Now how exactly does it relate to the question about bandwidth throttling? Why is it necessary for you to point out that your prices are not the best in the industry? How does your pricing strategy relate to bandwidth consumption control?
Because, one possible answser to my inquiry might be "lots of hosting providers these days offer unlimited bandwidth. Why can't you do that?" or "You charge too much for bandwidth as it is!" While those may be valid answers, I wanted to clarify that we're not operating on a scale where we can make those sort of adjustments as easily, and so I'm interested in answers that focus on managing existing resources better instead of conforming to what may be standard for the big powerhouse hosting companies. I hope that helps.
There are some good instructions here for setting up qmail on OS X.
qmail is the #2 MTA on the Internet, and the fastest growing. Highly recommended over sendmail, with distinct superiority in issues of security, reliability, and efficiency.
You're going to switch to OS X now, or you're going to switch to OS X later. The only question you have to answer is "what section of the train do I want to be on?" The engine's already rolled past...do you want to be comfortable in the middle coach cars, or running behind the caboose trying to catch up?
Seriously: I'm a switcher...a power-user/sysadmin who used Windozes and frumped around with RedHat/FreeBSD desktops for a long time, got up the nerve to try OS X, and I'm not looking back. I tell people who laugh (as they drool over my TiBook) and/or don't understand that in 5 years, they'll be using OS X too. Their laugh is a little more strained at that point, because I think they sense that I may be right. Maybe they *want* me to be right.
The plunge is totally worth it. If I had the cash, I'd offer you a money-back guarantee. OS X is the future of desktop computing.
Thanks to all who have responded so far. Most of the responses have been along the lines of "Get a lawyer, get an accountant". Others have decided to be nasty and called me a dick for asking or claimed that the question isn't of any interest.
To clarify a few things:
I've already got a lawyer and accountant working on the issue for me.
I will defer to their counsel in almost all cases.
On some issues, they've indicated that I have a choice about what particular path I take.
Given that the Slashdot population as a whole has more experience (anecdotal though it may be) than my particular lawyer and accountant do on this topic, I thought it would be interesting to see what others have done in similar situations
I appreciate the responses with positive, relevant insights.
No love for recent QT 5 Pro License Buyers
on
QuickTime 6 Is Out
·
· Score: 2
I just bought the unlock license for QT 5 Pro a few weeks ago. I just called a friendly Apple sales rep and asked if there were any opportunities to get a discount on the QT 6 unlock, or a refund on the QT 5 license. She indicated that there were no such opportunities, but that I should check back later. If anyone finds different, let us know.
All of the replies to this thread are great - I'm glad to see people encouraging alternative fuel sources for cars, given all of the environmental, political, and financial benefits. I'll add a link to the Grassroots Biodesel and Vegetable Oil Fuel site, run by the folks living at an awesome ecovillage in northwest Missouri.
But beyond that, I just wanted to encourage folks to consider long-term solutions that don't necessarily involve buying the right car. If you have to buy a car now, go for it, but maybe as a part of that process you could take some time to write a letter to your government representative encouraging investment in mass transit, bicycle infrastructure (bike lanes, etc), and more broad support for environmentally friendly transportation methods (on land, air, and sea).
The energy and resources devoted to producing cars, even eco-friendly ones, and the infrastructure that supports them is still very significant in an unsustainable sort of way, and we won't be any better off in 20 years if we're all just solo drivers of SUVs that happen to be running on biodiesel.
Also, if you're going to join a motorist club, don't join AAA, use an org like Better World. Better World provides all the same features, but unlike AAA, they don't actively oppose funding for mass transit, clean air regulations, bike paths, etc.
Yeah, hey, watch it with the redneck jokes. I've been pretty happy living on a small farm in rural Indiana for the past few years, but that doesn't mean I can't kick your ass when it comes to administering a FreeBSD cluster, desigining a network, writing Perl, or other mad skillz. And that's between feeding the sheep, planting the garlic, driving big trucks around, and whatever else it is you think we do. Just watch out - one day a "redneck"'s might just 0wN jo0.:)
About a year ago I wrote an article about why Napster should have called it quits then, instead of coming to an end this way. I'd like to take this opportunity to say "I told you so." But there's a little more substance and principle to it than that, if you check out the article.
