Once upon a time, I was looking for somewhere to buy some new PC hardware (I live in the UK). I went out and bought a copy of Micro Mart. A publication that is probably >80% adverts, all for online computer retailers. I bought it for the ads and discovered many retailers and got some components at a really good price -- I paid ~UK1.00 for some adverts! So, where does this fit into the grand scheme of things?
I think the plan is to delete high scoring mail at the gateway (Scores are user-definable, but default is 8). Any mail with socres between 6 and their chosen score will be tagged, but delivered.
The user can set the delete-at-gateway as low as 5, so they can expect to never see a tag, but they do run the risk of losing false-positives.
I work at a UK university and we're introducing a new system to deal with spam. We've already got an in-house product, MailScanner which does the detection job pretty well, but our mail servers are quite loaded with junk.
We're about to offer a "delete at gateway" option, so our users don't have to filter their email and lessen the load on the mail servers at the same time. This service is optional, so our users can choose whether they want it, but we'll be strongly encouraging them to use it.
Additionally, they can set their spam threshold, so they can delete most spam, but review the borderline cases.
I use one of these . The intellect AirKey is a small form-factor keyboard with built-in mouse that functions over infra-red. Infra-red really is a fine compromise, because I need to be in IR range to use the TV remote anyway!
The mouse-pad thingy is quite neat, it's small and can be driven from your sofa. It's a bit tricky to get used to at first, but it's really worth it once you get used to it.
My only advice is don't install the system with it, use a proper keyboard and mouse. This thing is fine as a PC remote control, but you probably don't want to set one up with it!
If the above still hasn't sold you, it's a very cheap option and most importantly it's black!
That's what I understand, but it's still pointless and stupid (Or just an excuse for hard disk manufacturers to screw you over)
Quite simply, 1000 bytes is almost totally useless as a measurement, so the original definition of a kilobyte was 1024 (2^10) bytes and a megabyte is 2^20 or 1024x1024 or 1048576 bytes.
I despise these kibibyte things, Apple have already inserted enough superfluous lowercase-'i's into the computing world, we need no more!
Yeah, so what if K in bytes is different to K in watts or grams, they use a different base for counting in, it's really not worth shoe-horning SI standards into something which is inherently incompatible with them.
People keep coming up with this whole "Cell Phones are dangerous in gas stations" stuff. Well, if you're going to ban cell phones due to the risks, then you really ought to consider the bigger risks, I'm sure there is a far greater risk from doing something as stupid as bringing a combustion-engine powered vehicle into a gas station!
Why not go with Wireless Ethernet? Okay, the bandwidth and latency aren't exactly phenomenal, but it's so much easier to install. At home, I've finally ditched all the wired ethernet and converted everything to wireless.
Here in Southampton, UK, the university campus and a lot of surrounding area is covered by Southampton Open Wireless Network and availability is pretty impressive. (It's nice to sit on the grass by the stream with my laptop reading my emails!)
I still don't buy the "Microsoft is responsible" talk, sure their software is buggy, but so is many other software. I've seen Linux and other Unix systems rooted, yet nobody starts claiming "It's all Linus' fault" etc.
Okay, so the Free Software folk invariably have patches out within hours of an exploit being discovered, but this hole has already been patched too.
The onus is on the virus writers (and Script Kiddies etc) who write malicious code and to some degree on people not maintaining their systems.
Not locking your front door doesn't give you the right to blame the door-making companies when you get burgled. You can still blame the burglars, but you're out of luck if you claim insurance since it's your own fault.
It's different if there aren't any patches, and I'm well aware that Microsoft have their problems and need to be more secure, but I still stand by my judgement that they can't be held responsible for every virus outbreak that happens!
"There's no such thing as offensive material, only offended people."
Well, that's what one of my friends said to me a long time ago. The comments here are only offensive if you choose to find them so. Does anyone else remember the tacky and tasteless Princess Diana jokes? Maybe I'm a minority, but I'd like to think that people would make tacky and tasteless jokes about me after I've passed on, at least I'd be remembered and people would be having fun!
If you don't approve of tasteless jokes, that's fine, but it's not for you to judge what others think
... can't you just pre filter all email attachments and run them through your own scanner
Just to clarify, we do filter attachments, using some in-house software called MailScanner. The points I brought up were just interesting thoughts on the subject.
That being said, we still get people mailing us with "Please can you send me the attachment you removed" messages, when it's quite blatantly a virus... Some people just never learn!
I work at a UK University as a sysadmin and the most prevalent viruses around here are Bagle, Netsky and MyDoom. The scary part about it all is that Both Bagle and Netsky are in about their 20th revision (Yes, viruses get upgrades and bugfixes too)
The more recent versions of these viruses are even killing off their 'competitors' - a recent Netsky will kill off any Bagle or MyDoom viruses it finds.
