Match this: Skillset: Mail server administration for server farms handling over 500 messages/second on each individual node, Perl, SQL, Apache, Squid, security (network and system, physical is not important for this role). Fluency in English is a must, with knowledge of two or more languages preferred.
Salary: Willing to telecommute to work for 400 USD/month, or lesser.
Job profile: 6 to 12 hours of dealing with abuse desk work, no filtering allowed or possible. Design and implement techniques to automate responses, with no false positives.
7) The Fighting genre - this one should be obvious. Like the Mecha genre, except that battles are fought between martial artists. The hero is a young punk who does not believe in all the martial arts codes - he is a street fighter, there to challenge the sanctity of the software-patent-sponsored "traditional" martial artists.
Nah, the hero is a young open source developer who gets sued for patent violations, and then learns martial arts to fight off the evil agents of the patent mafia, using his hacking skills to crack the lawyerese.
This is just the first step. After a few years, you will see a large conglomeration of ships around the aircraft carrier, and you will call it...the raft. Lu ha da hu pha le bu sh ni ah wa.....
You may call it bloat, but the fact is I can't remember the last time I cracked a manual - my expectation is the sofware is lousy if I can't install and operate it without a manual
Interestingly, if I can't RTFM _before_ I use software, I call it lousy. On the other hand, that may be due to the fact that I do complex things like multi million user email setups rather than trivial desktop use (word processing, file and print sharing, etc).
Zombie PCs are no problem, since they won't have any postage to play with.
Zombie PCs are PCs owned by normal users, but with spammers controlling them. If you have e-postage, and your PC is taken over, the spammer now has your money.
The traditional response of spammers to better filters has been to send more spam. A large portion of the cost of spam is in handling the traffic itself. Your solution does nothing to reduce that.
Spam is easy to define: Unsolicited Bulk Email. The hard part of it is not about the conTent of the email, it is the consent thing that is difficult.
We have two conflicting goals with consent based systems: 1> We want to recieve mails from some people we have not corresponded with. 2> We do not want mail from some people we have not corresponded with.
Being able to separate these two things is the hard part.
Add to that the fact that email can go to different recipients on the same server who have different preferences, and we have big issues.
Nope. As much as I dislike MAPS, I support DNSBLs. DNSBL use is in the hands of the mail administrator. You can use DNSBLs as part of a scoring system, or to block email at the edge.
Oh, and collateral damage is the only thing that works in getting the net cleaned. If you are caught in a DNSBL block, change hosting providers. You are paying an ISP that supports spammers, and hence supporting the spammer indirectly. Your alternative is to get into the personal blacklists of a few thousand sysadmins, and most of us don't really care about the collateral damage that hits you.
Businesses that need their email and spam fix can run servers without using DNSBLs. I know a few businesses who can use email only because they use DNSBLs.
There is nothing easier for a spammer to defeat then a RBL; they just set up a server in their closet and run their own SMTP server. Most DSL and cable connections use temporary IP addresses and you can't RBL Verizon. No spammer is going to co-lo a server to send spam from.
Welcome to 2005. Spammers leasing racks at datacentres is ancient news. DNSBLs also block dynamic IPs. DNSBLs scale up. Someof us don't care about not seeing the mail in our inboxes, we don't want them to even arrive at our servers. All that traffic is expensive.
1> Load a _secure_ version of Windows. No RPC, no running services, default firewall with both inbound and outbound traffic blocked, proper ACLs applied to the filesystem.
2> Disable HTML email completely. Remove the ability to send/recieve HTML email from Outlook and Outlook Express.
3> Secure IE and make it standards complaint. Securing IE includes removing ActiveX.
Do this in the next SP for Win2K and XP as well.
That will remove a lot of the holes exploited by spammers to get zombies from which to spam/phish.
Funnily enough, I grew up in a place with good public transport (electric trains, and buses).
Running a car was way more expensive than using public transport, and travelling 60 km daily (at todays rates, one round trip is about 60 cents after currency conversion) with no parking hassles was just an added bonus.
This system transports about 18 million people daily. Why the hell don't people in the US campaign for better public transport?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the minimum wage here is about 50 cents/day, and I am in the top 5% of wage earners.
Equivalent salary in the US would be about 72K/yr (for a slightly worse lifestyle).
Match this:
Skillset: Mail server administration for server farms handling over 500 messages/second on each individual node, Perl, SQL, Apache, Squid, security (network and system, physical is not important for this role). Fluency in English is a must, with knowledge of two or more languages preferred.
Salary: Willing to telecommute to work for 400 USD/month, or lesser.
Job profile: 6 to 12 hours of dealing with abuse desk work, no filtering allowed or possible. Design and implement techniques to automate responses, with no false positives.
(This is roughly my current job profile).
Bastille for OpenBSD?
...
"I see that I am running on an OpenBSD system.
