You're right, there is a sort of taboo on discussing salary, even with the employer. I know its business and such, but I feel almost rude for asking about money in such a climate. In the few jobs I've had as a fairly young person (25), pay was never negotiated, simply offered as part of the job. No argument or discussion about it, take it or not.
No.
Of course they're not going to say to you, "Hey! Here's our offer, but if you want more money, we'll pay! Our maximum threshold is $X! Now how much money would you like to make?"
If pay was never negotiated, it's your fault. They make you an offer, you say, "I'm sorry, I can't take that, but how about this?"
I've done that with every job I've ever had, save one. It was my first job, in fact, and it was good pay, but I still could've gotten more. I've never been that stupid again.
Be prepared. Cite reasons why you're worth more. Have average salary statistics for your area and career and experience in hand (SAGE SALARY SURVEY!).
Of course, if you aren't "that damn special" and/or don't believe you are--then take their lowball offer.
And to those of you who are afraid that the company's going to say, "Well, screw you for asking for more money in a business transaction! We'll bring in Candidate #2!"--remember that if you get an offer, you get the offer because you are the best candidate. They have taken the time to call your references, put you through X rounds of interviews, possibly drug-screen and/or background check you, and they have decided that you are who they want, or they wouldn't be making you an offer.
Basically, there's three outcomes. They may say, "Okay," and you've got your money. They may say, "Sorry, we can't do that," in which case you have to decide whether the previous salary was good enough, then either accept or continue to look. Or they may say, "Well how DARE you make us a counter-offer! Out, heathen, out!", in which case you are better off NOT working for that company.
But companies don't normally say "Out, heathen, out!"
Well, how would you react to someone who listed "ENRON Certified Accountant" on their résumé?
Nice job with "résumé". I'm impressed. (Did I mention I'm a grammar whore?)
That said, while I'm sure you're being tongue-in-cheek, I'm going to answer this anyway. Earlier up on my resume, there's reference to Microsoft products and Windows work. I've done it; like I said, paying rent was a priority. So if you're going to compare Microsoft to Enron (slightly different, but I do like that metaphor, so I'll let it pass), you'd have already binned my resume and cover letter.
But practically, I don't think most of the hiring managers that would be interested in me are going to do that. Most understand that there is rent to be paid and food to be eaten; most also understand that my locale is not a Unix market. Some of them even appreciate that, while I am an idealist, I am not an evangelist; I will tell you what I think and advocate the best technical solution, but in the end, you're the one who's paying me and I will implement what you say to implement.
Of course, that does not prohibit me from going home and sending out cover letters afterwards.
There's only so much room on a resume (one page). You put the best stuff on there. If you have certs on your resume, it's because you don't have anything better to put there.
See, I don't agree with this, either. I have a two-page resume. I put the most relevant stuff on the front page (my experience and my contact information). Someday, I may have a three-page resume if I have enough good, relevant work experience. (No, there's no McDonald's on there now; it's all IT work.) But I still have a two-page resume.
Interestingly enough, I have a 100% company response rate to my recent (last year) resumes. It's because your resume is not what sells you: your cover letter is. A manager should never, ever be looking at your resume and deciding whether or not to bring you in for an interview: s/he should have already decided and be looking for contact information or details of a particular job you've mentioned. At this point, a one-page resume (assuming you have any real experience) just screws the process up.
I'm also a writer, and there's a maxim that holds true for resumes as well. Make the story [resume] just as long as it needs to be; no longer, no shorter. In my case, right now, that's two pages.
(And to those who will say, "But... but what about the people who reflexively bin resumes for being longer than one page, no matter what's in there?!"... do you really want to work for someone like that?)
That is what everybody who has responded to me in this thread has failed to see: I do not believe that certifications require any demonstrable skill, since they can so easily be gamed. For three hundred US I can get a certificate that says my dog has the required skills.
Actually, no. In my post (which you have still failed to answer), I said "No, in most cases, certifications say absolutely nothing useful." As mentioned, I think they're pretty pointless, but my employer was buying.
But as someone else pointed out, there's a wide gap between thinking something is of no worth and actively penalizing candidates for having that something. It's the difference between not caring about eye color and binning the resumes of every blue-eyed candidate.
So why would you actively penalize candidates for having a certification on their resumes?
