And like all nationalized services they provide crappy service at a high price (like the post office.)
I don't know about that, being able to have a letter delivered anywhere in the country within a few days for only $.37 sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I've never had any problems with their service either. I highly doubt any private enterprise could compete at those prices (and yes, I'm aware that no one is doing it now because they're not allowed to; my point is that I doubt they could even if they were allowed to compete).
I send my mail through my earthlink server which works but now I must watch my volume (no mailing lists hosted here I'm afraid) because of my 'terms-of-service'.
Earthlink has no restrictions on the volume of outgoing mail you can send through their SMTP servers. The only requirement they have for outgoing mail is that it's not spam (ie, unsolicited bulk mail). Legit mailing lists are not a problem.
3) The from addy must be a valid account on their system (so no using their smtp servers for work email).
Number 3 is incorrect. You can use any From: address you want when sending mail through Earthlink's SMTP servers. The only requirement is that the domain in your return address actually exists. I send mail out via Earthlink on a daily basis with From: addresses belonging to a couple different networks and have never had a problem.
My related question is Why aren't CD players already computers?
I've been shopping around for a new CD player for my car. I thought I'd like it to play.mp3s too, as my CD collection is already encoded. BUT, here we are in 2003, and I can't find a single CD/MP3 player that can read ID3 tags. It's not like this is new technology we're talking about here, but all the available stereos still display file names only (and good luck getting them to handle subdirectories gracefully).
I'm told that car CD players do exist that can do this, but they're still prohibitively expensive. And I haven't actually seen one with my own eyes.
Anyway, I'd also like a home CD changer that could query FreeDB for artist/album/track info and display it on a small LCD display (and save the info somewhere to prevent looking it up every time I play the CD). Or better yet, a standard for storing this type of metadata on the CD itself, in a format that can be read and displayed by CD players, but as old as CDs are, if we don't have that now we're obviously never going to get it.
Wow, that was a bit of a tangent. I've given up on buying a car.mp3 player, btw. I'll consider it again when they're no longer so crippled.
Except that it's adware, even after you pay for it.
I had a Vindigo subscription for a year, and it was useful, but I got so sick of the ads that I cancelled it anyway. When I wrote to them asking why they don't disclose this fact before you subscribe I was basically told that this is the way it is and if I don't like it I can cancel. So I did.
You don't have to reorganize your mp3s. Really. The iTunes interface gives you access to your files, by Artist, Album, Genre, etc. And you can sort/search for them every which-way. So there's no need to manually keep them in organized folders yourself
Unless, of course, you ever want to do something with them outside of iTunes. Then it becomes a major pain in the ass.
It was probably posted because Slashdot has previously reported a similar story and people seemed to be interested in it, despite it not being "techie", "nerdy", or "geeky". You'll note that there are often stories about privacy issues here.
A bridge is network-transparent. Note that now you have a publically-routable IP address on your home machine (or firewall, or whatever), you don't have to use RFC1918 internal addresses behind the DSL bridge/modem. Once your ISP provisions additional IP address for you, using them is as simple as assigning them to whatever computers or devices you want.
What about OpenSSH exploits? Bind? Sendmail? Need I go on?
Someone who knows what he's doing, on any platform, will patch the vulnerabilities before they can become a problem.
I've administered an internet-connected NT4 mail/web server for the past four years and have not been affected by a single security problem. Why? Because I don't expose unnecessary services to the internet and I apply patches when needed, as soon as they're available. The same as I do for the Linux machines I administer and my OS X machine at home.
With IE, can you install mult. versions on the same machine?
On a Mac, yes. On Windows, no. That, combined with IE's frequent security updates, means I never test my sites on anything but the most current version of IE available. The alternative, leaving IE unpatched, doesn't really appeal, even though I don't normally use it for day-to-day stuff.
I should have mentioned in my original post there there should be an op-out clause for people who know what they're doing (Windows users excluded).
I'm going to assume you meant to say "Windows users included" here, as excluding all Windows users, regardless of their level of expertise, from a service that is available to users of other operating systems is ridiculous and elitist.
Windows, just like any flavor of *nix, can be anywhere between extremely secure to hideously insecure, depending on the knowledge and experience of the person who's running it.
There is no evidence that the SoBig virus was written by spammers
The fact that it's a trojan with a payload of a proxy server that is used to relay spam is pretty damning evidence, in my opinion. If it wasn't written by spammers themselves, it's almost certain that they contracted someone to do it.
And as for bandwidth charges. This, in principle, exists. However, for one, I've never once seen my internet bill go up within my billing period for any reason, much less specifically because of spam. The only time it's gone up is when *I* have upgraded my service. And as your example illustrates, in terms of bandwidth in this age of broadband, spam represents only a tiny fraction of received mail *in terms of size*.
