Umm, they are pretty much underground now aren't they? Considering the spammers are almost exclusively using the trojaned PC network to relay their crap I would say it is as underground as you can get.
This "follow the money" routine will work, the spammers need to get paid at some point, and considering most of their income is based on amount of sales from the spam then you just need to have a nice chat with whomever is accepting the loot and sending the products.
Agreed, problem is the media companies have become increasingly greedy and have figured out they can suck both tits at once.
Personally I refuse to subscribe to most of the specialty channels and especially the new digital packs, since most of the programming on the channels is rerun material from the main parent channels, Discovery Channel comes to mind where all the sub-channels such as The Science Channel rerun the crap out of stuff, heck some of the science on that channel is dated already. This programming used to appear on TLC but that's turned into something entirely different now and is no longer worth watching.
I live in an area with little OTA TV reception, so I have no choice but to use satellite for access to the networks, being in Canada I need to use a Canadian system since anything else has been deemed illegal by our big business supporting buttheads in power. That access costs me $28.88/month and all I get for that is the main Canadian and US networks, a few "educational" channels and some other crap not worth watching, so basically I have to pay $30/month for OTA channels.
Sad thing is, when the satellite company I used first started up they charged $10.95/month for the package I'm using, then implemented a "$20 minimume" policy since too many signed up at $10.95, go figure.
fire up the "Add/Remove programs", you get IE and WMP among normal apps
Unfortunately these days you'd end up breaking so many apps this isn't going to happen. Take QuickBooks for example, it uses IE throughout to display its windows I think, not just to display web pages but for just about everything.
Because of that program I have to leave Outlook Express as my default email client (I use Mozilla), if I let Moz be the default email client then Quickbooks craps out when trying to send invoices with it.
Luckily my new accountant uses Simply Accounting and we're dumping Quickbooks entirely, so Windows will once again be little more than a gaming OS for me!:)
Telus I've never really had a problem with, other than their reluctance to sell static addresses
Telus does have business accounts, start at the $89.95/month account level and you get 2 static IPs, advertised on telus.com so they don't seem too reluctant to offer static IPs.
They don't offer statics for residential account levels, but then again, how many residential accounts have such a need?
I have read about these positive experiments as well, they are quite interesting and it is funny how NASA basically ignored this data or at least refused to even entertain that life may have been found in these experiments.
While I don't buy all the stuff spouted out by Hoagland and the likes I do think they have a very good point that there is probably much more to Mars than meets the eye.
Even the remote possibility of artificial structures means we should expend as much energy as possible to go there and check these things out, it kinda makes sense that an ancient or alien race may leave clues on other bodies in the solar system for us to find once we evolve enough to see them. It may also be remnants of a lost civilization or a long since deserted outpost of some sort, or it might be nothing but it still needs to be checked out rather thoroughly.
I think part of the problem is it goes against many scientists personal belief systems if life is a norm rather than an exception in the universe. Also, our religious belief systems are built on humans being sort of special in the universe too, it could cause some social problems if we are told we're nothing special at all. This is becoming less of an issue mind you as we're slowly subjected to more media about space and alien possibilities in both science and science fiction.
The problem is there's a whole lot of evidence that points to evolution being the likely method used by nature to get us to where we are today, the other side basically uses theology or something don't they?
I mean I've heard creationists spouting that dinosaur BONES were planted by "God" to give us something to find while we're digging.
They may have a case about intelligent design, but only so far as DNA itself may have been designed but after which it led to evolving life if you ask me, unless some "God" really was bored for billions of years before "creating" us human types. You'd think we would have been the first things created if we were that important to it/him/she but science is showing we are relative newcomers to a very old universe.
There's just as strong a case that aliens were involved in creating/adjusting humanity from the native lifeforms developing here though.
I run some Linux boxes for a cable ISP here in Canada, each headend goes through a Squid proxy which also doubles as a handy firewall.