Finally, as a person in a hiring position, I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
See, this is one comment I've never really understood. Yes, there are lots of clueless certification monkeys out there. No, in most cases, certifications say absolutely nothing useful. But prejudice against those who may have gotten them for other reasons?
For instance, I am a MCP. I'm not particularly proud of it, being a Unix person, but work paid for it. Yeah, it's a Windows job; I'm living in a place with a weak Unix market and can't move for a couple years, and I choose to be able to pay rent. But I am a MCP, and I do put that on my resume... at the bottom, under "certifications/awards/professional organizations", in the same place I put my ACM membership and my black belt.
So why would that matter to you? Seriously. I'm curious.
And yes, every female that ever enters the abode threatens to (re)decorate the place.
Speaking as a female that just bought a kitchen table (the only table in the place) exclusively so I could cook dinner and be on IRC/slashdot at the same time, if you want to break your streak, I'll come over.;)
(And yes, for quite some time, my office chair was the only seating. Save for the step. It was built-in. Does that count against me?)
Now there's a bookshelf, but it's got Sparc rackmount hardware on the bottom, so I think that all balances out.
I think every kid should be forced to do one year of grunt work somewhere before going to college. I don't care if it is Peace Corps, picking up trash along the highway or working a minimum wage slot at the 7-11. I know a bit of 'real world' experience would have helped me focus in class.
So, because you were an unfocused moron, everyone else (who might be entirely capable of actually focusing and working) should be made to spend a year doing something that has nothing to do with his or her field of interest?
So, basically, because you were a lazy asshole with no self-control, every parent in the world should apply those standards to their kids?
Am I reading this right? You "feel all kinds of regret and spite" because YOU were incapable of getting off YOUR tushy? Your parents should have forced you to do something like that, instead of treating you as a rational and competent human being?
Growing up, I spent a lot of time on the Internet. I also:
Had my own freelance consulting business.
Did system administration for a Fortune 500 company the summer after I graduated from high school.
Am a published, paid technical writer.
Am working towards a double major at one of the top ten undergraduate engineering schools in the nation.
Have a GPA over 3.8.
So, I feel so sorry for you that no one ever got you off your ass. Please, take your time figuring out that your laziness isn't your parents' fault. Abdicate your responsibility to your own life and your own career. Less competition for me in the job market once I graduate.
Not only does the guy tend to be right on with my tastes (yours may vary), but he's funny. Reading the reviews of the bad stuff is a helluvalot more entertaining than actually watching it--not to say that picking one's nose wouldn't be, but, um, more entertaining than $FUN_ACTIVITY.
I've got a lot of stuff from him in my quotefile. Hmmm, let's see... From a review of some godawful Jalal Merhi movie:
"Forget mere "suspension" of disbelief here; it went bungee jumping and the cable broke."
Speaking of mascots, a while back someone posted a picture of a the OpenBSD mascot (puffy) in sexy, shapely female form. Does anyone still have this available?
Personally, if I were running a small ISP of my own, the default would be to deny the ability to do outbound tcp/25, then if a customer requested it, I would allow them to do so.
Okay, that's very reasonable. So is what Comcast is doing, in fact. But you didn't originally say that. You said "use your ISP's relay No Matter What!" and I tried to explain the reasons that using one's ISP server No Matter What can be a problem.
Just to reiterate: I have no problem with the view (using your numbers) "hey, okay, 4.3 million people don't need incoming SMTP, let's adopt a policy of "ask and ye shall receive"".
Mind you, I see you just complain about inadequate servers at the ISP. It's funny to see you tout Speakeasy as such a great ISP, but then say their mail servers have a 6 hour queue.
Actually, I've been very happy with Speakeasy's SMTP; I use it when I need to test something, and one of my consulting clients uses a business-class line and Speakeasy's outgoing mail server. They've never had a problem, and if they did, I would be on the phone to Speakeasy, saying "hey, guys, this is not normal, let's do something here, eh?"
But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, when $TELCO was the only game in town for high-speed Internet... not so very long ago, I regularly had said delays and lost mail (and I'm glad that you've never had mail lost, but I have, and it sets my teeth on edge).
That is, if you aren't just another mindless troll.
Eh, only sometimes in Nethack.
