The Civil Aeronautics Board was abolished. Look what the resultant deregulation did to the airlines. How many have gone bankrupt since 1980? And of course, we're all seeing what wonderful customer service and convenient schedules and routes the deregulated airlines are providing.
We tried trusting the DMA to meet with the Internet community to define what spam is, and work with said community to promote anti-spam legislation with real teeth in it (unlike the YOU-CAN-SPAM act). The DMA paid lip service to the concerns expressed at the meeting, and then later betrayed everyone except their own members and interests by endorsing spam as "commercial free speech."
They continued on to promote the idea that the industry could regulate itself. Look where E-mail is today with the DMA's much-hyped idea of "self-regulation" of E-mail "marketing."
Even the Amateur Radio Service, supposedly self-regulating, is having its share of problems.
Do we really, REALLY want to trust the broadcasters and mass media to regulate themselves?
I don't think so. The biggest problem with the FCC right now is that its chief commissioner, Michael Powell, is a Bush crony who has no more of a grip on common sense and technical realities than the Shrub himself. Get rid of Powell, and replace the commissioners that are part of his little circle, and I would wager that things would start improving practically overnight.
Still didn't look right. Besides, there was another big technical error right in front of us poor movie-goers. Think about it for a minute.
--The kids were after food themselves. They found such in the ship's galley.
--All they had to do was throw a whole bunch into the room where the wolfies were. There was far more in there than they or the other survivors could carry, let alone eat. The canids would be busy enough dealing with it that they would ignore anything short of a direct threat or an attempt to take food away.
The point I'm trying to make is that Hollywood went way overboard with that whole scene, just to make it look like Poor Humans vs. Big Bad Wolves. Just plain awful...
The visuals for the weather effects were awesome. However, the 'digital wolves' really stank. I've met more than a couple of wolves, and seen a whole pack of 'em going about their daily routines, and I can say with confidence that they do NOT move like the movie showed.
There were other faux pas, behavior-wise. Wolves are, by nature, very timid critters where people are concerned. You make any sort of sudden move or loud noise and, if they're not backed into a corner or you're not threatening a mom and cubs, they'll run away. Fast!
Then again, it seems to be a Hollywood requirement that any disaster movie needs to be equipped with SOME sort of allegedly people-eating animal. I guess wolves just happened to be handy at the time.
One of the mainstream (Capitol, BMI, Warner, etc.) music industry's favorite mantras, where poor album sales are concerned, is that CD copying and file downloading are largely to blame.
Did it ever occur to these same executives, even ONCE, that the REAL reason their sales are in the crapper might just be because much of today's alleged "music" (and I use the term loosely) is utter crap?
How long has it been since we've heard a band with the raw talent and power of, say, Boston? How long has it been since we've heard a singer who is also a real musician and actually WRITES THEIR OWN WORK? And performs it? Jimmy Buffett, just as one example, is still going strong today doing just that.
The music industry seems to be a lot more interested in "packaging" a voice, and selling it in concert (pardon the pun) with homogenized electronically-produced soundtracks that should be banned by the Geneva Convention, than they do in giving real music talent a chance. Witness shows like "American Idol" as a case in point. All they're doing is rehashing material that was written by others, and focusing on nothing but the voice. Horrid....
I can count the number of CDs I've bought in the last TEN YEARS on the fingers of one hand. Prior to that, in the late 80's and early 90's, I was buying several per month.
It's not because I've lost interest in the medium, nor is it because I'm into downloading MP3's (I'm not -- I literally don't have the time, as I've got enough to do maintaining my day job, side business, and my 'net presence).
No, the real reason I've not been buying many CDs is simply because I'm not finding a whole lot Out There that's worth buying. I blame the mainstream record companies for being more interested in quick sales than in promoting real talent.
GOOD music and REAL talent will sell themselves. The mainstream music labels should be concentrating more on fixing their own (very serious) internal problems than on buying up legislators and getting useless laws put into effect.
...You're self-hosted, as I am? I run everything for my domains, including authoritative DNS. The only things I get from my upstream ISP are a DSL data pipe and six static addresses.
I make no use of their servers at all, other than maintaining a backup E-mail box (which forwards to my servers in any case).
So what does the FBI do if someone is, effectively, their own ISP, but they're not providing service to anyone outside their immediate family (and one friend), nor reselling service?
The ONLY conditions I can see where there might be "legal obligations" to deliver all E-mail traffic is where the servers, and other university resources, are taxpayer (read: publically) funded.
Is that what's going on here? If not, it seems to me it would be a clear case of "their servers, their bandwidth, their rules," and that they could run things any way they bloody well pleased.
That's certainly the way it is with privately-owned systems.
...At least in terms of a long-range view. Assuming that the ultimate goal is to GET RID of oil as an energy source, since it is environmentally "dirty" and not readily renewable, such plants could reduce the motivation to find clean and renewable energy sources.
Consider this as a vicious cycle: Emissions from gasoline-burning cars are partly responsible for acid rain, which is destructive to agriculture. Too much acid rain = reduction in available plant matter, which ultimately means less agro-waste for the reprocessing plant and less CO2-to-oxygen conversion for our world. Given enough time, we're right back at square one, possibly even worse off than before.
I don't pretend to have all, or even some, of The Answers, as it were, but I'm not going to start celebrating until I know quite a bit more about this system, and whether ALL the long-term risks have been adequately considered.
--Generally derided as an urban legend, with good reason.