Once a week or so we turn on ntop for a few minutes and have a quick peek at who is moving what, if we notice any clients doing any outgoing scans on known virus ports we block them at the routers until they call in and clean the PC.
Once a month we'll scan the network with nmap to see what ports people are listening on.
Our mail servers scan incoming mail for viruses, if we see a cable client spewing viruses at it we block their SMTP access and block port 25 for them at the routers.
After about a year of this, we have a very low infection rate when new viruses hit. We also block worm ports at the routers so those don't effect us as bad (still possible if some idiot with an infected laptop gets on the wrong side of the firewall).
Our next step will likely be egress port 25 blocking entirely.
I saw an interview with Robert Plant on VH1 Classics a couple of months back, in it he stated that really there is only so many notes to go around, everyone copies someone at some point in their careers.
Musicians (and actors) as gazillionaires is a relatively new thing in our society, I think a lot of them are really losing it though. In the old days musicians were paid much like the rest of us, for doing a job, ie, playing music for an event or for a group.
Do I think Eminem deservers $10mil to compensate for some 10 year old girl blurting out his "creation"? Heck no, give the guy a couple of hundred bucks at most, but move on.
These folks would be more than happy to collect royalties off us all when we hum their tunes in the shower.
It's time we brought some of these "stars" back down to earth a little. It's a never ending cycle and it's the consumer who is burnt because of it, is any actor worth $20million for 3 or 4 months work on a movie? I don't think so myself, but because some suits in Hollywood think so we're now paying $10 a ticket at the movies, meanwhile these "stars" pump out garbage like Gigli.
And WTF is with Britney Spears? I saw some video of hers yesterday and she's selling nothing but sex appeal, her singing stinks and she has little talent, but I guess wriggling yer bum is worth millions in the US. How about getting her to put on a concert where she actually stands still and sings her songs rather than runs around lipsyncing everything.
We have many examples of life on Earth existing in extreme locations we never thought life could survive.
If life in the universe is the norm rather than the exception then I'd fully expect to see at the very least signs of microbial life on Mars, keep in mind that there are daytime surface temps of 15c on Mars which is quite cozy considering.
Now, whether life exists on Mars today is unknown right now, but I really do feel the chances are quite high just judging by the sheer pervasive nature and diversity of life on Earth, I get a feeling life is the norm in the universe myself.
No we aren't going to find complex life beyond fungus, basteria and microbes I think, but that is still life and it would mean we are likely not alone in the universe after all.
I agree, there is also a definite pattern in incoming SMTP traffic that indicates it is only a few groups using the trojan/virus network to relay spam.
Most of the spam I get is coming in via the trojaned machines, I use the XBL now which stops a good chunk, those that do get past the RBL lists are added to my internal RBL lists so they only get one shot at spamming me and almost zero hope of getting off that list in the future.
The really sad thing is the most persistent spam seems to be the Viagra and adult stuff which is what most users complain about the most, the spammers need to realize that people do NOT want this material in front of their kids and the efforts being taken to circumvent filters proves these guys are the lowest form of slime in human kind and most people wouldn't care much if something tragic was to happen to those type of people.
Those are almost always content 'stations' provided by the satellite/tv company as part of your subscription. Your subscription fees go to subsidize these 'value add' channels.
Reread my post, I stated that the audio feeds on Dish Network and Canada's ExpressVu service are being sent unencrypted, meaning any DVB receiver can basically get them by pointing an dish at the right location. No subscription required, they are free and because they are not encrypted perfectly legal to listen to.
Note tho that you cannot listen to these stations on Dish Network or ExpressVu receivers without a subscription, they control access on the receiver for these services.
www.dvbmaster.com for cards and other items of interests related to free TV services on your PC.
Interesting assessment and it really makes sense to me. While I have little other than my own CD collection converted into MP3s I do believe that these "artists" should be paid for performing and leave the recorded stuff as little more than advertising for the performances they put on.