I assume you are because of the willy-nilly ports remark was just an over-the-top remark that blows everything well out of proportion here.
Personally, I would like to see you suggest a solution to the spam problem today. Don't have one? Didn't think so.
Client-side filtering. Tracing the spammers and killing them with large sharp objects. And yes, blocking port 25 unless requested otherwise.
But...
There is a world of difference between "block port 25 unless requested otherwise", and "everyone should use their ISP's mail server". Something I read elsewhere in the discussion about an ISP's policy was quite insightful: they open upon request and add your mail server to a list of ones to be checked for open relays. If the check catches you, then you have to have a damned good reason for them to open it again.
Once more to reiterate: I would have no problem with that, I have no problem with what Comcast is doing, and I have no issues with Speakeasy's SMTP service--and yet I still believe that people can have valid reasons for running their own mail server. Whatever the answer to spam is, it isn't to blindly state, "use your ISP's server no matter what", and that's what I was replying to in your original post.
Every time this issue comes up, I just get depressed. People range from being upset about having to use the smtp server they agreed to use when they signed up for their account, they work fine, there is no reason a home user paying $39/mo should have the "right" to run smtp of their own, or be able to willy-nilly go connecting to other smtp servers on the net.
My God! How dare I "willy-nilly go connecting to other smtp servers on the internet"?
I mean, wow! Why stop at SMTP? Let's take it one step farther! How dare people go willy-nilly connecting to other servers on the Internet?! It's disgusting! For the health of the Internet as a whole, people must stop this insane practice!
What's that in the back? Hmmm? You mean the principle of the Internet is to be able to connect to other computers? But Awptimus Prime says that we shouldn't be able to go connecting willy-nilly to other systems!
Please don't slip in the puddle of sarcasm.
"[B]eing upset about having to use the smtp server [I] agreed to use when [I] signed up for [my] account"? I don't know about you, but I've read a lot of ISP contracts, and never has one said that I need to use my ISP's SMTP server. If it had, I would take my business elsewhere, or obey said restriction.
"[T]hey work fine", you say? You call six-hour delays fine? You call randomly lost email fine? I don't know about you, but I use my email for more than getting advertisements for hot goatse. Clients contact me, friends talk to me, automated systems scream "Help!", and if I don't get those messages in a timely fashion, I'm fucked. Along with said servers. Oh, and some of us like to use personal domains, y'know? And have multiple accounts for sorting purposes and different usages; one for automated, one for clients, one for friends?
You are of course entitled to your opinion, Awptimus Prime, just as I am mine. But personally? I am so glad that you aren't setting policy at my ISP or for the Internet, and if you ever start, I'll go elsewhere. Not that I think Speakeasy would ever listen to you as anything but a humor generator, but still, on principle.
Um... because most of us who run "home" mail servers do it because our ISP's mail servers are slow, unreliable, and down half of the time? Because the rewriting rules often keep us from using our personal domains? Because if we wanted to use our ISP's mail servers, we wouldn't be running our own?
Now, in my case, none of this applies, because I have a clueful ISP (Hi, Speakeasy!), but back in the Dark Ages of DSL through $TELCO, believe me, I had to. Or I didn't get mail. And believe me, I live for my mail.
Not that anyone's going to read this by now, but only one post at +3 or higher that mentions Kill Bill?
Come now, Slashdot. Lots of gore, lots more hot chicks (I say that and I'm a chick), cool swords, amazing choreography, tons of in-jokes, anime, and a sense of humor.
I stand by my original post stating that the licensing is the issue. Unless, of course, Postfix has adopted a proper BSD license in the two months since that posting.
Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I'm very surprised that they chose sendmail for the default. Why did they do that? Or do you mean sendmail in a figurative way?
It's licensing issues. The qmail license is completely unacceptable, and the postfix one contains too much legalese. exim is GPL'ed, and they're trying to remove GPL'ed material from the tree, not put it back in.
They've patched sendmail a great deal to make it less vulnerable and make it run in a less monolithic manner. There is an occasional hole, but it's relatively rare.
For that volume, if you want "set it and forget it reliability"...
OpenBSD, hardened Sendmail from the default install, and Dovecot. Can't beat it. It just keeps going and going and going... </energizer-bunny>
One good thing, too, about OpenBSD is that it's very, very light on your hardware. I did mail for more users than you're talking about on a P166. Make sure to use SMTP auth with Sendmail, though. And, yeah, I do consulting too. Send me an email if you're interested and we can talk.