I have absolutely no issue using my cellphone while fueling, because I know, as a tech, that there's no way the thing could generate even half the energy required to trigger a spark hot enough to ignite anything.
HOWEVER -- The one thing I absolutely do NOT do is get back into my car, slide across the seat while getting out again, and then touch the pump nozzle. That's a sure way to generate a dangerous spark.
Translation: RF energy is not the issue here. Static electricity is. If RF were an issue, we'd have police, fire, and other public-safety people causing explosions every time they had to use their mobile or portable radios while fueling up (and I can tell you from direct experience that said radios generate a heck of a lot more power -- anywhere from 3-5 watts for a portable to over 100 watts for a mobile) than any wireless phone handset (outputs of less than 100 milliwatts, typically).
Can we please bury this long-deceased equine? The smell is really getting nasty...
On point #1: The radios you refer to are in the Family Radio Service. It would not be practical to use them to trigger a bomb because -- guess what? -- Anyone else using an FRS radio on the same frequency could trigger such prematurely.
Point #2 is more plausible, but I can tell you from direct experience that the control transmitters for model aircraft are BIG. Very difficult to conceal, let alone operate surreptitiously.
On point #3: Again, with any receiver that just detects a carrier or similar signal, as could be produced by a spark-gapper, you're running the risk of triggering a device prematurely, especially if the receiver is broad-banded and someone happens to key their portable radio near enough to it. Spark-gap devices are very noisy as well, and practically impossible to operate in 'stealth' mode.
Now, with all that said, and to answer your original question: A jamming device, being (in most cases) a simple transmitter or sweep oscillator, can be made as narrow or as broad-banded as available funds or circumstances dictate. It's perfectly feasible to construct one that will kill cellphones, but permit conventional radio traffic to pass unhindered. Remember that a great many police, fire, and public service agencies still depend on good ole' FM analog radios, and said radios operate well away from cellular frequencies (with a few exceptions).
I'm sorry. I cannot agree. True confirmed opt-in attaches a unique randomly-generated token to each confirmation message. You keep the confirmations on file, and if someone complains you can send their confirmation back to them, saying "see? You really did opt in."
In any case, you are absolutely correct. By my definition, you are a spammer. For every complaint that you DO receive, there are likely quite a few others that you do not for whatever reason (user doesn't bother, etc.)
Considering that you were nice enough to include your company's URL in your post, I will be adding your IP range(s) to our local 'Deny' list this evening.
That aside, the fact remains that Scott Richter is a criminal, a liar, and a thief, not necessarily in that order. The judge in the case was a true ass for granting even a TRO.
"There are firewall/spam blocker methods that will continue to fail as spammers learn the tricks to route around them. This is the old hacker/security expert game. Build a better lock/block and it will soon be cracked/by-passed. The cycle is repeated ad nauseum."
Really? Now how do you come to that conclusion?
I ask because I use a combination of blocking methods, including referencing at least a half-dozen DNSBL's and a locally-generated (on our mail servers) blocking list. The ultimate purpose is to refuse connection attempts based on source IP address or domain name.
This method is extremely effective, and I don't know of any cases where it has been cracked.
The most egregious offenders, such as Wholesale Bandwidth (who happen to be hosting a big chunk of Richter's operations), get dropped into my router's 'Deny' table. This has the effect of denying ANY connection to any system within my LAN, based (again) on originating IP address or address range.
This method has also proved extremely effective, saving me God only knows how many hours of wasted effort in sorting out what's spam and what's not.
Please explain to me how these methods, used by thousands of other admins and ISPs, "will continue to fail," because I can't see that they ever failed in the first place.
If you don't believe me, ask your ISP to turn off any filters they're using on your mailbox for a 48 hour period.;-)
Oh, one other thing. Don't write it as "SPAM." That's a registered trademark of Hormel Foods. Write it as "spam" or "Spam."
"First, I know nothing of OIRB specifically. However, please don't assume that all email marketing companies are spammers. It just isn't true. I work for a company that does email marketing, and our server has had the same IP address for over a year, and all of our emails come from the same domain, with clear opt-out instructions (in addition, you had to have opted in directly to have received it to begin with)..."
"Clear opt-out instructions."
Now why in the Multiverse would you even need those if you were running confirmed opt-IN to begin with?
Speaking as a self-hosted SysAdmin, one who deals with the spam onslaught every single day, I would be very interested to hear a detailed description of your opt-in process. It should go something like this.
(1) User visits your web site (or whoever's site with your link on it), and decides they want to be on your mailing list.
(2) User clicks link accordingly, is given a full set of details on said list, and is asked to provide an E-mail address.
(3) User does so. User then receives a confirming E-mail, saying "We received your subscription request for list (whatever). If this was really you, and you really want to receive this, do (whatever). If you do NOT want to do this, do nothing and you'll never hear from us again."
That, in a nutshell, is confirmed opt-in. It is the ONLY legitimate method of bulk E-mail advertising.
If your company is not doing those exact steps, in that exact sequence, you're spamming. Period.
If you are spamming, please tell me which marketing firm you're with so I can place your IP address range(s) into my domain's 'Deny' list for the mail servers.
...And only IF they allow VPN traffic to go through.
Permit me to expand on this. While several libraries,bookstore/coffee places, and even a few hotels have installed WAPs for the benefit of their patrons, and said WAPs work perfectly well for generic web surfing, I've yet to find a single one that allows VPN traffic to pass through.