I have little sympathy for actors who are paid millions per movie and those movies are rehashed crap. Case in point, I recently was dragged to see 50 First Dates, at the end all I felt was ripped off since I'd just sat through a rewrite of Memento and Groundhog Day into some "new" movie.
It is also tough to convince the public that an artist should be paid money when you download a song on demand yet you can hear that same song free on the radio, free from satellite*, etc.
* Little known fact, there are 100+ free digital audio streams available on satellite, a PCI card to receive them is less than $80US (you would need a dish, less than $50US tho) and you can easily leech music from the stream. These are the audio streams found on Dish Network and ExpressVu systems, they are unencrypted on the birds. If you have room for a larger dish and buy another receiver there is 100+ more waiting from DMX and Music Choice too. Basically, don't buy Sirius/XM for home:)
Definitely, that is pretty much what my attitude has become as I've grown older, I've also been able to come to terms with death much more because my attitude is "I was dead before I was born" and I don't recall any of that.
I don't have religious beliefs to fall back on, I don't believe in life after death either other than the spirit/memories of those who have died remain with the living, but only for so long unless you did something famous or something.
I have had lots of friends and family die in my 37 years, not once has any of those who passed before me came back and given any indication of an "afterlife", sure we could always go with "maybe they can't" but it's more likely that they can't because they aren't in existence on any level anymore, outside of their atoms which are now being recycled on our planet getting ready for the next time they become part of something.
I find it quite incredible that there's a good chance atoms and molecules in my body at one point were possibly part of a dinosaur, heck some of them could have existed in previous generations of humans.
I too often rant to my friends and family about what I consider to be an indication of the fall of western civilization: too many people are caught up in a lust for material possessions - I think that is just another aspect of not living in the moment.
Me too! Recently I did my tax returns, I run my own business from home and after all my write-offs I made a whopping $5000/year or so! Obviously I am not out to win any monopoly game here.
I hate jewelry, my wife loves the stuff, but I maintain it is worthless except in tbe minds of those who actually are enamoured by shiny things. Come on, it's freaking rocks and metal! Sure the work the craftsperson did to turn it into a ring is worth something but the materials themselves to me are worthless.
We live in the now, I myself am amazed at life itself, being alive is an interesting experience but really it is just a vacation from death because you will return to that state eventually.
Then there's the real big questions, like is any of this worth the effort? Let's be realistic, science is starting to show us that eventually, no matter what, humanity will die out entirely. We'll either get wiped out by gamma ray bursts, wiped by the Andromeda galaxy colliding with us and flinging us into a hostile enviroment or simply die when our sun runs out of fuel and goes dark, explodes or whatever it plans on doing at EOL.
On the positive side of things, the planet we sit on didn't always exist anyway, and the atoms in us have already been through a few furnaces before, so it's not like we're gonna notice really.
Interesting, my local ISP (whom I used to work for) has been running on Pentium class PC's since he opened... in 1996! He still uses the same cases too, just keeps upgrading the mobo, etc.
Last year I went and replaced a small town cableco's server network, removing their old Pentium1 boxes and replacing with Pentium3 boxes, they run everything, email, dns and a squid proxy system at 2 of their headends.
It works, it works well, of course don't run everything off one box but I can certainly say that you do not need to go get overhyped Sun hardware when standard PC hardware will work just fine.
One last thing, you do this using quality hardware, it won't work quite so well if you are very cheap and buy bottom end junk. Helps if you know how to build a system that doesn't crash much.
Heck, after posting this and finding some incredibly priced housing me and my wife are seriously considering selling our house here in BC and moving to Sask now, we would be mortgage free since our current house has appreciated $40k since we bought.
And since this is Canadian dollars, his $7,000 should buy up half the town!
A similar thing happened a few years back in Newfoundland, waterfront homes were going for like $6,000 and then the Americans discovered this and bought them up as summer homes.
Then again, I'm not sure what you'd do with a house in Saskatchewan in summer or winter, winter just sucks more cause it's absolute zero outside. In the summer you can watch your dog run, for miles and miles or something.