We're a small web-development/consulting shop, and things have definitely been a little slow over the past few months. We've found the best ways to avoid it turning into a mess like the one linked include things like:
-Always keep your employees informed about the state of things: finances, workload, potential customers, potential problem areas. Big surprises are bad, dramatic changes are bad.
-Let everybody know that their loyalty and willingness to stay through rough times will be rewarded in the good times. But, complementing that, don't expect them to take their loyalty too far (i.e. to the point where they can't live their lives, pay bills, etc) - let them know that you'll support them in whatever adjustments they need to make, including leaving if necessary.
-Use the experience, skills, and wisdom of your collective staff to find new ways to bring in income, reduce expenses, and streamline operations without sacrificing quality. Having 1 or 2 people at the "top" trying to make all the right decisions is too much - include the people who will be affected by them in the process, especially when times get rough.
-Don't do anything stupid that will put you in court, jail, congressional hearings, or on the front page of the paper. Business ethics are business ethics, through good times and bad - whatever yours are, don't sacrifice them just to save this particular ship, even if it is cutting those icebergs a little close.
How's that for a dose of idealism? But really - honesty, trust, integrity and creativity will get you through a lot more crap than a 50% paycut for your employees will. It's worked for us.
Can anyone confirm or deny that the bug with the not being able to use a TiBook 667 with JUST an external monitor, and the lid closed has been fixed?
I was on the phone with Apple Care today and, while solving an unrelated problem, indicated my frustration about this issue. The tech explained it was a thermal/design issue - the system would get too hot and possibly cause damage to components. The fact that this was still the party line on the day of the OS update would indicate that the lid will stay open for a while.
Re:"Not Possible," says Local Slashdot Reader
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2
I believe that, in this case, "absence of evidence is evidence of absence". In other words, the fact that we don't already know about time travel is evidence that time travel will never be possible. This gets confusing quickly, but if time travel ever becomes possible, somebody will surely travel to what is our past.
I can disprove your theory using your theory: let's say that someone 100 years (or whatever) from now travels back in time and tells us about time travel. So now we know that time travel is possible, and you're saying this would have happened by now.
But, what if 500 years from now (or whatever), someone decides that time travel is a bad idea, has harmed humanity, etc., so *they* travel back in time to stop the creation of time travel 100 years from now. The end result? Time travel happens (and is therefore possible), but no evidence of time travel exists, at least not for us yet.
In a four-dimensional universe, theories that depend on a linear, unalterable nature of time probably won't hold up for very long. Or maybe I'm just bitter that I got kicked out of the Q continuum.
China should look at SpamCop's weekly statistics on most exploited open relays, and then consider carefully whether or not this is "our" problem, or "their" problem.
If you produce counterfeit bills and try to spend them at my store, and I ask you to leave saying "your fake money's no good here", would you really want to try to sue me into accepting your funny money?
AT&T, other ISPs should take advantage of this
on
Spam Slows AT&T Email
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I hope that AT&T tells their customers exactly what happened: "your mail was delayed because of spam". This is just the kind of incident that would help educate the masses that spam is a very real problem that needs immediate attention.
I agree with the other posters who note that the economics of Spamming need to be reversed in order to stop it, but I think that, even before that, public opinion needs to be swayed such that it is perceived as a significant problem worth addressing all over the place, not just at one ISP or for one open relay. A lot of people have just gotten used to ignoring/deleting 5, 20, 100 spam messages per day. "It's just part of using the Internet, right?" This needs to change. When things like the AT&T congestion happen, they should be used to get the public a little more outraged.
What lawyer goes home at night thinking "wow, I really made a difference today. I'm doing my own little part to end poverty, stop war, and make life for all people everywhere happy and sustainable by... PATENTING HYPERLINKING." ??
BT needs to hire a Director of Choosing Your Battles.
Acording to this article Google is getting deluged by resumes, this is just a way for them to weed out the 600+ resumes they get a day.