This makes no sense whatsoever to me. What good is a wireless LAN connection if you can't use it to attach to your home or office LAN via secure tunnel?
When queried about the outright blocking of VPN traffic, the folks at the library gave some nebulous excuse about "security issues" that prevented them from offering the feature, but that they expected to have it available "within a year or so." Considering that, at least for PPTP, all one has to do is open a bidirectional path for port 1723 on the firewall, this excuse seems weak at best.
As for Borders, finding anyone who even knows anything about the WAP beyond "Yes, it's available, how much time would you like to purchase?" is hopeless.
With that in mind: I would be VERY interested in hearing from anyone who happens to take advantage of this feature on a Lufthansa flight AND is able to link to their home LAN via a VPN tunnel through it.
I would also be interested in hearing from those who have tried using VPN through other public WAPs in their area, and what kind of success (or failure) you've had.
And just when I thought they couldn't sink much lower.
I will say this much. The advertisers should be paying the END USERS if they want to get people to read their drenn. They're the ones who are getting their mailbox stuffed anyway.
Not likely. I was much more dismayed when a far more promising series that some may remember, called "Farscape," was cancelled. To this day, I still don't understand why SciFi was stupid enough to can a show that was carrying Number-One ratings. Thankfully, they seem to have (finally!) realized their error (as evidenced by the fact that they're financing the production of the miniseries).
As for 'Andromeda' -- It held my interest for maybe three episodes. Kevin Sorbo and a starship just didn't seem to go together. Now, if they'd tossed in some subtle-yet-silly references to 'Hercules,' that might have made the difference.
And while we're on the topic of Gene Roddenberry series that go stale, what about "Earth: Final Conflict?" It had IMMENSE potential, and pretty decent writing -- until they killed off Boone's character, and Tribune Entertainment got their grubby little mitts into it. The only good episode after that was the series finale (and you knew it really WAS the finale because Sandoval's character was done in!)
I can only hope that "Tripping the Rift," "Scare Tactics," and "Mad Mad House" meet the same fate as "Andromeda" and "Mutant X."
Some have said that 'blanket measures' (such as listing entire countries as spam and abuse sources) taken by the AHBL are wrong, and that only the "bad" ISPs (those harboring spammers) should be targeted for such listing.
I would point out that the "bad" ISP, in this case, IS being targeted. The fact that it is Spain's national ISP is secondary to the fact that Telefonica.es (and its broadband/dialup counterpart, rima-tde.net) is a huge and (apparently) unceasing source of spam, port probes, and other network abuse.
Speaking as a mail server owner/operator, I rank Spain as only a few steps below China, Korea, and other Pacific Rim ISPs as spammer havens and nests of virus-compromised 'spammer zombies.' I've lost count of how many times I've seen spam attempts from IP ranges controlled by Telefonica, Rima, and their clones hit our filters. The abuse flowing from them is responsible for at least 10-15% of the accumulated weekly entries in our reject logs.
I would also like to point out a few other things. First off: NONE of the DNSBLs, such as AHBL, SPEWS, or Steve Linford's Spamhaus actively block ANYone.
What DNSBLs do is publish AN OPINION, in the form of their listings of IP addresses or address ranges, as to which parts of the Internet are supportive of spammers and network abuse. It is up to EACH INDIVIDUAL SYSADMIN, or anyone else who connects to the Internet, to choose whether to believe that opinion by configuring (or not) their equipment to check incoming mail-transfer requests against said DNSBL.
Let me say it again: DNSBLs, BY THEMSELVES, DO NOT BLOCK E-MAIL OR ANY OTHER TRAFFIC! SYSADMINS DO.
Yes, SysAdmins. Those like myself, who are fed up with the unending abuse of our private property by spammers, abuse that is supported by unethical or uncaring ISPs who, apparently, don't give an aerial intercourse through a toroidal pastry what their users do as long as said user's check doesn't bounce.
I'm currenly using the DNSBLs compiled and mainted by Spamhaus, and several from Blackholes.us to help protect our tiny little corner of the 'net from spammers. No one compelled, ordered, cajoled, coerced, bullied, or hassled me into using any of them. I chose to do so because of the positive things said about them by other SysAdmins, and because my own experiments revealed an 80%+ drop in our spam load received once I implemented their use by our servers.
Am I blocking entire countries? Yes, several. China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, south America (the 200/8 subnet, to be exact), pretty much every IP range controlled by LACNIC, most of France, and the.ru top-level domain (just to name a few) have all made it into my local 'Deny' lists, all because I never seem to get anything but spam and other abuse from all of them.
My servers, my bandwidth, my rules. And it's just exactly that simple for anyone else who connects to the 'net, no matter if they're an AOL user, trying to protect their single E-mail box, or the CTO of a worldwide conglomerate with 100,000+ E-mail boxes to worry about.
Telefonica got themselves into this mess by ignoring spam complaints. They have no one but themselves to blame if other admins choose to drop packets from them, no matter if they're doing it with their own local list or with the AHBL's help.
If the AHBL thinks listing the entirety of Telefonica will get their attention, and perhaps give them some badly-needed motivation to clean up their act, great!
One other thing. Slashdot posed the question at the beginning of this article "...or has something gone terribly wrong?"
Yes, it has. Spammers are still being allowed to abuse a resource that anyone, from a three-year old kid to a century-old adult, should be able to enjoy WITHOUT THE THREAT of losing their inbox to spam.