Ok, you say apartment so I'm assuming rental to begin with, don't bother! Take your $7,000 and use it for a downpayment for a house of your own, interest rates are low right now and you are much better off paying a mortgage of your own rather than someone elses for them.
Now, if it's a condo, check the D-Link DWL-900AP+ access points out, they will run in repeater mode so you could share probably get away with doing it with 2-4 units spread around the top floors.
The big question will be your gateway, with a dozen apartments you could all share a T1 line easy enough but there are monthly costs and likely be the same or more than cable/dsl alternatives and really that's only if all apartments sign up and keep paying.
If you are renting, let the landlord build this type of "service" rather than wasting your own money, put it to better use, just buy 1 AP and whomever can see it can link up.
That's my guess, first clue has been since the new virus my incoming virus level increased and judging by the similarities in the spam runs it's a couple of gangs doing the run.
I don't think this can be stopped until it's legal to vigilante find these arses and perform death penalties on the spot. No problem from my viewpoint, they are nothing but leeches on society anyway with obviously little to offer society in general.
Hey, I like this plan, at the same time hand that list over to the RBL's of the world, I'd like a copy for my own list, this would effectively stop spam from this viru run.
I say this as I've noted an increase in the days since MyDoom of my incoming spam levels, all of them have similarities so I imagine it is one or two outfits using this trojan network, chances are they are the same ones creating the viruses too.
I think the SCO/Linux thing is just to sidetrack us while they continue to use the trojan network for spam delivery.
And it will always stand out as the most riveting sci-fi series I've seen, I've been getting B5 DVD sets for xmas and bday presents for the past 2 years and have just recently begun watching them back to back.
I am reliving the feelings I had 10 years ago watching the original run, except now I don't have to wait 10 weeks for the next episode to find out what will happen. Any fan of the series who caught the original run will express the same thing, that wait between some episodes was very tough to take.
I recall chatting with the producers in #babylon5 duing production, getting to know them, noticing they listened to fans and knowing they were trying something new, something special and what they did produce was/is great. I sent JMS an email after the final episode aired thanking him for all his work, dedication and for writing one of the greatest works of sci-fi ever filmed.
Star Trek has NEVER induced the types of emotions I felt watching B5, not even close. B5 made me laugh at times, it made me care for the characters and it even made me cry at times as well, and not just because of bad scripts/acting.
If any series deserves a spin-off, it is B5, just don't let TNT handle it this time.
making their chances of finding someone to sue almost nil
Not quite, the spams are selling a product at some point, someone is somehow receiving payment for doing the advertising and there is where you get them, whether it be the actual spammer or the company being advertised.
If the spammer is paid per lead there you have them, if they are paid per sale same thing, somehow the money gets to the spammer and there will be a trail to it. Even if they use false aliases they just add fraud to the list, they still have to pick up the money at some point.
The choice for the companies involved should be disclose the information for the spammer you hired or you get fined or criminally charged instead.
The spammers could flood the world with false spam runs targetting innocent companies, hiding their true money making runs, but I think those would stand out as the ones selling Viagra/Penis Patches/etc. as they do now.
We need something and soon, it's a losing battle on the mailservers, I tend to a local dialup ISPs incoming scanning server, they have slowly been losing clients over the years as broadband has taken hold and yet the mail server resource requirements continues to grow at an alarming rate, we turn away 80% of the SMTP connections that come in as it is and still a large percentage of what comes in is still spam. His customers are demanding a solution and the sad thing is the stuff that gets past all the RBL/SpamAssassin checks is the freaking adult stuff most people want rid of the most, especially parents.
I think Europa is a tad too close to Jupiter for human habitation, the radiation around there is supposed to be pretty lethal pretty much all the time.
Keep in mind Jupiter throws off more energy than it takes in from the Sun as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, they are pretty much underground now aren't they? Considering the spammers are almost exclusively using the trojaned PC network to relay their crap I would say it is as underground as you can get.