The winner of this contest (and maybe a few of the runner ups) will most likely get a job offer as well. Beats having to weed through 4200 greatly exagerated CVs every week...
It's just like Willy Wonka's plan in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"! He had a special contest, the winners of which got a lifetime supply of Willy Wonka Chocolate and a VIP tour of the factory. After all the bratty winning kids were weeded out, Wonka says to the remaining kid Charlie: the factory is yours.
Google kind of reminds me of Willy Wonka that way.
I still haven't been able to find a registrar other than NSI that allows you to make changes to your registration via PGP-authenticated e-mail. And they're slowing phasing out that feature.
Anyone know of another registrar that allows this?
I just now realized the gravity of NetSol's changing policies after having a conversation with one of their techs.
In the past, as a technical contact for a large number of domains that I may or may not have been the registrant of, I could make changes to the domain's contact assignments and DNS info via e-mail (using PGP to authenticate the request, of course). This was good because it could be automated and repeated without having any bit of information that was unique to each domain.
Under the new/recent system, domains registered are assigned an account number (it's possible to have 1 account number to N domains) with a password, and that information is required to make changes to the domain. The technical contact no longer has the authority to make changes unless he/she is given the username/password by the registrant.
There are definite security advantages here, don't get me wrong. But after pressing the NetSol tech on it for a while, he admitted that they have no provision for folks like me that may need to update a large number of domains at once. We were able to determine together that my options are:
A) obtain the account info and password for every domain and make the change myself, or
B) send the change information to every customer/domain registrant, and ask them to change it.
The horror or either option should be apparent, especially in that neither scales well at all.
To make things worse, NetSol is planning ("in the next few months", according to the tech) to assign account numbers and passwords to all the old-school domain registrations that can still be updated by e-mail. This will finally lock me out (as the tech contact) of any control for all of our hosted domains until I contact each customer and ask them to hand over their password.
Don't mean to whine - you can see where I'm going here. I'm wondering if anyone knows of an alternate registrar that allows e-mail based change requests (preferrably with PGP) or otherwise provides some tools to ISPs for bulk updates?
Why shouldn't I work for the NSA? That a tough one, but I'll take a shot.
Say I'm working at the NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it, maybe I break it. I'm really happy with myself, because I did my job well.
But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or in the Middle East and once they have that location they bomb the village where the rebel army is hiding. Fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with, just got killed.
Now the politicians are saying "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area," because they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there getting shot just like it wasn't them when their number got called because they were pulling a tour in the National Guard.
It'll be some kid from Southie over there taking shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from, and the guy that put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, because he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile he realizes that the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies use the little skirmish to scare up oil prices. It's a cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
They're taking their sweet time bringing the oil back, of course, and maybe they took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fucking play slalom with the icebergs. It ain't too long until he hits one, spills the oil, and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic.
So now my buddy's out of work, he can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the fucking job interviews which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is giving him chronic hemorrhoids. Meanwhile, he's starving because any time he tries to get a bite to eat the only Blue Plate Special they're serving is North Atlantic Scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think? I'm holding out for something better.
I figure, fuck it. While I'm at it, I might as well just shoot my buddy in the ass, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard. I could be elected President.
--From "Good Will Hunting" (Matt Damon's character speaking to an NSA recruiter, in a heavy Boston accent)
I want to clarify that it's not a matter of behavior or professionalism. Web development is generally a surprisingly involved process of meeting a lot of different criteria, expectations, and standards, all while trying to retain a sense of style, creativity, and originality. We have clients come to us all the time and ask us to build websites that they can't view properly on their own out-dated software. We have people who want us to build extra-secure websites, and then demand that we make exceptions to accomodate their home dial-up account, thus ripping a big security hole in the whole operation. I assure you that we do everything we can to optimize for the common case, extensive testing before releasing and all. But you just can't meet everyone's expectations and still develop something you want to take credit for.
I'm frequently reminded of the Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert's boss tells him the company website needs to be more "webbish". And then he asks how long that will take.:) That's the world of professional website development in a nutshell.