My only exposure to the movies-from-vidgames genre so far has been to watch 'Final Fantasy.' While the animation and CGI work was decent enough, the story was weak at best, certainly not enough to earn the movie a permanent spot in our collection.
I've always held the belief that it's good, solid STORYWRITING that makes a movie or video game succeed, not how many FX you can cram into X number of minutes. Look at 'Field of Dreams' for example. Minimal FX, but a terrific story, and well-told to boot.
What I would REALLY like to see is some of the older 'classic' SF novels turned into movies that FOLLOW THE BOOK with a high degree of accuracy. These days, adapting something like Heinlein's "Have Space Suit, Will Travel," or perhaps the original "Red Planet" would, I think, make for a heck of a blockbuster.
"You would have to be pretty close to do it since you are competing with a 50KW station most of the time..."
Not necessarily. If you could get within, say, a quarter-mile or so of the thing with about 50 or so watts, you'd probably do just fine. Remember that FM receivers exhibit a little something called the 'capture effect.' This is nothing more than the tendency for the receiver to capture and demodulate the strongest signal it hears.
Now, I know that 50kW sounds like a lot for a broadcast station, and it certainly is when you're close-in to the antenna site. However, also remember the inverse-square law when it comes to radio signals: Specifically, that the signal strength decreases as a function of the square of the distance from the antenna.
If a billboard is more than a few miles away from a station's antenna site, the station's signal is going to be fairly weak by the time it gets there (on the order of microvolts or fractions of a microvolt). If you're close enough that your signal is stronger than that, you're going to capture the receiver, no problem.
So... who's going to be the first to put 'Klaatu, Barada, Nikdo' up on one of those things? (Did I just date myself?);-)
The used/surplus market can really be your friend once you get to the States. Some areas are better supplied than others. For example, the Seattle area has RE-PC, which bills itself as the largest used/recycled computer place in the northwest (probably true -- I've not found any other computer surplus place in the region quite so large). I see rackmount cases and parts turn up there all the time, at both the retail locations, and the prices are generally pretty cheap.
The SF Bay Area part of California has a generous supply of used electronics and computer places too numerous to list in any detail here. At the risk of load-testing my web server, I have a page at this link that lists all the Bay Area surplus places that I knew of as of my last (annual) trip to the area in 2003.
I would, however, like to point out one place in particular in the Bay Area. Weird Stuff Warehouse has to be seen to be believed, though their prices can be a little on the high side, IMO.
Outside of the retail surplus scene, amateur ("ham") radio swap meets can also be excellent sources of such parts. I bought my original rack case from one of the Bay Area events back in 2000, and it is still serving me well today. You can search for hamfests close to whatever area you'll be moving to at this link.
I hope that helps. Rackmount stuff is great fun, and scrounging for it (and other parts) even more so. Definitely part of the "Tinkerer's Spirit."
That's one opinion, and you are certainly entitled to it. In fact, your statement serves as just one example of the huge diversity of interests, likes, and dislikes that occur in the SF&F community.
For my part, I could barely stand 'Firefly,' and I didn't miss it when it was cancelled. It never really felt like they had a direction, a goal. Moya's crew, at least, each had their personal goals to pursue. I never got that impression from the crew of the Serenity.
'Farscape,' however, thoroughly captured my attention, and that of my wife. When watching, we would not answer the phone or the door. Any such calls could, as far as we were concerned, wait until well after the show.
'Farscape' is a story that will indeed have an ending, at least as far as the miniseries is concerned. I'm hoping that, once that's done, they'll release the entire series AND the mini in a boxed set of DVD's.
I will say this as well: SciFi was foolish to cancel the series in the first place, and I think they may finally have realized that. I mean, come on... 'Farscape' goes away, and we get God-awful drenn like 'Scare Tactics,' 'Mad Mad House,' and the worst remake of 'Battlestar Galactica' imaginable. I can't imagine that I was the only one who despised all three programs (and more) on sight -- perhaps SciFi is finally listening to viewer feedback, as they should have all along.
That, and you'll never convince me that the money saved from canning 'Farscape' DIDN'T, in some way, go towards supporting the horrid lineup the channel has now.
You're obviously not a SysAdmin, or someone else who runs mail servers. Otherwise, you'd be cheering very loudly (and a lot less sarcastically) in response to this (as I am!)
I've lost count of the number of times a virus-infested "spammer zombie" Comcast box has tried to hit our mail servers, and the problem's been going on for at least the last six months. In fact, it has gotten bad enough that I have two entire domains (client.comcast.net and client2.comcast.net) blocked out of our servers altogether.
If Comcast's cable broadband customers are too ignorant or too stupid to take even the most basic of computing security precautions, why should the rest of the 'net have to suffer for their utter lack of responsibility for their systems? If they lose their connection until they TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for cleaning up their system, they have only themselves to blame.
I, for one, am stunned that Comcrap actually DID something useful! Their abuse-handling unit has, in times past, shown all the responsiveness of a sun-warmed snail on vallium.
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The Civil Aeronautics Board was abolished. Look what the resultant deregulation did to the airlines. How many have gone bankrupt since 1980? And of course, we're all seeing what wonderful customer service and convenient schedules and routes the deregulated airlines are providing.