This "follow the money" routine will work, the spammers need to get paid at some point, and considering most of their income is based on amount of sales from the spam then you just need to have a nice chat with whomever is accepting the loot and sending the products.
Agreed, problem is the media companies have become increasingly greedy and have figured out they can suck both tits at once.
Personally I refuse to subscribe to most of the specialty channels and especially the new digital packs, since most of the programming on the channels is rerun material from the main parent channels, Discovery Channel comes to mind where all the sub-channels such as The Science Channel rerun the crap out of stuff, heck some of the science on that channel is dated already. This programming used to appear on TLC but that's turned into something entirely different now and is no longer worth watching.
I live in an area with little OTA TV reception, so I have no choice but to use satellite for access to the networks, being in Canada I need to use a Canadian system since anything else has been deemed illegal by our big business supporting buttheads in power. That access costs me $28.88/month and all I get for that is the main Canadian and US networks, a few "educational" channels and some other crap not worth watching, so basically I have to pay $30/month for OTA channels.
Sad thing is, when the satellite company I used first started up they charged $10.95/month for the package I'm using, then implemented a "$20 minimume" policy since too many signed up at $10.95, go figure.
fire up the "Add/Remove programs", you get IE and WMP among normal apps
:)
Unfortunately these days you'd end up breaking so many apps this isn't going to happen. Take QuickBooks for example, it uses IE throughout to display its windows I think, not just to display web pages but for just about everything.
Because of that program I have to leave Outlook Express as my default email client (I use Mozilla), if I let Moz be the default email client then Quickbooks craps out when trying to send invoices with it.
Luckily my new accountant uses Simply Accounting and we're dumping Quickbooks entirely, so Windows will once again be little more than a gaming OS for me!
Telus I've never really had a problem with, other than their reluctance to sell static addresses
Telus does have business accounts, start at the $89.95/month account level and you get 2 static IPs, advertised on telus.com so they don't seem too reluctant to offer static IPs.
They don't offer statics for residential account levels, but then again, how many residential accounts have such a need?
I have read about these positive experiments as well, they are quite interesting and it is funny how NASA basically ignored this data or at least refused to even entertain that life may have been found in these experiments.
While I don't buy all the stuff spouted out by Hoagland and the likes I do think they have a very good point that there is probably much more to Mars than meets the eye.
Even the remote possibility of artificial structures means we should expend as much energy as possible to go there and check these things out, it kinda makes sense that an ancient or alien race may leave clues on other bodies in the solar system for us to find once we evolve enough to see them. It may also be remnants of a lost civilization or a long since deserted outpost of some sort, or it might be nothing but it still needs to be checked out rather thoroughly.
I think part of the problem is it goes against many scientists personal belief systems if life is a norm rather than an exception in the universe. Also, our religious belief systems are built on humans being sort of special in the universe too, it could cause some social problems if we are told we're nothing special at all. This is becoming less of an issue mind you as we're slowly subjected to more media about space and alien possibilities in both science and science fiction.
The problem is there's a whole lot of evidence that points to evolution being the likely method used by nature to get us to where we are today, the other side basically uses theology or something don't they?
I mean I've heard creationists spouting that dinosaur BONES were planted by "God" to give us something to find while we're digging.
They may have a case about intelligent design, but only so far as DNA itself may have been designed but after which it led to evolving life if you ask me, unless some "God" really was bored for billions of years before "creating" us human types. You'd think we would have been the first things created if we were that important to it/him/she but science is showing we are relative newcomers to a very old universe.
There's just as strong a case that aliens were involved in creating/adjusting humanity from the native lifeforms developing here though.
I run some Linux boxes for a cable ISP here in Canada, each headend goes through a Squid proxy which also doubles as a handy firewall.
Once a week or so we turn on ntop for a few minutes and have a quick peek at who is moving what, if we notice any clients doing any outgoing scans on known virus ports we block them at the routers until they call in and clean the PC.