From the article: "If the web page is valid and you can't view it in your browser, the problem is your browser," said WaSP steering committee member Dori Smith. "Our goal is not to promote one browser maker's product over another; we are urging users to upgrade to any browser that does a better job of supporting standards than the one they're using now."
Now, I'm a professional website developer, and I have my fair share of frustration in building websites that are generally accepted as "standards compliant" but that can't be rendered properly by many people (sometimes even our clients, on their own machines).
But, the approach of these folks seems too harsh and too subjective. They're basically saying that "our desire to use standards is supremely more important than your [lack of technical experience | shortage of time | computer's limitations | appreciation for simplicity. ]"
It's not that these things can't be overcome in time - they can, and they are being overcome. But to suggest that, starting right now, someone shouldn't be able to look at a website with whatever client software they want is akin, in my mind, to saying they shouldn't be able to publish on the web unless they adhere to a certain set of guidelines. That's scary.
If you're interested in another comprehensive howto document that's slightly more technical and includes more info for sysadmins and organizational policy makers, check out this qmail anti-spam howto.
Note that a lot of the instructions given in the "death to spam" document can be consolidated and handed off to services like spamcop, which will do all the tracking down stuff for you and just tell you which address to send abuse complaints to. Very handy.
I have been maintaining an anti-spam HOWTO document for some time now that might be useful to read. It's written for qmail users and administrators, but does address both the theories/principles behind blocking/preventing spam, and the technical methods that can be used to actually do this. I think it's a good summary document for users, sysadmins, and managers considering these issues.
Note that hobbyists and students can still buy a discounted version of VMWare from the VMWare store up until December 4th. That's $100 versus the usual $300. After that (according to a recent e-mail sent to their mailing list), they'll only be handling discounted orders through a special distributor.
I've been using VMware to "do the windows work I need to do with the stability of Linux" and I'm thoroughly pleased. USB support + some speed improvements would be great, but all in good time.
Slashdot Mirror
Because, one possible answser to my inquiry might be "lots of hosting providers these days offer unlimited bandwidth. Why can't you do that?" or "You charge too much for bandwidth as it is!" While those may be valid answers, I wanted to clarify that we're not operating on a scale where we can make those sort of adjustments as easily, and so I'm interested in answers that focus on managing existing resources better instead of conforming to what may be standard for the big powerhouse hosting companies. I hope that helps.
qmail is the #2 MTA on the Internet, and the fastest growing. Highly recommended over sendmail, with distinct superiority in issues of security, reliability, and efficiency.
Seriously: I'm a switcher...a power-user/sysadmin who used Windozes and frumped around with RedHat/FreeBSD desktops for a long time, got up the nerve to try OS X, and I'm not looking back. I tell people who laugh (as they drool over my TiBook) and/or don't understand that in 5 years, they'll be using OS X too. Their laugh is a little more strained at that point, because I think they sense that I may be right. Maybe they *want* me to be right.
The plunge is totally worth it. If I had the cash, I'd offer you a money-back guarantee. OS X is the future of desktop computing.
To clarify a few things:
I just bought the unlock license for QT 5 Pro a few weeks ago. I just called a friendly Apple sales rep and asked if there were any opportunities to get a discount on the QT 6 unlock, or a refund on the QT 5 license. She indicated that there were no such opportunities, but that I should check back later. If anyone finds different, let us know.
But beyond that, I just wanted to encourage folks to consider long-term solutions that don't necessarily involve buying the right car. If you have to buy a car now, go for it, but maybe as a part of that process you could take some time to write a letter to your government representative encouraging investment in mass transit, bicycle infrastructure (bike lanes, etc), and more broad support for environmentally friendly transportation methods (on land, air, and sea).
The energy and resources devoted to producing cars, even eco-friendly ones, and the infrastructure that supports them is still very significant in an unsustainable sort of way, and we won't be any better off in 20 years if we're all just solo drivers of SUVs that happen to be running on biodiesel.
Also, if you're going to join a motorist club, don't join AAA, use an org like Better World. Better World provides all the same features, but unlike AAA, they don't actively oppose funding for mass transit, clean air regulations, bike paths, etc.