I guess that's what they get for forcing everyone to migrate to XP last year...
You say forcing? So Rose doesn't allow alternative OS'es? Wow... They always struck me as pretty clueful... Big surprise.
If you get a chance, I'd love to discuss this more with you in email. If you see this and wouldn't mind, drop me a line here. I'd really appreciate it.
Where's my "You must be THIS smart to use a free, open-source OS that doesn't hold your hand every step of the way" stick?
But, since you started it, BSD, Last I tried it, was a bitch to install. True, it was on a laptop, from a parallel CD-ROM, With an unrecognized PCMCIA NIC, But a bitch nonetheless. Linux installed fine.
I have no idea which BSD you used, but since the conversation is about Open, I'll assume that (if it was Free or Net, you're right; the curses-based installers are a pain). By "a bitch to install", I'm going to assume you mean "waaaah!
waaaaah!!! aaaigh! it doesn't hold my hand and be all nice and graphical-like!"
Personally, Open's installer is the best I've ever used. Onto one of the most stupid things I've ever read in a Slashdot post...
Secure, who cares, it was a laptop.
This is where intelligent beings WORRY about security. Use that thing on your neck for more than a hat rack, could you? Think about it. The laptop gets carried around with important data on it. Someone steals it, or you forget it somewhere. It falls into the hands of Mr. Evil-Nasty-Cracker-Guy. Tell me, do you want an OS with encrypted filesystems and swap, or do you want to say bye-bye to your data security? Or let's say you're carrying your laptop along to a convention, and they provide wireless. Do you want to get cracked in the next five minutes, like you would with a default install of Red Hat?
If I was worried about security, the entire freakin OS will be Read-Only (read KNOPPIX) same for my website (another CD-ROM) deface that!!!!
Oh, my God. We've got a live one here.
First: I take it you're planning to never update your website and burn THAT to the read-only media, too.
Second: As a member of the global Internet community, I don't give a shit whether your petty little website gets "L@MERZ I RULE A$$ OK PLZ THX~!!!!!!??!?!?!/" plastered across your front page. I DO, however, care if you get rooted -- amazingly enough, being on read-only media is not enough to prevent you from getting rooted via a remote security hole, imagine that -- and start DoS'ing people under the control of some script kiddy.
So if you want to run a very secure SSH server, OpenBSD is the way to go! For anything else (i.e. anything not in OpenBSD's "secure by default" install, which is everything besides OpenSSH), it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference what OS you run it on.
You, sir, madam, or genderless being, are amazingly incorrect and misinformed.
A default install of OpenBSD includes:
Chrooted Apache
Sendmail hardened with OS-specific patches
ftpd
popa3d
dhcpd
Perl 5
pf
NFS tools
Lots more I can't think of off the top of my head...
Now, admittedly, in the default install, only sshd and sendmail are turned on. Big fuckin' deal. With five seconds of work, it's all on and ready. And most of those are hardened software. You should diff the source trees against the original packages someday...
OpenBSD has always been all about giving the end user a complete server-in-a-box, so to speak. In fact, most of this stuff is off by default in FreeBSD and NetBSD.
I like "Mirrors" by BoC, too, but some tracks definitely dip in quality, and it's not their traditional sound. Aside from that... I have noticed, just as a general trend, that Peter Gabriel and Duran Duran seems very susceptible to the "one or two good songs an album" trend. But, hey, that's just me.
I didn't know that P. Diddy was on IRC.., No wonder J-Lo left you... Now I know... and knowing is half the battle...
Gah. Dude, it gets a bit old.;) The nick comes from the OpenBSD blowfish. I'm their resident BSD girl.
And I feel the need to go on the record as saying that Puff Daddy sucks and sucks hard, and not in the nice way, either.
As for finding out, I don't have a copy of the virus... only some of the clients. And I'm too busy akilling those to be interested in where it came from. Fact is, it's loose. And that's the most important thing.
... am a technical administrator on a fairly small (100-200 users), Klingon-themed network that plays host to a fairly large Star Trek simming organization.
