?
If you had read more closely, you would have seen that I never said all Arabs were culpable for the actions of a few.
What I said was that Hollywood's cliches were at least rooted in events that have actually taken place, unlike the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is a libelous forgery intended only to incite racial hatred.
But apparently, you don't see the distinction.
And I see you've called me a bigot because you don't understand the distinction. How nice.
OK, let's try another explanation:
Even in some alternate universe where Hollywood cliches and overt hate speech occupy the same moral zip code, the answer to your original question is simple; so simple we all heard it in grade school:
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Because the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery and a libel intended to incite hatred and violence against Jews.
Whereas the assertion that Evil Islamic Arab terrorists are out to get the US is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- true.
Maybe you haven't been catching the news lately. You see, there used to be these two buildings in New York. They were destroyed by -- get this -- Arab terrorists. They killed something like 3,000 people, and afterwards, their leaders were sad that they hadn't killed even more. And they said -- wait for it -- that they wouldn't stop until America was destroyed.
Check this stuff out, it happened in September of, like, 2001 or something, man.
Apparently, in order to get Egyptian commentators to argue in favor of freedom of expression, you have to broadcast a blatantly antisemitic miniseries, complete with Jews plotting world domination with the old Russian "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" forgery.
Well, it's good to know they have some standards.
Pathetic freaks.
And how it is titled.
In the blog referenced, some writers advise that one could filter out email with the phrase "with DAV" in a received line to avoid the spam generated using this exploit.
However, a quick analysis that I just did against our issues tracking database reveals a caution that's worth sharing.
Of the issues in the Messagefire database for false positive and false negative tracking, the ones showing the string "with DAV" were much more likely to have been reported as valid mail than as junk we missed.
A possibility to explain this is that our filter engine eliminated nearly all of the "with DAV" spams using a different datum. A deeper analysis would be necessary to know for sure.
But the caution is this: normal users often use this "with DAV" method, so filtering out those messages is likely to result in a non-trivial number of false positives. At present, I would not recommend that filtering method.
For those too busy to read the article summary above, here's a summary summary:
Seriously, if the editors of Slashdot bitching about someone else's editorial bias isn't an example of the pot calling the kettle black, then I have no idea what is.
If what you say is true, and I tend to think that it is, then it only underscores the need to do the sort of thing I was describing.
Sun needs to get in front of the Linux parade in a big way to protect its future.
Because Sun has $12Bn in market capitalization and $5.5Bn in cash on hand, I think the question isn't who's going to buy Sun, but rather who should Sun buy?
I have maintained for some time that Sun should purchase RedHat (current market cap. approx. $1Bn if my sources are correct), go whole hog into promoting Linux, move the advanced features from Solaris into Linux, and turn their hardware into the best darned high-end Linux servers and desktops you ever saw.
First of all, IBM is already trying to do this to Sun with high-end servers. New action is needed to defend that ground.
Second, putting the weight of Sun and the open source devotees behind Linux application development together can help cut into Microsoft's server market share and potentially even make some more desktop inroads.
There's probably no getting Sun out of the hardware business. But unless they harness a mass movement behind the software needed for their systems, they face the prospect of being the Apple of the UNIX server world: well-regarded but largely unused.
I think you've just proven the original poster's point, Mr. Socialist.
1. The "diplomat" is a neutral piece. To underscore this fact, it is not colored white or black, but rather blue, white, red.
2. The "diplomat" is never placed on the board. It cannot move and can have no ultimate effect on the outcome of the game.
3. The "diplomat" acts at the beginning of white's turn. The effect of the diplomat is to prevent white from moving any pieces.
4. Each time the "diplomat" acts, black gains an additional pawn, which may be placed on the board at the player's discretion.
5. Each time black receives a new pawn this way, the "diplomat" receives several million dollars from black, which it can stash in secret accounts to use to conduct it's "diplomacy" in other parts of the world. The "diplomat" may buy and keep other pieces of its own, which it may insert into other games without asking anyone's permission.
This sequence continues until white completely ignores the "diplomat" and begins moving pieces over the diplomats protestations.
But later, in a surprise decision, the Supreme Court threw out the posting, and placed George W. Bush on the Apple board instead.
Upon hearing of the stunning turn-around, Gore refused to leave the Apple board room, clinging fiercely to the furniture and sometimes hiding under the board room table.
After seven hours, Apple security guards were finally able to remove Gore from the premises and send him on his way.
Gore was visibly shaken after the defeat and called it "a dark day for America," citing the line of environmentally-friendly computers he had hoped to encourage Apple to produce by a wave of his majestic hand. "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," said Gore, "and look what has become of it. Without someone to call new environmentally-friendly computers into existence by detached fiat, what will become of the American worker?"