I'm still staggered that people will open email from people they've never heard of, open any attachments therein, entering passwords as they go!
The worst case of virus authors realising the stupidity of the people they were targetting was a virus with an NTP client built-in, so that the timebomb expiry on it would still work, despite the host PC's clock not being set correctly!
But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...
You say that, but look at sites like astalavista it's chock-full of cracks for time-limited, reduced, or otherwise restricted pieces of software.
Put quite simply, as we all know, DRM does not, can not and will not ever work. People will always find ways round this, and for every 1 industry programmer writing this stuff, there are 10 black-hats out there trying to defeat it.
The above point about iTunes is definitely on the ball, If you don't put in the protection measures, people see no need to crack it.
I'm sure there are plenty of shareware authors out there who make enough out of their totally unprotected products, simply guilt-tripping people to pay, rather than enforcing un-usability.
That is because we actually care about having good Video and Audio quality, not retarded menus. Menus aren't part of movies, thus they are useless.
And that's why Linux hasn't and won't catch on in the desktop market for a very long time. This is the same thing that ESR was talking about a week or so back. There seems to be a complete lack of any HCI knowledge in the open-source community.
I'm trying to set up a Linux installation where I never need to use the command line, but it's nigh on impossible!
This isn't meant as a troll, audio/video quality is most important, but if the average Joe is going to use Linux, he'll want his DVD menus and pretty userland configuration tools. It'd just be nice if more people would make improve the ease-of-use of packages.
Anyway, I'm done ranting - back to finding a use for my last mod point.
Some ISPs worth their salt do this already. I had a mate (who uses the same ISP that I do) and got disconnected as one of his housemates got a spam-relay trojan.
They had no hesitation reconnecting him once he'd fixed the problem, but the fact is that they noticed and acted.
The ISP in question is Eclipse Networking (UK) who are a really good ADSL supplier. (I've got 8 public IPs and reverse-DNS)
It would be good if more ISPs took the time to sort this stuff out, often it's people who don't even know their machine has been hijacked.
The whole certificate system is screwy anyway, the "Padlock" only proves that the *connection* is secure, (Prevents "man-in-the-middle" attacks). The host at the other end isn't guaranteed trustworthy.
Do you honestly trust Verisign et al to judge whether a website is trustworthy or not? I certainly don't. SSL certificates prove absolutely jack about the site in question, it's just a way for the CAs to make a quick buck.
Anyway, my rant is over. I'll go have a cup of tea and calm down now.:)
A friend of mine summed it up rather nicely, "If you buy things with PayPal, you're spending money, but if you receive anything into your PayPal account, it's nothing more than magic beans".
Yeah, sure their practices are dubious at best, but you *did* agree to the license agreement (Let's not go there).
Transfer your money out regularly, don't keep too much in the account at any time, and vet your buyers just as they'd vet you (That's what eBay feedback is for!)
It's not as if it's just "easily copyable" things like software/multimedia that's the issue.
Sure you can't "copy" a bag of sugar, but you can't "copy" a microprocessor either - It's still copyright infringement if you make your own Pentium CPUs.
Conversely, you can still "steal" a copy of Windows XP off the shelf - you have the physical item (Box, holographic CD etc), wherever you stole it from doesn't.
The whole concept of IP is to protect ideas, which is a very different paradigm to protecting physical items.
It all depends on what you're trying to provide in an operating system.
My last Linux install came complete with a web browser (Mozilla) and an Office suite (Openoffice.org). I use OpenOffice, but chose to install Firebird (Or whatever they're calling it this week)
Last time I installed Windows XP, I installed Nero Burning ROM, despite the built-in CD-recording tools. I use the Windows XP Firewall, but I know plenty of people who prefer Kerio or Norton Personal Firewall etc.
Microsoft is meeting a demand for an Operating System with all these features. Just so long as they don't stop you running someone else's in preference, they can bundle whatever the hell they like with Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Once upon a time, I was looking for somewhere to buy some new PC hardware (I live in the UK). I went out and bought a copy of Micro Mart. A publication that is probably >80% adverts, all for online computer retailers. I bought it for the ads and discovered many retailers and got some components at a really good price -- I paid ~UK1.00 for some adverts! So, where does this fit into the grand scheme of things?
I think the plan is to delete high scoring mail at the gateway (Scores are user-definable, but default is 8). Any mail with socres between 6 and their chosen score will be tagged, but delivered.
The user can set the delete-at-gateway as low as 5, so they can expect to never see a tag, but they do run the risk of losing false-positives.
I work at a UK university and we're introducing a new system to deal with spam. We've already got an in-house product, MailScanner which does the detection job pretty well, but our mail servers are quite loaded with junk.