Once a month we'll scan the network with nmap to see what ports people are listening on.
Our mail servers scan incoming mail for viruses, if we see a cable client spewing viruses at it we block their SMTP access and block port 25 for them at the routers.
After about a year of this, we have a very low infection rate when new viruses hit. We also block worm ports at the routers so those don't effect us as bad (still possible if some idiot with an infected laptop gets on the wrong side of the firewall).
Our next step will likely be egress port 25 blocking entirely.
I saw an interview with Robert Plant on VH1 Classics a couple of months back, in it he stated that really there is only so many notes to go around, everyone copies someone at some point in their careers.
Musicians (and actors) as gazillionaires is a relatively new thing in our society, I think a lot of them are really losing it though. In the old days musicians were paid much like the rest of us, for doing a job, ie, playing music for an event or for a group.
Do I think Eminem deservers $10mil to compensate for some 10 year old girl blurting out his "creation"? Heck no, give the guy a couple of hundred bucks at most, but move on.
These folks would be more than happy to collect royalties off us all when we hum their tunes in the shower.
It's time we brought some of these "stars" back down to earth a little. It's a never ending cycle and it's the consumer who is burnt because of it, is any actor worth $20million for 3 or 4 months work on a movie? I don't think so myself, but because some suits in Hollywood think so we're now paying $10 a ticket at the movies, meanwhile these "stars" pump out garbage like Gigli.
And WTF is with Britney Spears? I saw some video of hers yesterday and she's selling nothing but sex appeal, her singing stinks and she has little talent, but I guess wriggling yer bum is worth millions in the US. How about getting her to put on a concert where she actually stands still and sings her songs rather than runs around lipsyncing everything.
Why not?
We have many examples of life on Earth existing in extreme locations we never thought life could survive.
If life in the universe is the norm rather than the exception then I'd fully expect to see at the very least signs of microbial life on Mars, keep in mind that there are daytime surface temps of 15c on Mars which is quite cozy considering.
Now, whether life exists on Mars today is unknown right now, but I really do feel the chances are quite high just judging by the sheer pervasive nature and diversity of life on Earth, I get a feeling life is the norm in the universe myself.
No we aren't going to find complex life beyond fungus, basteria and microbes I think, but that is still life and it would mean we are likely not alone in the universe after all.
I agree, there is also a definite pattern in incoming SMTP traffic that indicates it is only a few groups using the trojan/virus network to relay spam.
Most of the spam I get is coming in via the trojaned machines, I use the XBL now which stops a good chunk, those that do get past the RBL lists are added to my internal RBL lists so they only get one shot at spamming me and almost zero hope of getting off that list in the future.
The really sad thing is the most persistent spam seems to be the Viagra and adult stuff which is what most users complain about the most, the spammers need to realize that people do NOT want this material in front of their kids and the efforts being taken to circumvent filters proves these guys are the lowest form of slime in human kind and most people wouldn't care much if something tragic was to happen to those type of people.
www.dvbmaster.com has a selection available, SkyVision has them as well but they use them for their one-way internet services.
Those are almost always content 'stations' provided by the satellite/tv company as part of your subscription. Your subscription fees go to subsidize these 'value add' channels.
Reread my post, I stated that the audio feeds on Dish Network and Canada's ExpressVu service are being sent unencrypted, meaning any DVB receiver can basically get them by pointing an dish at the right location. No subscription required, they are free and because they are not encrypted perfectly legal to listen to.
Note tho that you cannot listen to these stations on Dish Network or ExpressVu receivers without a subscription, they control access on the receiver for these services.
www.dvbmaster.com for cards and other items of interests related to free TV services on your PC.
Interesting assessment and it really makes sense to me. While I have little other than my own CD collection converted into MP3s I do believe that these "artists" should be paid for performing and leave the recorded stuff as little more than advertising for the performances they put on.