This worm was hitting us badly. I personally spent at least six or seven hours slamming the fuck out of the clients (they connect with a very distinctive hostmask/realname/nick) since they started hitting us on Sunday, and we have ~1500 akills for distinctive IP's set up now.
As you may imagine, manual akills just wasn't cutting it after a while. We all have actual jobs, and sitting on IRC whamming worms is something we don't get paid for. We've fixed our problem with a small Perl script one of our server admins wrote. I don't have the link where he placed it online right now, but I'm sure he'd be okay with sharing if anyone's interested. At the very least, it'll give you some heuristics to work from (the fundamental pattern is a nick with one, two, or three numbers on the end, a real name consisting of two capitalized words, and an identd response made of those two words reversed and conglomerated).
If there's any other admins of networks out there, pop onto irc.kdfs.net and join #helpdesk. Mention that you're looking for Puffy (me) or Danzak (script writer) and you're interested in our virus client killing bot.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, there is a sort of taboo on discussing salary, even with the employer. I know its business and such, but I feel almost rude for asking about money in such a climate. In the few jobs I've had as a fairly young person (25), pay was never negotiated, simply offered as part of the job. No argument or discussion about it, take it or not.
No.
Of course they're not going to say to you, "Hey! Here's our offer, but if you want more money, we'll pay! Our maximum threshold is $X! Now how much money would you like to make?"
If pay was never negotiated, it's your fault. They make you an offer, you say, "I'm sorry, I can't take that, but how about this?"
I've done that with every job I've ever had, save one. It was my first job, in fact, and it was good pay, but I still could've gotten more. I've never been that stupid again.
Be prepared. Cite reasons why you're worth more. Have average salary statistics for your area and career and experience in hand (SAGE SALARY SURVEY!).
Of course, if you aren't "that damn special" and/or don't believe you are--then take their lowball offer.
And to those of you who are afraid that the company's going to say, "Well, screw you for asking for more money in a business transaction! We'll bring in Candidate #2!"--remember that if you get an offer, you get the offer because you are the best candidate. They have taken the time to call your references, put you through X rounds of interviews, possibly drug-screen and/or background check you, and they have decided that you are who they want, or they wouldn't be making you an offer.
Basically, there's three outcomes. They may say, "Okay," and you've got your money. They may say, "Sorry, we can't do that," in which case you have to decide whether the previous salary was good enough, then either accept or continue to look. Or they may say, "Well how DARE you make us a counter-offer! Out, heathen, out!", in which case you are better off NOT working for that company.
But companies don't normally say "Out, heathen, out!"
Nice job with "résumé". I'm impressed. (Did I mention I'm a grammar whore?)
That said, while I'm sure you're being tongue-in-cheek, I'm going to answer this anyway. Earlier up on my resume, there's reference to Microsoft products and Windows work. I've done it; like I said, paying rent was a priority. So if you're going to compare Microsoft to Enron (slightly different, but I do like that metaphor, so I'll let it pass), you'd have already binned my resume and cover letter.
But practically, I don't think most of the hiring managers that would be interested in me are going to do that. Most understand that there is rent to be paid and food to be eaten; most also understand that my locale is not a Unix market. Some of them even appreciate that, while I am an idealist, I am not an evangelist; I will tell you what I think and advocate the best technical solution, but in the end, you're the one who's paying me and I will implement what you say to implement.
Of course, that does not prohibit me from going home and sending out cover letters afterwards.
See, I don't agree with this, either. I have a two-page resume. I put the most relevant stuff on the front page (my experience and my contact information). Someday, I may have a three-page resume if I have enough good, relevant work experience. (No, there's no McDonald's on there now; it's all IT work.) But I still have a two-page resume.
Interestingly enough, I have a 100% company response rate to my recent (last year) resumes. It's because your resume is not what sells you: your cover letter is. A manager should never, ever be looking at your resume and deciding whether or not to bring you in for an interview: s/he should have already decided and be looking for contact information or details of a particular job you've mentioned. At this point, a one-page resume (assuming you have any real experience) just screws the process up.
I'm also a writer, and there's a maxim that holds true for resumes as well. Make the story [resume] just as long as it needs to be; no longer, no shorter. In my case, right now, that's two pages.
(And to those who will say, "But... but what about the people who reflexively bin resumes for being longer than one page, no matter what's in there?!"... do you really want to work for someone like that?)