We're about to offer a "delete at gateway" option, so our users don't have to filter their email and lessen the load on the mail servers at the same time. This service is optional, so our users can choose whether they want it, but we'll be strongly encouraging them to use it.
Additionally, they can set their spam threshold, so they can delete most spam, but review the borderline cases.
I use one of these . The intellect AirKey is a small form-factor keyboard with built-in mouse that functions over infra-red. Infra-red really is a fine compromise, because I need to be in IR range to use the TV remote anyway!
The mouse-pad thingy is quite neat, it's small and can be driven from your sofa. It's a bit tricky to get used to at first, but it's really worth it once you get used to it.
My only advice is don't install the system with it, use a proper keyboard and mouse. This thing is fine as a PC remote control, but you probably don't want to set one up with it!
If the above still hasn't sold you, it's a very cheap option and most importantly it's black!
That's what I understand, but it's still pointless and stupid (Or just an excuse for hard disk manufacturers to screw you over)
Quite simply, 1000 bytes is almost totally useless as a measurement, so the original definition of a kilobyte was 1024 (2^10) bytes and a megabyte is 2^20 or 1024x1024 or 1048576 bytes.
I despise these kibibyte things, Apple have already inserted enough superfluous lowercase-'i's into the computing world, we need no more!
Yeah, so what if K in bytes is different to K in watts or grams, they use a different base for counting in, it's really not worth shoe-horning SI standards into something which is inherently incompatible with them.
People keep coming up with this whole "Cell Phones are dangerous in gas stations" stuff. Well, if you're going to ban cell phones due to the risks, then you really ought to consider the bigger risks, I'm sure there is a far greater risk from doing something as stupid as bringing a combustion-engine powered vehicle into a gas station!
Why not go with Wireless Ethernet? Okay, the bandwidth and latency aren't exactly phenomenal, but it's so much easier to install. At home, I've finally ditched all the wired ethernet and converted everything to wireless.
Here in Southampton, UK, the university campus and a lot of surrounding area is covered by Southampton Open Wireless Network and availability is pretty impressive. (It's nice to sit on the grass by the stream with my laptop reading my emails!)
In parallel universe, Soviet America discovers YOU!
I still don't buy the "Microsoft is responsible" talk, sure their software is buggy, but so is many other software. I've seen Linux and other Unix systems rooted, yet nobody starts claiming "It's all Linus' fault" etc.
Okay, so the Free Software folk invariably have patches out within hours of an exploit being discovered, but this hole has already been patched too.
The onus is on the virus writers (and Script Kiddies etc) who write malicious code and to some degree on people not maintaining their systems.
Not locking your front door doesn't give you the right to blame the door-making companies when you get burgled. You can still blame the burglars, but you're out of luck if you claim insurance since it's your own fault.
It's different if there aren't any patches, and I'm well aware that Microsoft have their problems and need to be more secure, but I still stand by my judgement that they can't be held responsible for every virus outbreak that happens!
"There's no such thing as offensive material, only offended people."
Well, that's what one of my friends said to me a long time ago. The comments here are only offensive if you choose to find them so. Does anyone else remember the tacky and tasteless Princess Diana jokes? Maybe I'm a minority, but I'd like to think that people would make tacky and tasteless jokes about me after I've passed on, at least I'd be remembered and people would be having fun!
If you don't approve of tasteless jokes, that's fine, but it's not for you to judge what others think
...anyway, that's my rant for the day done!
... can't you just pre filter all email attachments and run them through your own scanner
Just to clarify, we do filter attachments, using some in-house software called MailScanner. The points I brought up were just interesting thoughts on the subject.
That being said, we still get people mailing us with "Please can you send me the attachment you removed" messages, when it's quite blatantly a virus... Some people just never learn!
I work at a UK University as a sysadmin and the most prevalent viruses around here are Bagle, Netsky and MyDoom. The scary part about it all is that Both Bagle and Netsky are in about their 20th revision (Yes, viruses get upgrades and bugfixes too)
The more recent versions of these viruses are even killing off their 'competitors' - a recent Netsky will kill off any Bagle or MyDoom viruses it finds.
I'm still staggered that people will open email from people they've never heard of, open any attachments therein, entering passwords as they go!
The worst case of virus authors realising the stupidity of the people they were targetting was a virus with an NTP client built-in, so that the timebomb expiry on it would still work, despite the host PC's clock not being set correctly!
But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...
You say that, but look at sites like astalavista it's chock-full of cracks for time-limited, reduced, or otherwise restricted pieces of software.
Put quite simply, as we all know, DRM does not, can not and will not ever work. People will always find ways round this, and for every 1 industry programmer writing this stuff, there are 10 black-hats out there trying to defeat it.
The above point about iTunes is definitely on the ball, If you don't put in the protection measures, people see no need to crack it.