Sources said Gore had returned home to begin regrowing his beard through a long, arduous process of sitting on the living room sofa for weeks on end and subsisting on a diet of Cheetos.
Sure, that makes sense in the Cloud Cuckoo Land known as Liberal politics.
For many of the rest of us, the idea that you are allowed to speak your mind, but not allowed to defend your life with any tools you see fit is, well, a little nutty.
After all, there was never a criminal anywhere who said, "Uh Oh. Here comes a citizens with FULL First Amendment rights. What will I do if he yells at me?"
So, when will this be finalized?
Feature freeze was supposed to be back at the end of October. When can we have final bits?
(Before you ask, yes, I am more than capable of running a development kernel. But I'm old enough now to have other things to do with my life. I need the tested goods.)
Can we have 2.6? Soon, please?
Inspired by this thread, I double-checked one of my systems, found that the L2 cache wasn't being picked up because of a BIOS bug, flashed the BIOS with the newest version and got an instant, free speed boost on an aging machine.
Thanks, slashdot!
Some spammers have realized that the outrage that follows their mailings is a resource that they can use against their enemies.
They do this by forging the headers in such a way that it appears that a "white hat" has actually been responsible for the spam in some way.
Then when the zealous, but unsuspecting user examines the headers, they end up directing their perfectly understandable opprobrium towards the spammer's enemies (anti-spam groups and companies, usually) instead of the spammer themselves.
It's called a "Joe Job" and it's the new price of admission for anti-spam activists.
No, here is the story that should make you think of skynet:
The Defense Department is working on a self-aware computer.
Remember: No Fate But What We Make. :)
Supposing for a minute that it were even possible to create an identification system that could reliably identify travellers, we're still left with this problem:
When they can't compromise the ID system, we'll simply find out how depressingly easy it is to compromise the people instead.
What, you never heard of someone changing their mind? Of being bribed? Blackmailed? Deceived?
Terrorism is social engineering carried out by psychopaths.
The infinite quirks and limitless variations of human psychology will doom every static system meant to lock them down.
And, no matter how much we might want to maintain the fantasy, it simply isn't true that there are "good" people and "bad" people. There are people. Some of them carry evil intent, and sometimes they perform evil acts.
You can't screen for evil at the airport.
This is a very good point.
Truth is, to really tackle the problem of spam, a solution is needed that doesn't require the user to be a software engineer.
Plus, another problem with rolling out a Bayesian filter for a large collection of users is that each individual user needs their very own filter database. The statistical analysis of my mail would be nearly useless for anyone else.
OK, cards on the table: I am working on a new solution that will be useful for the general public and overcomes these problems.
Those who care to learn more can sign up to be notified when it becomes available.
Check out www.PureMessaging.com
This summer, I had the opportunity to help officate at a debate held at the Oxford University Student Union. This was for an XML course that was developed by a consulting firm that was presented at the University. During the summer, Oxford hosts a significant number of for-profit and non-profit organizations holding conferences, seminars, and the like.
The city of Oxford and the University are stunning. If you've never seen them, you're missing out.
The debating hall is laid out similarly to the House of Commons, which us 'mericans sometimes get a glimpse of on TV.
At the head of the room is the debate chairman, who presides over the debate and makes sure that the rules are followed. To his left and right are the Union treasurer and librarian. Since this wasn't an "official" Oxford Union debate, all three of those roles were held by participants in the XML summer course. I sat to the left of the chairman, and helped decide matters of debate procedure and scope. (Don't laugh; there actually was one matter to review.On the main floor of the debate chamber is the Secretary's desk. The Secretary likewise assures debate procedure is followed and assists the chairman in doing so.
On either side of the Secretary's table are the proposer of the motion, and the opposer. Each of them leads a particular side of the debate.
Around all of them are the seats for the participants, arranged on both the main floor and a balcony surrounding everything.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the debate hall are the doors. On the way in, they look like simple double doors. Only when you are inside can you see that over the right door reads a sign saying "Yeses", and over the left door "Noes." At the end of the debate all participants file out through those doors, their numbers counted by the Secretary as they pass. Then everyone files back in to hear the results read.
The Oxford Union is one of the oldest free speech organizations in the world, and certainly deserving of respect on that basis. The debating hall is a monument to civil society and free speech. The Union is also a completely private institution: a true union of, by, and for Oxford students.
Now, having said all of that, the fact remains that a debate at the Oxford Union is just a debate. It's not a UN Security Council resolution or a Supreme Court judgment. It's just the opinion of a bunch of people who happened to be in the hall at the time as to whether the proposer or the opposer made a better case for their side.
It's all good fun, and much needed at that. But let's not get all worked up about it.