That is what everybody who has responded to me in this thread has failed to see: I do not believe that certifications require any demonstrable skill, since they can so easily be gamed. For three hundred US I can get a certificate that says my dog has the required skills.
Actually, no. In my post (which you have still failed to answer), I said "No, in most cases, certifications say absolutely nothing useful." As mentioned, I think they're pretty pointless, but my employer was buying.
But as someone else pointed out, there's a wide gap between thinking something is of no worth and actively penalizing candidates for having that something. It's the difference between not caring about eye color and binning the resumes of every blue-eyed candidate.
So why would you actively penalize candidates for having a certification on their resumes?
Finally, as a person in a hiring position, I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
See, this is one comment I've never really understood. Yes, there are lots of clueless certification monkeys out there. No, in most cases, certifications say absolutely nothing useful. But prejudice against those who may have gotten them for other reasons?
For instance, I am a MCP. I'm not particularly proud of it, being a Unix person, but work paid for it. Yeah, it's a Windows job; I'm living in a place with a weak Unix market and can't move for a couple years, and I choose to be able to pay rent. But I am a MCP, and I do put that on my resume... at the bottom, under "certifications/awards/professional organizations", in the same place I put my ACM membership and my black belt.
So why would that matter to you? Seriously. I'm curious.
Speaking as a female that just bought a kitchen table (the only table in the place) exclusively so I could cook dinner and be on IRC/slashdot at the same time, if you want to break your streak, I'll come over. ;)
(And yes, for quite some time, my office chair was the only seating. Save for the step. It was built-in. Does that count against me?)
Now there's a bookshelf, but it's got Sparc rackmount hardware on the bottom, so I think that all balances out.
You don't see OpenBSD winning any awards for number of installations, do ya?
That's about as good a rebuttal as saying, "You don't see Telent winning any awards for cow tipping, do ya?"
Excellence in cow tipping has never been my goal in life. Market penetration has never been OpenBSD's.
(I'll even be nice and not suggest that you'd be qualified to judge a cow-tipping contest, though it pains me sorely.)
Hmm.
Theo: created OpenBSD, an OS with one remote hole in the default install in seven years.
You: post on Slashdot.
Yeah, I know who's an idiot here...
So, because you were an unfocused moron, everyone else (who might be entirely capable of actually focusing and working) should be made to spend a year doing something that has nothing to do with his or her field of interest?
Good thinking, buddy.
So, basically, because you were a lazy asshole with no self-control, every parent in the world should apply those standards to their kids?
Am I reading this right? You "feel all kinds of regret and spite" because YOU were incapable of getting off YOUR tushy? Your parents should have forced you to do something like that, instead of treating you as a rational and competent human being?
Growing up, I spent a lot of time on the Internet. I also:
So, I feel so sorry for you that no one ever got you off your ass. Please, take your time figuring out that your laziness isn't your parents' fault. Abdicate your responsibility to your own life and your own career. Less competition for me in the job market once I graduate.
... from watching stuff like that, at least when it comes to older releases
Ziggy's Video Realm.
Not only does the guy tend to be right on with my tastes (yours may vary), but he's funny. Reading the reviews of the bad stuff is a helluvalot more entertaining than actually watching it--not to say that picking one's nose wouldn't be, but, um, more entertaining than $FUN_ACTIVITY.
I've got a lot of stuff from him in my quotefile. Hmmm, let's see... From a review of some godawful Jalal Merhi movie: "Forget mere "suspension" of disbelief here; it went bungee jumping and the cable broke."
I rest my case.
http://pureyiff.com/.
Though the leash is hotter.
Okay, that's very reasonable. So is what Comcast is doing, in fact. But you didn't originally say that. You said "use your ISP's relay No Matter What!" and I tried to explain the reasons that using one's ISP server No Matter What can be a problem.
Just to reiterate: I have no problem with the view (using your numbers) "hey, okay, 4.3 million people don't need incoming SMTP, let's adopt a policy of "ask and ye shall receive"".
Mind you, I see you just complain about inadequate servers at the ISP. It's funny to see you tout Speakeasy as such a great ISP, but then say their mail servers have a 6 hour queue.