You have obviously never paid to keep a mail server in a co-location facility where you do pay for your bandwidth usage. There you see the cost effect of spam in a way you don't on an individual level. Multiply the amount of spam the average person receives times the number of mailboxes on your system, figure out how much bandwidth is being used by it, and then you'll see how spam has a very real cost associated with it.
It only gets worse as it scales up. ISPs get to the point where they frequently have to add additional hardware to handle the fact that 30 - 40% of their incoming mail is spam.
A co-worker of mine left his workstation unlocked over his day off one time. We picked half a dozen of his.mp3s at random, backed them up to somewhere he wasn't likely to stumble across them, and replaced them all with "Who Let the Dogs Out", named to the same name as the original files.
There's nothing funnier than a week or two later, after we had pretty much forgotten about it, hearing that song blaring out in the middle of his Bob Marley playlist.
We also do the standard send-email-to-the-office-mailing-list prank, but we expand that to typing in their IRC and AIM windows as well. Telling peoples' friends "Tell me you love me" is always good for a laugh.
How come I pay $22 per month for a 56k dialup connection while my friend gets 1.5Mb/256k DSL with a static IP address for just over twice that amount?
Actually, that's what I'm paying for my DSL and you know what? I think it's a pretty good deal. Compare what you've got to the alternatives available to you, not what's available to someone halfway around the world.
Don't get me wrong, what I'd really like is a completely unrestricted 100Mb/s network connection to my house with my own/28 for under $100/mo. but, until that happens, I'm not going to cry over what I've got when it's so much better than what I had five years ago.
True, but if you'll notice, the latest crop of viruses don't actually cause any damage. They're more concerned with propagation rather than killing their host outright. I don't think this latest one does any damage at all other than disabling antivirus software and such. Something like that will do its thing whether it's running as root or not.
Slashdot Mirror
And like all nationalized services they provide crappy service at a high price (like the post office.)
I don't know about that, being able to have a letter delivered anywhere in the country within a few days for only $.37 sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I've never had any problems with their service either. I highly doubt any private enterprise could compete at those prices (and yes, I'm aware that no one is doing it now because they're not allowed to; my point is that I doubt they could even if they were allowed to compete).
And if you use an RSS reader, you can do what I do and get your daily fix by subscribing to the feed someone made of it:
http://dwlt.net/tapestry/ch.rdf
I send my mail through my earthlink server which works but now I must watch my volume (no mailing lists hosted here I'm afraid) because of my 'terms-of-service'.
Earthlink has no restrictions on the volume of outgoing mail you can send through their SMTP servers. The only requirement they have for outgoing mail is that it's not spam (ie, unsolicited bulk mail). Legit mailing lists are not a problem.
So for earthlink to send email:
3) The from addy must be a valid account on their system (so no using their smtp servers for work email).
Number 3 is incorrect. You can use any From: address you want when sending mail through Earthlink's SMTP servers. The only requirement is that the domain in your return address actually exists. I send mail out via Earthlink on a daily basis with From: addresses belonging to a couple different networks and have never had a problem.
My related question is Why aren't CD players already computers?
.mp3s too, as my CD collection is already encoded. BUT, here we are in 2003, and I can't find a single CD/MP3 player that can read ID3 tags. It's not like this is new technology we're talking about here, but all the available stereos still display file names only (and good luck getting them to handle subdirectories gracefully).
.mp3 player, btw. I'll consider it again when they're no longer so crippled.
I've been shopping around for a new CD player for my car. I thought I'd like it to play
I'm told that car CD players do exist that can do this, but they're still prohibitively expensive. And I haven't actually seen one with my own eyes.
Anyway, I'd also like a home CD changer that could query FreeDB for artist/album/track info and display it on a small LCD display (and save the info somewhere to prevent looking it up every time I play the CD). Or better yet, a standard for storing this type of metadata on the CD itself, in a format that can be read and displayed by CD players, but as old as CDs are, if we don't have that now we're obviously never going to get it.
Wow, that was a bit of a tangent. I've given up on buying a car
Except that it's adware, even after you pay for it.
I had a Vindigo subscription for a year, and it was useful, but I got so sick of the ads that I cancelled it anyway. When I wrote to them asking why they don't disclose this fact before you subscribe I was basically told that this is the way it is and if I don't like it I can cancel. So I did.
Are you crazy? I bet it does exactly the opposite. Haven't you ever noticed how much more expensive junk food is?