We tried trusting the DMA to meet with the Internet community to define what spam is, and work with said community to promote anti-spam legislation with real teeth in it (unlike the YOU-CAN-SPAM act). The DMA paid lip service to the concerns expressed at the meeting, and then later betrayed everyone except their own members and interests by endorsing spam as "commercial free speech."
They continued on to promote the idea that the industry could regulate itself. Look where E-mail is today with the DMA's much-hyped idea of "self-regulation" of E-mail "marketing."
Even the Amateur Radio Service, supposedly self-regulating, is having its share of problems.
Do we really, REALLY want to trust the broadcasters and mass media to regulate themselves?
I don't think so. The biggest problem with the FCC right now is that its chief commissioner, Michael Powell, is a Bush crony who has no more of a grip on common sense and technical realities than the Shrub himself. Get rid of Powell, and replace the commissioners that are part of his little circle, and I would wager that things would start improving practically overnight.
...the Turist Trap?
Still didn't look right. Besides, there was another big technical error right in front of us poor movie-goers. Think about it for a minute.
--The kids were after food themselves. They found such in the ship's galley.
--All they had to do was throw a whole bunch into the room where the wolfies were. There was far more in there than they or the other survivors could carry, let alone eat. The canids would be busy enough dealing with it that they would ignore anything short of a direct threat or an attempt to take food away.
The point I'm trying to make is that Hollywood went way overboard with that whole scene, just to make it look like Poor Humans vs. Big Bad Wolves. Just plain awful...
The visuals for the weather effects were awesome. However, the 'digital wolves' really stank. I've met more than a couple of wolves, and seen a whole pack of 'em going about their daily routines, and I can say with confidence that they do NOT move like the movie showed.
There were other faux pas, behavior-wise. Wolves are, by nature, very timid critters where people are concerned. You make any sort of sudden move or loud noise and, if they're not backed into a corner or you're not threatening a mom and cubs, they'll run away. Fast!
Then again, it seems to be a Hollywood requirement that any disaster movie needs to be equipped with SOME sort of allegedly people-eating animal. I guess wolves just happened to be handy at the time.
Keep the peace(es).
One of the mainstream (Capitol, BMI, Warner, etc.) music industry's favorite mantras, where poor album sales are concerned, is that CD copying and file downloading are largely to blame.
Did it ever occur to these same executives, even ONCE, that the REAL reason their sales are in the crapper might just be because much of today's alleged "music" (and I use the term loosely) is utter crap?
How long has it been since we've heard a band with the raw talent and power of, say, Boston? How long has it been since we've heard a singer who is also a real musician and actually WRITES THEIR OWN WORK? And performs it? Jimmy Buffett, just as one example, is still going strong today doing just that.
The music industry seems to be a lot more interested in "packaging" a voice, and selling it in concert (pardon the pun) with homogenized electronically-produced soundtracks that should be banned by the Geneva Convention, than they do in giving real music talent a chance. Witness shows like "American Idol" as a case in point. All they're doing is rehashing material that was written by others, and focusing on nothing but the voice. Horrid....
I can count the number of CDs I've bought in the last TEN YEARS on the fingers of one hand. Prior to that, in the late 80's and early 90's, I was buying several per month.
It's not because I've lost interest in the medium, nor is it because I'm into downloading MP3's (I'm not -- I literally don't have the time, as I've got enough to do maintaining my day job, side business, and my 'net presence).
No, the real reason I've not been buying many CDs is simply because I'm not finding a whole lot Out There that's worth buying. I blame the mainstream record companies for being more interested in quick sales than in promoting real talent.
GOOD music and REAL talent will sell themselves. The mainstream music labels should be concentrating more on fixing their own (very serious) internal problems than on buying up legislators and getting useless laws put into effect.
...You're self-hosted, as I am? I run everything for my domains, including authoritative DNS. The only things I get from my upstream ISP are a DSL data pipe and six static addresses.
I make no use of their servers at all, other than maintaining a backup E-mail box (which forwards to my servers in any case).
So what does the FBI do if someone is, effectively, their own ISP, but they're not providing service to anyone outside their immediate family (and one friend), nor reselling service?
The ONLY conditions I can see where there might be "legal obligations" to deliver all E-mail traffic is where the servers, and other university resources, are taxpayer (read: publically) funded.
Is that what's going on here? If not, it seems to me it would be a clear case of "their servers, their bandwidth, their rules," and that they could run things any way they bloody well pleased.
That's certainly the way it is with privately-owned systems.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. Objections withdrawn (at least until I teach myself a little more about the subject).
...At least in terms of a long-range view. Assuming that the ultimate goal is to GET RID of oil as an energy source, since it is environmentally "dirty" and not readily renewable, such plants could reduce the motivation to find clean and renewable energy sources.
Consider this as a vicious cycle: Emissions from gasoline-burning cars are partly responsible for acid rain, which is destructive to agriculture. Too much acid rain = reduction in available plant matter, which ultimately means less agro-waste for the reprocessing plant and less CO2-to-oxygen conversion for our world. Given enough time, we're right back at square one, possibly even worse off than before.
I don't pretend to have all, or even some, of The Answers, as it were, but I'm not going to start celebrating until I know quite a bit more about this system, and whether ALL the long-term risks have been adequately considered.
C'mon, people... This horse died a lonnnnnnng time ago. It has been:
--Beat to death on 'Mythbusters...'
--Debunked on Snopes...
--Generally derided as an urban legend, with good reason.
I have absolutely no issue using my cellphone while fueling, because I know, as a tech, that there's no way the thing could generate even half the energy required to trigger a spark hot enough to ignite anything.