I'm sure there are plenty of shareware authors out there who make enough out of their totally unprotected products, simply guilt-tripping people to pay, rather than enforcing un-usability.
Google getting overused?
What I find most ironic is that this is one of the rare occasions when I knew before the article appeared on Slashdot!
In fact, that would suggest that Google is one of the few sites that I visit more often that Slashdot!
I still think the best description and example of this is:
"to verb a noun"
The ironic thing is of course that the word "verb" is a noun, but is used in this context as a verb.
That is because we actually care about having good Video and Audio quality, not retarded menus. Menus aren't part of movies, thus they are useless.
And that's why Linux hasn't and won't catch on in the desktop market for a very long time. This is the same thing that ESR was talking about a week or so back. There seems to be a complete lack of any HCI knowledge in the open-source community. I'm trying to set up a Linux installation where I never need to use the command line, but it's nigh on impossible! This isn't meant as a troll, audio/video quality is most important, but if the average Joe is going to use Linux, he'll want his DVD menus and pretty userland configuration tools. It'd just be nice if more people would make improve the ease-of-use of packages. Anyway, I'm done ranting - back to finding a use for my last mod point.
Some ISPs worth their salt do this already. I had a mate (who uses the same ISP that I do) and got disconnected as one of his housemates got a spam-relay trojan.
They had no hesitation reconnecting him once he'd fixed the problem, but the fact is that they noticed and acted.
The ISP in question is Eclipse Networking (UK) who are a really good ADSL supplier. (I've got 8 public IPs and reverse-DNS)
It would be good if more ISPs took the time to sort this stuff out, often it's people who don't even know their machine has been hijacked.
The whole certificate system is screwy anyway, the "Padlock" only proves that the *connection* is secure, (Prevents "man-in-the-middle" attacks). The host at the other end isn't guaranteed trustworthy.
:)
Do you honestly trust Verisign et al to judge whether a website is trustworthy or not? I certainly don't. SSL certificates prove absolutely jack about the site in question, it's just a way for the CAs to make a quick buck.
Anyway, my rant is over. I'll go have a cup of tea and calm down now.
And here was me thinging it had something to do with improving my Aureal Vortex soundcard as well as my hard disk. :)
A friend of mine summed it up rather nicely, "If you buy things with PayPal, you're spending money, but if you receive anything into your PayPal account, it's nothing more than magic beans".
Yeah, sure their practices are dubious at best, but you *did* agree to the license agreement (Let's not go there).
Transfer your money out regularly, don't keep too much in the account at any time, and vet your buyers just as they'd vet you (That's what eBay feedback is for!)
It's not as if it's just "easily copyable" things like software/multimedia that's the issue.
Sure you can't "copy" a bag of sugar, but you can't "copy" a microprocessor either - It's still copyright infringement if you make your own Pentium CPUs.
Conversely, you can still "steal" a copy of Windows XP off the shelf - you have the physical item (Box, holographic CD etc), wherever you stole it from doesn't.
The whole concept of IP is to protect ideas, which is a very different paradigm to protecting physical items.
Favourite CEO?
Now you're making me think. Just last week, I'd have said Darl McBride, but now you've totally thrown me off-course!
Before that Steve Ballmer/Bill Gates were probably number one, but now...
The more important question is "Who will be next"
Steve Jobs suing companies for using translucent blue plastic?
Maybe Intel will sue Via for making Pentium-compatible chipsets.
Who knows, maybe Slashdot will sue EZboard for creating unlicensed web-forums!
Well, that's typically Microsoft, not wanting to use well-documented existing standards, and to reinvent the wheel.
:D
Oh, wait.
It all depends on what you're trying to provide in an operating system.
My last Linux install came complete with a web browser (Mozilla) and an Office suite (Openoffice.org). I use OpenOffice, but chose to install Firebird (Or whatever they're calling it this week)
Last time I installed Windows XP, I installed Nero Burning ROM, despite the built-in CD-recording tools. I use the Windows XP Firewall, but I know plenty of people who prefer Kerio or Norton Personal Firewall etc.
Microsoft is meeting a demand for an Operating System with all these features. Just so long as they don't stop you running someone else's in preference, they can bundle whatever the hell they like with Windows.
The whole thing is a bit of a moot point anyway. The quick rundown for those who weren't paying attention:
IE doesn't print anything after a ^A (0x01 in ASCII)
so scamsters were using
www.microsoft.com^A@myhaxorwebsite.com/
the result being that only www.microsoft.com would show up and people would think the link is genuine
Removing the user@domainname feature does *nothing* to stop the scammers. Instead, you just have a long domain name, e.g.
www.microsoft.com.myhaxordomain.com and put the ^A in the obvious place! Guess what... Same problem.
At least they've finally patched the thing altogether, but as for that CLSID exploit, well, I guess you'd better keep typing those URLs by hand!