You don't have to reorganize your mp3s. Really. The iTunes interface gives you access to your files, by Artist, Album, Genre, etc. And you can sort/search for them every which-way. So there's no need to manually keep them in organized folders yourself
Unless, of course, you ever want to do something with them outside of iTunes. Then it becomes a major pain in the ass.
Actually, sensible people in any of these areas will just wait until a more decent hour to see it.
He's probably referring to one of these, some of which can reportedly run arbitrary code.
The price of security is eternal vigilance. Full stop.
It was probably posted because Slashdot has previously reported a similar story and people seemed to be interested in it, despite it not being "techie", "nerdy", or "geeky". You'll note that there are often stories about privacy issues here.
A bridge is network-transparent. Note that now you have a publically-routable IP address on your home machine (or firewall, or whatever), you don't have to use RFC1918 internal addresses behind the DSL bridge/modem. Once your ISP provisions additional IP address for you, using them is as simple as assigning them to whatever computers or devices you want.
What about OpenSSH exploits? Bind? Sendmail? Need I go on?
Someone who knows what he's doing, on any platform, will patch the vulnerabilities before they can become a problem.
I've administered an internet-connected NT4 mail/web server for the past four years and have not been affected by a single security problem. Why? Because I don't expose unnecessary services to the internet and I apply patches when needed, as soon as they're available. The same as I do for the Linux machines I administer and my OS X machine at home.
How does one go about getting OLD versions of browsers to check their sites with?
All the old browsers you'll ever need can be found at http://browsers.evolt.org/.
With IE, can you install mult. versions on the same machine?
On a Mac, yes. On Windows, no. That, combined with IE's frequent security updates, means I never test my sites on anything but the most current version of IE available. The alternative, leaving IE unpatched, doesn't really appeal, even though I don't normally use it for day-to-day stuff.
I should have mentioned in my original post there there should be an op-out clause for people who know what they're doing (Windows users excluded).
I'm going to assume you meant to say "Windows users included" here, as excluding all Windows users, regardless of their level of expertise, from a service that is available to users of other operating systems is ridiculous and elitist.
Windows, just like any flavor of *nix, can be anywhere between extremely secure to hideously insecure, depending on the knowledge and experience of the person who's running it.
There is no evidence that the SoBig virus was written by spammers
The fact that it's a trojan with a payload of a proxy server that is used to relay spam is pretty damning evidence, in my opinion. If it wasn't written by spammers themselves, it's almost certain that they contracted someone to do it.
And as for bandwidth charges. This, in principle, exists. However, for one, I've never once seen my internet bill go up within my billing period for any reason, much less specifically because of spam. The only time it's gone up is when *I* have upgraded my service. And as your example illustrates, in terms of bandwidth in this age of broadband, spam represents only a tiny fraction of received mail *in terms of size*.
You have obviously never paid to keep a mail server in a co-location facility where you do pay for your bandwidth usage. There you see the cost effect of spam in a way you don't on an individual level. Multiply the amount of spam the average person receives times the number of mailboxes on your system, figure out how much bandwidth is being used by it, and then you'll see how spam has a very real cost associated with it.
It only gets worse as it scales up. ISPs get to the point where they frequently have to add additional hardware to handle the fact that 30 - 40% of their incoming mail is spam.
A co-worker of mine left his workstation unlocked over his day off one time. We picked half a dozen of his .mp3s at random, backed them up to somewhere he wasn't likely to stumble across them, and replaced them all with "Who Let the Dogs Out", named to the same name as the original files.
There's nothing funnier than a week or two later, after we had pretty much forgotten about it, hearing that song blaring out in the middle of his Bob Marley playlist.
We also do the standard send-email-to-the-office-mailing-list prank, but we expand that to typing in their IRC and AIM windows as well. Telling peoples' friends "Tell me you love me" is always good for a laugh.
See eXistenz for another take on that theme.
Well, he is on their board of directors.
Why not? They voted him back into office less than a year ago.
How come I pay $22 per month for a 56k dialup connection while my friend gets 1.5Mb/256k DSL with a static IP address for just over twice that amount?
/28 for under $100/mo. but, until that happens, I'm not going to cry over what I've got when it's so much better than what I had five years ago.
Actually, that's what I'm paying for my DSL and you know what? I think it's a pretty good deal. Compare what you've got to the alternatives available to you, not what's available to someone halfway around the world.
Don't get me wrong, what I'd really like is a completely unrestricted 100Mb/s network connection to my house with my own
True, but if you'll notice, the latest crop of viruses don't actually cause any damage. They're more concerned with propagation rather than killing their host outright. I don't think this latest one does any damage at all other than disabling antivirus software and such. Something like that will do its thing whether it's running as root or not.
So what's the answer?