HOWEVER -- The one thing I absolutely do NOT do is get back into my car, slide across the seat while getting out again, and then touch the pump nozzle. That's a sure way to generate a dangerous spark.
Translation: RF energy is not the issue here. Static electricity is. If RF were an issue, we'd have police, fire, and other public-safety people causing explosions every time they had to use their mobile or portable radios while fueling up (and I can tell you from direct experience that said radios generate a heck of a lot more power -- anywhere from 3-5 watts for a portable to over 100 watts for a mobile) than any wireless phone handset (outputs of less than 100 milliwatts, typically).
Can we please bury this long-deceased equine? The smell is really getting nasty...
I feel compelled to point out...
On point #1: The radios you refer to are in the Family Radio Service. It would not be practical to use them to trigger a bomb because -- guess what? -- Anyone else using an FRS radio on the same frequency could trigger such prematurely.
Point #2 is more plausible, but I can tell you from direct experience that the control transmitters for model aircraft are BIG. Very difficult to conceal, let alone operate surreptitiously.
On point #3: Again, with any receiver that just detects a carrier or similar signal, as could be produced by a spark-gapper, you're running the risk of triggering a device prematurely, especially if the receiver is broad-banded and someone happens to key their portable radio near enough to it. Spark-gap devices are very noisy as well, and practically impossible to operate in 'stealth' mode.
Now, with all that said, and to answer your original question: A jamming device, being (in most cases) a simple transmitter or sweep oscillator, can be made as narrow or as broad-banded as available funds or circumstances dictate. It's perfectly feasible to construct one that will kill cellphones, but permit conventional radio traffic to pass unhindered. Remember that a great many police, fire, and public service agencies still depend on good ole' FM analog radios, and said radios operate well away from cellular frequencies (with a few exceptions).
I'm sorry. I cannot agree. True confirmed opt-in attaches a unique randomly-generated token to each confirmation message. You keep the confirmations on file, and if someone complains you can send their confirmation back to them, saying "see? You really did opt in."
In any case, you are absolutely correct. By my definition, you are a spammer. For every complaint that you DO receive, there are likely quite a few others that you do not for whatever reason (user doesn't bother, etc.)
Considering that you were nice enough to include your company's URL in your post, I will be adding your IP range(s) to our local 'Deny' list this evening.
That aside, the fact remains that Scott Richter is a criminal, a liar, and a thief, not necessarily in that order. The judge in the case was a true ass for granting even a TRO.
Jenohn writes...
;-)
"There are firewall/spam blocker methods that will continue to fail as spammers learn the tricks to route around them. This is the old hacker/security expert game. Build a better lock/block and it will soon be cracked/by-passed. The cycle is repeated ad nauseum."
Really? Now how do you come to that conclusion?
I ask because I use a combination of blocking methods, including referencing at least a half-dozen DNSBL's and a locally-generated (on our mail servers) blocking list. The ultimate purpose is to refuse connection attempts based on source IP address or domain name.
This method is extremely effective, and I don't know of any cases where it has been cracked.
The most egregious offenders, such as Wholesale Bandwidth (who happen to be hosting a big chunk of Richter's operations), get dropped into my router's 'Deny' table. This has the effect of denying ANY connection to any system within my LAN, based (again) on originating IP address or address range.
This method has also proved extremely effective, saving me God only knows how many hours of wasted effort in sorting out what's spam and what's not.
Please explain to me how these methods, used by thousands of other admins and ISPs, "will continue to fail," because I can't see that they ever failed in the first place.
If you don't believe me, ask your ISP to turn off any filters they're using on your mailbox for a 48 hour period.
Oh, one other thing. Don't write it as "SPAM." That's a registered trademark of Hormel Foods. Write it as "spam" or "Spam."
Johnnyb writes...
"First, I know nothing of OIRB specifically. However, please don't assume that all email marketing companies are spammers. It just isn't true. I work for a company that does email marketing, and our server has had the same IP address for over a year, and all of our emails come from the same domain, with clear opt-out instructions (in addition, you had to have opted in directly to have received it to begin with)..."
"Clear opt-out instructions."
Now why in the Multiverse would you even need those if you were running confirmed opt-IN to begin with?
Speaking as a self-hosted SysAdmin, one who deals with the spam onslaught every single day, I would be very interested to hear a detailed description of your opt-in process. It should go something like this.
(1) User visits your web site (or whoever's site with your link on it), and decides they want to be on your mailing list.
(2) User clicks link accordingly, is given a full set of details on said list, and is asked to provide an E-mail address.
(3) User does so. User then receives a confirming E-mail, saying "We received your subscription request for list (whatever). If this was really you, and you really want to receive this, do (whatever). If you do NOT want to do this, do nothing and you'll never hear from us again."
That, in a nutshell, is confirmed opt-in. It is the ONLY legitimate method of bulk E-mail advertising.
If your company is not doing those exact steps, in that exact sequence, you're spamming. Period.
If you are spamming, please tell me which marketing firm you're with so I can place your IP address range(s) into my domain's 'Deny' list for the mail servers.
...And only IF they allow VPN traffic to go through.
Permit me to expand on this. While several libraries, bookstore/coffee places, and even a few hotels have installed WAPs for the benefit of their patrons, and said WAPs work perfectly well for generic web surfing, I've yet to find a single one that allows VPN traffic to pass through.