Actually, I've been very happy with Speakeasy's SMTP; I use it when I need to test something, and one of my consulting clients uses a business-class line and Speakeasy's outgoing mail server. They've never had a problem, and if they did, I would be on the phone to Speakeasy, saying "hey, guys, this is not normal, let's do something here, eh?"
But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, when $TELCO was the only game in town for high-speed Internet... not so very long ago, I regularly had said delays and lost mail (and I'm glad that you've never had mail lost, but I have, and it sets my teeth on edge).
That is, if you aren't just another mindless troll.
Eh, only sometimes in Nethack.
I assume you are because of the willy-nilly ports remark was just an over-the-top remark that blows everything well out of proportion here.
Ever read this? You should.
Personally, I would like to see you suggest a solution to the spam problem today. Don't have one? Didn't think so.
Client-side filtering. Tracing the spammers and killing them with large sharp objects. And yes, blocking port 25 unless requested otherwise.
But...
There is a world of difference between "block port 25 unless requested otherwise", and "everyone should use their ISP's mail server". Something I read elsewhere in the discussion about an ISP's policy was quite insightful: they open upon request and add your mail server to a list of ones to be checked for open relays. If the check catches you, then you have to have a damned good reason for them to open it again.
Once more to reiterate: I would have no problem with that, I have no problem with what Comcast is doing, and I have no issues with Speakeasy's SMTP service--and yet I still believe that people can have valid reasons for running their own mail server. Whatever the answer to spam is, it isn't to blindly state, "use your ISP's server no matter what", and that's what I was replying to in your original post.
My God! How dare I "willy-nilly go connecting to other smtp servers on the internet"?
I mean, wow! Why stop at SMTP? Let's take it one step farther! How dare people go willy-nilly connecting to other servers on the Internet?! It's disgusting! For the health of the Internet as a whole, people must stop this insane practice!
What's that in the back? Hmmm? You mean the principle of the Internet is to be able to connect to other computers? But Awptimus Prime says that we shouldn't be able to go connecting willy-nilly to other systems!
Please don't slip in the puddle of sarcasm.
"[B]eing upset about having to use the smtp server [I] agreed to use when [I] signed up for [my] account"? I don't know about you, but I've read a lot of ISP contracts, and never has one said that I need to use my ISP's SMTP server. If it had, I would take my business elsewhere, or obey said restriction.
"[T]hey work fine", you say? You call six-hour delays fine? You call randomly lost email fine? I don't know about you, but I use my email for more than getting advertisements for hot goatse. Clients contact me, friends talk to me, automated systems scream "Help!", and if I don't get those messages in a timely fashion, I'm fucked. Along with said servers. Oh, and some of us like to use personal domains, y'know? And have multiple accounts for sorting purposes and different usages; one for automated, one for clients, one for friends?
You are of course entitled to your opinion, Awptimus Prime, just as I am mine. But personally? I am so glad that you aren't setting policy at my ISP or for the Internet, and if you ever start, I'll go elsewhere. Not that I think Speakeasy would ever listen to you as anything but a humor generator, but still, on principle.
Now, in my case, none of this applies, because I have a clueful ISP (Hi, Speakeasy!), but back in the Dark Ages of DSL through $TELCO, believe me, I had to. Or I didn't get mail. And believe me, I live for my mail.
Come now, Slashdot. Lots of gore, lots more hot chicks (I say that and I'm a chick), cool swords, amazing choreography, tons of in-jokes, anime, and a sense of humor.
Say it with me, guys. Best. Movie. This. Year.
Oh, really?
I stand by my original post stating that the licensing is the issue. Unless, of course, Postfix has adopted a proper BSD license in the two months since that posting.
It's licensing issues. The qmail license is completely unacceptable, and the postfix one contains too much legalese. exim is GPL'ed, and they're trying to remove GPL'ed material from the tree, not put it back in.
They've patched sendmail a great deal to make it less vulnerable and make it run in a less monolithic manner. There is an occasional hole, but it's relatively rare.
OpenBSD, hardened Sendmail from the default install, and Dovecot. Can't beat it. It just keeps going and going and going... </energizer-bunny>
One good thing, too, about OpenBSD is that it's very, very light on your hardware. I did mail for more users than you're talking about on a P166. Make sure to use SMTP auth with Sendmail, though. And, yeah, I do consulting too. Send me an email if you're interested and we can talk.