204.179.120.93 swquery.apple.com
Oh, sure, and we're just supposed to trust that your DNS hasn't already been poisoned? :)
Yeah, hey, watch it with the redneck jokes. I've been pretty happy living on a small farm in rural Indiana for the past few years, but that doesn't mean I can't kick your ass when it comes to administering a FreeBSD cluster, desigining a network, writing Perl, or other mad skillz. And that's between feeding the sheep, planting the garlic, driving big trucks around, and whatever else it is you think we do. Just watch out - one day a "redneck"'s might just 0wN jo0. :)
About a year ago I wrote an article about why Napster should have called it quits then, instead of coming to an end this way. I'd like to take this opportunity to say "I told you so." But there's a little more substance and principle to it than that, if you check out the article.
We're a small web-development/consulting shop, and things have definitely been a little slow over the past few months. We've found the best ways to avoid it turning into a mess like the one linked include things like:
-Always keep your employees informed about the state of things: finances, workload, potential customers, potential problem areas. Big surprises are bad, dramatic changes are bad.
-Let everybody know that their loyalty and willingness to stay through rough times will be rewarded in the good times. But, complementing that, don't expect them to take their loyalty too far (i.e. to the point where they can't live their lives, pay bills, etc) - let them know that you'll support them in whatever adjustments they need to make, including leaving if necessary.
-Use the experience, skills, and wisdom of your collective staff to find new ways to bring in income, reduce expenses, and streamline operations without sacrificing quality. Having 1 or 2 people at the "top" trying to make all the right decisions is too much - include the people who will be affected by them in the process, especially when times get rough.
-Don't do anything stupid that will put you in court, jail, congressional hearings, or on the front page of the paper. Business ethics are business ethics, through good times and bad - whatever yours are, don't sacrifice them just to save this particular ship, even if it is cutting those icebergs a little close.
How's that for a dose of idealism? But really - honesty, trust, integrity and creativity will get you through a lot more crap than a 50% paycut for your employees will. It's worked for us.
I was on the phone with Apple Care today and, while solving an unrelated problem, indicated my frustration about this issue. The tech explained it was a thermal/design issue - the system would get too hot and possibly cause damage to components. The fact that this was still the party line on the day of the OS update would indicate that the lid will stay open for a while.
I can disprove your theory using your theory: let's say that someone 100 years (or whatever) from now travels back in time and tells us about time travel. So now we know that time travel is possible, and you're saying this would have happened by now.
But, what if 500 years from now (or whatever), someone decides that time travel is a bad idea, has harmed humanity, etc., so *they* travel back in time to stop the creation of time travel 100 years from now. The end result? Time travel happens (and is therefore possible), but no evidence of time travel exists, at least not for us yet.
In a four-dimensional universe, theories that depend on a linear, unalterable nature of time probably won't hold up for very long. Or maybe I'm just bitter that I got kicked out of the Q continuum.
If you produce counterfeit bills and try to spend them at my store, and I ask you to leave saying "your fake money's no good here", would you really want to try to sue me into accepting your funny money?
I agree with the other posters who note that the economics of Spamming need to be reversed in order to stop it, but I think that, even before that, public opinion needs to be swayed such that it is perceived as a significant problem worth addressing all over the place, not just at one ISP or for one open relay. A lot of people have just gotten used to ignoring/deleting 5, 20, 100 spam messages per day. "It's just part of using the Internet, right?" This needs to change. When things like the AT&T congestion happen, they should be used to get the public a little more outraged.
I maintain an anti-spam resource for the qmail community, which I will now shamelessly plug: http://www.summersault.com/chris/techno/qmail/qmai l-antispam.html
BT needs to hire a Director of Choosing Your Battles.
It's just like Willy Wonka's plan in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"! He had a special contest, the winners of which got a lifetime supply of Willy Wonka Chocolate and a VIP tour of the factory. After all the bratty winning kids were weeded out, Wonka says to the remaining kid Charlie: the factory is yours.
Google kind of reminds me of Willy Wonka that way.