This makes no sense whatsoever to me. What good is a wireless LAN connection if you can't use it to attach to your home or office LAN via secure tunnel?
When queried about the outright blocking of VPN traffic, the folks at the library gave some nebulous excuse about "security issues" that prevented them from offering the feature, but that they expected to have it available "within a year or so." Considering that, at least for PPTP, all one has to do is open a bidirectional path for port 1723 on the firewall, this excuse seems weak at best.
As for Borders, finding anyone who even knows anything about the WAP beyond "Yes, it's available, how much time would you like to purchase?" is hopeless.
With that in mind: I would be VERY interested in hearing from anyone who happens to take advantage of this feature on a Lufthansa flight AND is able to link to their home LAN via a VPN tunnel through it.
I would also be interested in hearing from those who have tried using VPN through other public WAPs in their area, and what kind of success (or failure) you've had.
Keep the peace(es).
And just when I thought they couldn't sink much lower.
I will say this much. The advertisers should be paying the END USERS if they want to get people to read their drenn. They're the ones who are getting their mailbox stuffed anyway.
Not likely. I was much more dismayed when a far more promising series that some may remember, called "Farscape," was cancelled. To this day, I still don't understand why SciFi was stupid enough to can a show that was carrying Number-One ratings. Thankfully, they seem to have (finally!) realized their error (as evidenced by the fact that they're financing the production of the miniseries).
As for 'Andromeda' -- It held my interest for maybe three episodes. Kevin Sorbo and a starship just didn't seem to go together. Now, if they'd tossed in some subtle-yet-silly references to 'Hercules,' that might have made the difference.
And while we're on the topic of Gene Roddenberry series that go stale, what about "Earth: Final Conflict?" It had IMMENSE potential, and pretty decent writing -- until they killed off Boone's character, and Tribune Entertainment got their grubby little mitts into it. The only good episode after that was the series finale (and you knew it really WAS the finale because Sandoval's character was done in!)
I can only hope that "Tripping the Rift," "Scare Tactics," and "Mad Mad House" meet the same fate as "Andromeda" and "Mutant X."
Some have said that 'blanket measures' (such as listing entire countries as spam and abuse sources) taken by the AHBL are wrong, and that only the "bad" ISPs (those harboring spammers) should be targeted for such listing.
.ru top-level domain (just to name a few) have all made it into my local 'Deny' lists, all because I never seem to get anything but spam and other abuse from all of them.
I would point out that the "bad" ISP, in this case, IS being targeted. The fact that it is Spain's national ISP is secondary to the fact that Telefonica.es (and its broadband/dialup counterpart, rima-tde.net) is a huge and (apparently) unceasing source of spam, port probes, and other network abuse.
Speaking as a mail server owner/operator, I rank Spain as only a few steps below China, Korea, and other Pacific Rim ISPs as spammer havens and nests of virus-compromised 'spammer zombies.' I've lost count of how many times I've seen spam attempts from IP ranges controlled by Telefonica, Rima, and their clones hit our filters. The abuse flowing from them is responsible for at least 10-15% of the accumulated weekly entries in our reject logs.
I would also like to point out a few other things. First off: NONE of the DNSBLs, such as AHBL, SPEWS, or Steve Linford's Spamhaus actively block ANYone.
What DNSBLs do is publish AN OPINION, in the form of their listings of IP addresses or address ranges, as to which parts of the Internet are supportive of spammers and network abuse. It is up to EACH INDIVIDUAL SYSADMIN, or anyone else who connects to the Internet, to choose whether to believe that opinion by configuring (or not) their equipment to check incoming mail-transfer requests against said DNSBL.
Let me say it again: DNSBLs, BY THEMSELVES, DO NOT BLOCK E-MAIL OR ANY OTHER TRAFFIC! SYSADMINS DO.
Yes, SysAdmins. Those like myself, who are fed up with the unending abuse of our private property by spammers, abuse that is supported by unethical or uncaring ISPs who, apparently, don't give an aerial intercourse through a toroidal pastry what their users do as long as said user's check doesn't bounce.
I'm currenly using the DNSBLs compiled and mainted by Spamhaus, and several from Blackholes.us to help protect our tiny little corner of the 'net from spammers. No one compelled, ordered, cajoled, coerced, bullied, or hassled me into using any of them. I chose to do so because of the positive things said about them by other SysAdmins, and because my own experiments revealed an 80%+ drop in our spam load received once I implemented their use by our servers.
Am I blocking entire countries? Yes, several. China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, south America (the 200/8 subnet, to be exact), pretty much every IP range controlled by LACNIC, most of France, and the
My servers, my bandwidth, my rules. And it's just exactly that simple for anyone else who connects to the 'net, no matter if they're an AOL user, trying to protect their single E-mail box, or the CTO of a worldwide conglomerate with 100,000+ E-mail boxes to worry about.
Telefonica got themselves into this mess by ignoring spam complaints. They have no one but themselves to blame if other admins choose to drop packets from them, no matter if they're doing it with their own local list or with the AHBL's help.
If the AHBL thinks listing the entirety of Telefonica will get their attention, and perhaps give them some badly-needed motivation to clean up their act, great!
One other thing. Slashdot posed the question at the beginning of this article "...or has something gone terribly wrong?"
Yes, it has. Spammers are still being allowed to abuse a resource that anyone, from a three-year old kid to a century-old adult, should be able to enjoy WITHOUT THE THREAT of losing their inbox to spam.