You say forcing? So Rose doesn't allow alternative OS'es? Wow... They always struck me as pretty clueful... Big surprise.
If you get a chance, I'd love to discuss this more with you in email. If you see this and wouldn't mind, drop me a line here. I'd really appreciate it.
But, since you started it, BSD, Last I tried it, was a bitch to install. True, it was on a laptop, from a parallel CD-ROM, With an unrecognized PCMCIA NIC, But a bitch nonetheless. Linux installed fine.
I have no idea which BSD you used, but since the conversation is about Open, I'll assume that (if it was Free or Net, you're right; the curses-based installers are a pain). By "a bitch to install", I'm going to assume you mean "waaaah! waaaaah!!! aaaigh! it doesn't hold my hand and be all nice and graphical-like!"
Personally, Open's installer is the best I've ever used. Onto one of the most stupid things I've ever read in a Slashdot post...
Secure, who cares, it was a laptop.
This is where intelligent beings WORRY about security. Use that thing on your neck for more than a hat rack, could you? Think about it. The laptop gets carried around with important data on it. Someone steals it, or you forget it somewhere. It falls into the hands of Mr. Evil-Nasty-Cracker-Guy. Tell me, do you want an OS with encrypted filesystems and swap, or do you want to say bye-bye to your data security? Or let's say you're carrying your laptop along to a convention, and they provide wireless. Do you want to get cracked in the next five minutes, like you would with a default install of Red Hat?
If I was worried about security, the entire freakin OS will be Read-Only (read KNOPPIX) same for my website (another CD-ROM) deface that!!!!
Oh, my God. We've got a live one here.
First: I take it you're planning to never update your website and burn THAT to the read-only media, too.
Second: As a member of the global Internet community, I don't give a shit whether your petty little website gets "L@MERZ I RULE A$$ OK PLZ THX~!!!!!!??!?!?!/" plastered across your front page. I DO, however, care if you get rooted -- amazingly enough, being on read-only media is not enough to prevent you from getting rooted via a remote security hole, imagine that -- and start DoS'ing people under the control of some script kiddy.
You, sir, madam, or genderless being, are amazingly incorrect and misinformed.
A default install of OpenBSD includes:
Now, admittedly, in the default install, only sshd and sendmail are turned on. Big fuckin' deal. With five seconds of work, it's all on and ready. And most of those are hardened software. You should diff the source trees against the original packages someday...
OpenBSD has always been all about giving the end user a complete server-in-a-box, so to speak. In fact, most of this stuff is off by default in FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Hmmmm... Offhand...
I like "Mirrors" by BoC, too, but some tracks definitely dip in quality, and it's not their traditional sound. Aside from that... I have noticed, just as a general trend, that Peter Gabriel and Duran Duran seems very susceptible to the "one or two good songs an album" trend. But, hey, that's just me.
Gah. Dude, it gets a bit old. ;) The nick comes from the OpenBSD blowfish. I'm their resident BSD girl.
And I feel the need to go on the record as saying that Puff Daddy sucks and sucks hard, and not in the nice way, either.
As for finding out, I don't have a copy of the virus... only some of the clients. And I'm too busy akilling those to be interested in where it came from. Fact is, it's loose. And that's the most important thing.
This worm was hitting us badly. I personally spent at least six or seven hours slamming the fuck out of the clients (they connect with a very distinctive hostmask/realname/nick) since they started hitting us on Sunday, and we have ~1500 akills for distinctive IP's set up now.
As you may imagine, manual akills just wasn't cutting it after a while. We all have actual jobs, and sitting on IRC whamming worms is something we don't get paid for. We've fixed our problem with a small Perl script one of our server admins wrote. I don't have the link where he placed it online right now, but I'm sure he'd be okay with sharing if anyone's interested. At the very least, it'll give you some heuristics to work from (the fundamental pattern is a nick with one, two, or three numbers on the end, a real name consisting of two capitalized words, and an identd response made of those two words reversed and conglomerated).
If there's any other admins of networks out there, pop onto irc.kdfs.net and join #helpdesk. Mention that you're looking for Puffy (me) or Danzak (script writer) and you're interested in our virus client killing bot.
No false positives so far. :)