:)
I have little sympathy for actors who are paid millions per movie and those movies are rehashed crap. Case in point, I recently was dragged to see 50 First Dates, at the end all I felt was ripped off since I'd just sat through a rewrite of Memento and Groundhog Day into some "new" movie.
It is also tough to convince the public that an artist should be paid money when you download a song on demand yet you can hear that same song free on the radio, free from satellite*, etc.
* Little known fact, there are 100+ free digital audio streams available on satellite, a PCI card to receive them is less than $80US (you would need a dish, less than $50US tho) and you can easily leech music from the stream. These are the audio streams found on Dish Network and ExpressVu systems, they are unencrypted on the birds. If you have room for a larger dish and buy another receiver there is 100+ more waiting from DMX and Music Choice too. Basically, don't buy Sirius/XM for home
Definitely, that is pretty much what my attitude has become as I've grown older, I've also been able to come to terms with death much more because my attitude is "I was dead before I was born" and I don't recall any of that.
I don't have religious beliefs to fall back on, I don't believe in life after death either other than the spirit/memories of those who have died remain with the living, but only for so long unless you did something famous or something.
I have had lots of friends and family die in my 37 years, not once has any of those who passed before me came back and given any indication of an "afterlife", sure we could always go with "maybe they can't" but it's more likely that they can't because they aren't in existence on any level anymore, outside of their atoms which are now being recycled on our planet getting ready for the next time they become part of something.
I find it quite incredible that there's a good chance atoms and molecules in my body at one point were possibly part of a dinosaur, heck some of them could have existed in previous generations of humans.
I too often rant to my friends and family about what I consider to be an indication of the fall of western civilization: too many people are caught up in a lust for material possessions - I think that is just another aspect of not living in the moment.
Me too! Recently I did my tax returns, I run my own business from home and after all my write-offs I made a whopping $5000/year or so! Obviously I am not out to win any monopoly game here.
I hate jewelry, my wife loves the stuff, but I maintain it is worthless except in tbe minds of those who actually are enamoured by shiny things. Come on, it's freaking rocks and metal! Sure the work the craftsperson did to turn it into a ring is worth something but the materials themselves to me are worthless.
We live in the now, I myself am amazed at life itself, being alive is an interesting experience but really it is just a vacation from death because you will return to that state eventually.
Then there's the real big questions, like is any of this worth the effort? Let's be realistic, science is starting to show us that eventually, no matter what, humanity will die out entirely. We'll either get wiped out by gamma ray bursts, wiped by the Andromeda galaxy colliding with us and flinging us into a hostile enviroment or simply die when our sun runs out of fuel and goes dark, explodes or whatever it plans on doing at EOL.
On the positive side of things, the planet we sit on didn't always exist anyway, and the atoms in us have already been through a few furnaces before, so it's not like we're gonna notice really.
Interesting, my local ISP (whom I used to work for) has been running on Pentium class PC's since he opened ... in 1996! He still uses the same cases too, just keeps upgrading the mobo, etc.
Last year I went and replaced a small town cableco's server network, removing their old Pentium1 boxes and replacing with Pentium3 boxes, they run everything, email, dns and a squid proxy system at 2 of their headends.
It works, it works well, of course don't run everything off one box but I can certainly say that you do not need to go get overhyped Sun hardware when standard PC hardware will work just fine.
One last thing, you do this using quality hardware, it won't work quite so well if you are very cheap and buy bottom end junk. Helps if you know how to build a system that doesn't crash much.
Heck, after posting this and finding some incredibly priced housing me and my wife are seriously considering selling our house here in BC and moving to Sask now, we would be mortgage free since our current house has appreciated $40k since we bought.
Why right here in North America! $3,150CAD
And since this is Canadian dollars, his $7,000 should buy up half the town!
A similar thing happened a few years back in Newfoundland, waterfront homes were going for like $6,000 and then the Americans discovered this and bought them up as summer homes.