That sure seems "terribly wrong" to me.
"Army of Darkness?" Where did that come from? I was referring to the classic flick 'Day the Earth Stood Still.'
My only exposure to the movies-from-vidgames genre so far has been to watch 'Final Fantasy.' While the animation and CGI work was decent enough, the story was weak at best, certainly not enough to earn the movie a permanent spot in our collection.
I've always held the belief that it's good, solid STORYWRITING that makes a movie or video game succeed, not how many FX you can cram into X number of minutes. Look at 'Field of Dreams' for example. Minimal FX, but a terrific story, and well-told to boot.
What I would REALLY like to see is some of the older 'classic' SF novels turned into movies that FOLLOW THE BOOK with a high degree of accuracy. These days, adapting something like Heinlein's "Have Space Suit, Will Travel," or perhaps the original "Red Planet" would, I think, make for a heck of a blockbuster.
"You would have to be pretty close to do it since you are competing with a 50KW station most of the time..."
;-)
Not necessarily. If you could get within, say, a quarter-mile or so of the thing with about 50 or so watts, you'd probably do just fine. Remember that FM receivers exhibit a little something called the 'capture effect.' This is nothing more than the tendency for the receiver to capture and demodulate the strongest signal it hears.
Now, I know that 50kW sounds like a lot for a broadcast station, and it certainly is when you're close-in to the antenna site. However, also remember the inverse-square law when it comes to radio signals: Specifically, that the signal strength decreases as a function of the square of the distance from the antenna.
If a billboard is more than a few miles away from a station's antenna site, the station's signal is going to be fairly weak by the time it gets there (on the order of microvolts or fractions of a microvolt). If you're close enough that your signal is stronger than that, you're going to capture the receiver, no problem.
So... who's going to be the first to put 'Klaatu, Barada, Nikdo' up on one of those things? (Did I just date myself?)
The used/surplus market can really be your friend once you get to the States. Some areas are better supplied than others. For example, the Seattle area has RE-PC, which bills itself as the largest used/recycled computer place in the northwest (probably true -- I've not found any other computer surplus place in the region quite so large). I see rackmount cases and parts turn up there all the time, at both the retail locations, and the prices are generally pretty cheap.
The SF Bay Area part of California has a generous supply of used electronics and computer places too numerous to list in any detail here. At the risk of load-testing my web server, I have a page at this link that lists all the Bay Area surplus places that I knew of as of my last (annual) trip to the area in 2003.
I would, however, like to point out one place in particular in the Bay Area. Weird Stuff Warehouse has to be seen to be believed, though their prices can be a little on the high side, IMO.
I also have store and swap meet listings for the Puget Sound region and the metro Portland area of Oregon.
Outside of the retail surplus scene, amateur ("ham") radio swap meets can also be excellent sources of such parts. I bought my original rack case from one of the Bay Area events back in 2000, and it is still serving me well today. You can search for hamfests close to whatever area you'll be moving to at this link.
I hope that helps. Rackmount stuff is great fun, and scrounging for it (and other parts) even more so. Definitely part of the "Tinkerer's Spirit."
Enjoy your travels.
That's one opinion, and you are certainly entitled to it. In fact, your statement serves as just one example of the huge diversity of interests, likes, and dislikes that occur in the SF&F community.
For my part, I could barely stand 'Firefly,' and I didn't miss it when it was cancelled. It never really felt like they had a direction, a goal. Moya's crew, at least, each had their personal goals to pursue. I never got that impression from the crew of the Serenity.
'Farscape,' however, thoroughly captured my attention, and that of my wife. When watching, we would not answer the phone or the door. Any such calls could, as far as we were concerned, wait until well after the show.
'Farscape' is a story that will indeed have an ending, at least as far as the miniseries is concerned. I'm hoping that, once that's done, they'll release the entire series AND the mini in a boxed set of DVD's.
I will say this as well: SciFi was foolish to cancel the series in the first place, and I think they may finally have realized that. I mean, come on... 'Farscape' goes away, and we get God-awful drenn like 'Scare Tactics,' 'Mad Mad House,' and the worst remake of 'Battlestar Galactica' imaginable. I can't imagine that I was the only one who despised all three programs (and more) on sight -- perhaps SciFi is finally listening to viewer feedback, as they should have all along.
That, and you'll never convince me that the money saved from canning 'Farscape' DIDN'T, in some way, go towards supporting the horrid lineup the channel has now.
You're obviously not a SysAdmin, or someone else who runs mail servers. Otherwise, you'd be cheering very loudly (and a lot less sarcastically) in response to this (as I am!)
I've lost count of the number of times a virus-infested "spammer zombie" Comcast box has tried to hit our mail servers, and the problem's been going on for at least the last six months. In fact, it has gotten bad enough that I have two entire domains (client.comcast.net and client2.comcast.net) blocked out of our servers altogether.
If Comcast's cable broadband customers are too ignorant or too stupid to take even the most basic of computing security precautions, why should the rest of the 'net have to suffer for their utter lack of responsibility for their systems? If they lose their connection until they TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for cleaning up their system, they have only themselves to blame.
I, for one, am stunned that Comcrap actually DID something useful! Their abuse-handling unit has, in times past, shown all the responsiveness of a sun-warmed snail on vallium.
Hmmmm... We'll need a name for that. 'Elvon?' 'Klingish?' 'Hairballese?' You be the judge. ;-)