I still haven't been able to find a registrar other than NSI that allows you to make changes to your registration via PGP-authenticated e-mail. And they're slowing phasing out that feature.
Anyone know of another registrar that allows this?
In the past, as a technical contact for a large number of domains that I may or may not have been the registrant of, I could make changes to the domain's contact assignments and DNS info via e-mail (using PGP to authenticate the request, of course). This was good because it could be automated and repeated without having any bit of information that was unique to each domain.
Under the new/recent system, domains registered are assigned an account number (it's possible to have 1 account number to N domains) with a password, and that information is required to make changes to the domain. The technical contact no longer has the authority to make changes unless he/she is given the username/password by the registrant.
There are definite security advantages here, don't get me wrong. But after pressing the NetSol tech on it for a while, he admitted that they have no provision for folks like me that may need to update a large number of domains at once. We were able to determine together that my options are:
A) obtain the account info and password for every domain and make the change myself, or
B) send the change information to every customer/domain registrant, and ask them to change it.
The horror or either option should be apparent, especially in that neither scales well at all.
To make things worse, NetSol is planning ("in the next few months", according to the tech) to assign account numbers and passwords to all the old-school domain registrations that can still be updated by e-mail. This will finally lock me out (as the tech contact) of any control for all of our hosted domains until I contact each customer and ask them to hand over their password.
Don't mean to whine - you can see where I'm going here. I'm wondering if anyone knows of an alternate registrar that allows e-mail based change requests (preferrably with PGP) or otherwise provides some tools to ISPs for bulk updates?
Say I'm working at the NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it, maybe I break it. I'm really happy with myself, because I did my job well.
But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or in the Middle East and once they have that location they bomb the village where the rebel army is hiding. Fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with, just got killed.
Now the politicians are saying "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area," because they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there getting shot just like it wasn't them when their number got called because they were pulling a tour in the National Guard.
It'll be some kid from Southie over there taking shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from, and the guy that put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, because he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile he realizes that the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies use the little skirmish to scare up oil prices. It's a cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
They're taking their sweet time bringing the oil back, of course, and maybe they took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fucking play slalom with the icebergs. It ain't too long until he hits one, spills the oil, and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic.
So now my buddy's out of work, he can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the fucking job interviews which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is giving him chronic hemorrhoids. Meanwhile, he's starving because any time he tries to get a bite to eat the only Blue Plate Special they're serving is North Atlantic Scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think? I'm holding out for something better.
I figure, fuck it. While I'm at it, I might as well just shoot my buddy in the ass, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard. I could be elected President.
--From "Good Will Hunting" (Matt Damon's character speaking to an NSA recruiter, in a heavy Boston accent)
I'm frequently reminded of the Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert's boss tells him the company website needs to be more "webbish". And then he asks how long that will take. :) That's the world of professional website development in a nutshell.
Now, I'm a professional website developer, and I have my fair share of frustration in building websites that are generally accepted as "standards compliant" but that can't be rendered properly by many people (sometimes even our clients, on their own machines).
But, the approach of these folks seems too harsh and too subjective. They're basically saying that "our desire to use standards is supremely more important than your [lack of technical experience | shortage of time | computer's limitations | appreciation for simplicity. ]"
It's not that these things can't be overcome in time - they can, and they are being overcome. But to suggest that, starting right now, someone shouldn't be able to look at a website with whatever client software they want is akin, in my mind, to saying they shouldn't be able to publish on the web unless they adhere to a certain set of guidelines. That's scary.
Note that a lot of the instructions given in the "death to spam" document can be consolidated and handed off to services like spamcop, which will do all the tracking down stuff for you and just tell you which address to send abuse complaints to. Very handy.
I have been maintaining an anti-spam HOWTO document for some time now that might be useful to read. It's written for qmail users and administrators, but does address both the theories/principles behind blocking/preventing spam, and the technical methods that can be used to actually do this. I think it's a good summary document for users, sysadmins, and managers considering these issues.
I've been using VMware to "do the windows work I need to do with the stability of Linux" and I'm thoroughly pleased. USB support + some speed improvements would be great, but all in good time.