Then again, I'm not sure what you'd do with a house in Saskatchewan in summer or winter, winter just sucks more cause it's absolute zero outside. In the summer you can watch your dog run, for miles and miles or something.
Ok, you say apartment so I'm assuming rental to begin with, don't bother! Take your $7,000 and use it for a downpayment for a house of your own, interest rates are low right now and you are much better off paying a mortgage of your own rather than someone elses for them.
Now, if it's a condo, check the D-Link DWL-900AP+ access points out, they will run in repeater mode so you could share probably get away with doing it with 2-4 units spread around the top floors.
The big question will be your gateway, with a dozen apartments you could all share a T1 line easy enough but there are monthly costs and likely be the same or more than cable/dsl alternatives and really that's only if all apartments sign up and keep paying.
If you are renting, let the landlord build this type of "service" rather than wasting your own money, put it to better use, just buy 1 AP and whomever can see it can link up.
Don't know about you but my wife won't let me have one!
That's my guess, first clue has been since the new virus my incoming virus level increased and judging by the similarities in the spam runs it's a couple of gangs doing the run.
I don't think this can be stopped until it's legal to vigilante find these arses and perform death penalties on the spot. No problem from my viewpoint, they are nothing but leeches on society anyway with obviously little to offer society in general.
Hey, I like this plan, at the same time hand that list over to the RBL's of the world, I'd like a copy for my own list, this would effectively stop spam from this viru run.
I say this as I've noted an increase in the days since MyDoom of my incoming spam levels, all of them have similarities so I imagine it is one or two outfits using this trojan network, chances are they are the same ones creating the viruses too.
I think the SCO/Linux thing is just to sidetrack us while they continue to use the trojan network for spam delivery.
And it will always stand out as the most riveting sci-fi series I've seen, I've been getting B5 DVD sets for xmas and bday presents for the past 2 years and have just recently begun watching them back to back.
I am reliving the feelings I had 10 years ago watching the original run, except now I don't have to wait 10 weeks for the next episode to find out what will happen. Any fan of the series who caught the original run will express the same thing, that wait between some episodes was very tough to take.
I recall chatting with the producers in #babylon5 duing production, getting to know them, noticing they listened to fans and knowing they were trying something new, something special and what they did produce was/is great. I sent JMS an email after the final episode aired thanking him for all his work, dedication and for writing one of the greatest works of sci-fi ever filmed.
Star Trek has NEVER induced the types of emotions I felt watching B5, not even close. B5 made me laugh at times, it made me care for the characters and it even made me cry at times as well, and not just because of bad scripts/acting.
If any series deserves a spin-off, it is B5, just don't let TNT handle it this time.
making their chances of finding someone to sue almost nil
Not quite, the spams are selling a product at some point, someone is somehow receiving payment for doing the advertising and there is where you get them, whether it be the actual spammer or the company being advertised.
If the spammer is paid per lead there you have them, if they are paid per sale same thing, somehow the money gets to the spammer and there will be a trail to it. Even if they use false aliases they just add fraud to the list, they still have to pick up the money at some point.
The choice for the companies involved should be disclose the information for the spammer you hired or you get fined or criminally charged instead.
The spammers could flood the world with false spam runs targetting innocent companies, hiding their true money making runs, but I think those would stand out as the ones selling Viagra/Penis Patches/etc. as they do now.
We need something and soon, it's a losing battle on the mailservers, I tend to a local dialup ISPs incoming scanning server, they have slowly been losing clients over the years as broadband has taken hold and yet the mail server resource requirements continues to grow at an alarming rate, we turn away 80% of the SMTP connections that come in as it is and still a large percentage of what comes in is still spam. His customers are demanding a solution and the sad thing is the stuff that gets past all the RBL/SpamAssassin checks is the freaking adult stuff most people want rid of the most, especially parents.
I think Europa is a tad too close to Jupiter for human habitation, the radiation around there is supposed to be pretty lethal pretty much all the time.
Keep in mind Jupiter throws off more energy than it takes in from the Sun as well.