Checking
You are working as the root user. This is not secure. Please run as a non root user."
7) The Fighting genre - this one should be obvious. Like the Mecha genre, except that battles are fought between martial artists. The hero is a young punk who does not believe in all the martial arts codes - he is a street fighter, there to challenge the sanctity of the software-patent-sponsored "traditional" martial artists.
Nah, the hero is a young open source developer who gets sued for patent violations, and then learns martial arts to fight off the evil agents of the patent mafia, using his hacking skills to crack the lawyerese.
I know Kung Fu!
Too late. Your defense system was found to be too expensive and has been outsourced to India.
Enjoy your stay.
This is just the first step. After a few years, you will see a large conglomeration of ships around the aircraft carrier, and you will call it...the raft.
Lu ha da hu pha le bu sh ni ah wa.....
You may call it bloat, but the fact is I can't remember the last time I cracked a manual - my expectation is the sofware is lousy if I can't install and operate it without a manual
Interestingly, if I can't RTFM _before_ I use software, I call it lousy. On the other hand, that may be due to the fact that I do complex things like multi million user email setups rather than trivial desktop use (word processing, file and print sharing, etc).
Do those computers run on batteries? Or on really lousy power?
Zombie PCs are no problem, since they won't have any postage to play with.
Zombie PCs are PCs owned by normal users, but with spammers controlling them. If you have e-postage, and your PC is taken over, the spammer now has your money.
Does that not depend on your target user? I would rather much have applications targetted at users who know how to read, and understand.
Unclear or missing documentation, on the other hand, is really bad practice.
The traditional response of spammers to better filters has been to send more spam. A large portion of the cost of spam is in handling the traffic itself. Your solution does nothing to reduce that.
Who manages the payments? Also, spammers aren't sending spam from their own systems, the zombie PCs they control are.
What happens when you get infected by a spamming virus/trojan, and you get billed thousands of dollars?
BTW, we are speaking more emails per unit time than credit card transactions, so you need an incredible financial infrastructure to support this idea.
This has been discussed so many times with the same old rebuttals and the same FUSSP still keeps popping up.
Spam is easy to define: Unsolicited Bulk Email. The hard part of it is not about the conTent of the email, it is the consent thing that is difficult.
We have two conflicting goals with consent based systems:
1> We want to recieve mails from some people we have not corresponded with.
2> We do not want mail from some people we have not corresponded with.
Being able to separate these two things is the hard part.
Add to that the fact that email can go to different recipients on the same server who have different preferences, and we have big issues.
Couldn't be an Indian. We use the Queen's English.
Imagines slashdot being down. tick. tick.
*twitch*
*refresh*
*refresh*
*refresh*
Where is my daily fix?
*refresh*
A Klashback perhaps?
Every DNSBL I know of has a listing policy. DNSBL users are expected to read the policy, and if it agrees with their policies, they may use the DNSBL.
As for the Nazi comment, a DNSBL operator could do that too. They just need a specific DNSBL with that policy in mind.
Nope. As much as I dislike MAPS, I support DNSBLs. DNSBL use is in the hands of the mail administrator. You can use DNSBLs as part of a scoring system, or to block email at the edge.
Oh, and collateral damage is the only thing that works in getting the net cleaned. If you are caught in a DNSBL block, change hosting providers.
You are paying an ISP that supports spammers, and hence supporting the spammer indirectly. Your alternative is to get into the personal blacklists of a few thousand sysadmins, and most of us don't really care about the collateral damage that hits you.
Businesses that need their email and spam fix can run servers without using DNSBLs. I know a few businesses who can use email only because they use DNSBLs.
DNSBLs aren't against commercial use. Hint: Commercial mail is not spam. Usolicited Bulk Email is spam, regardless of content.
Your first two points are right though.
There is nothing easier for a spammer to defeat then a RBL; they just set up a server in their closet and run their own SMTP server. Most DSL and cable connections use temporary IP addresses and you can't RBL Verizon. No spammer is going to co-lo a server to send spam from.
Welcome to 2005. Spammers leasing racks at datacentres is ancient news. DNSBLs also block dynamic IPs. DNSBLs scale up. Someof us don't care about not seeing the mail in our inboxes, we don't want them to even arrive at our servers. All that traffic is expensive.
1> Load a _secure_ version of Windows. No RPC, no running services, default firewall with both inbound and outbound traffic blocked, proper ACLs applied to the filesystem.
2> Disable HTML email completely. Remove the ability to send/recieve HTML email from Outlook and Outlook Express.
3> Secure IE and make it standards complaint. Securing IE includes removing ActiveX.
Do this in the next SP for Win2K and XP as well.
That will remove a lot of the holes exploited by spammers to get zombies from which to spam/phish.
Funnily enough, I grew up in a place with good public transport (electric trains, and buses).
Running a car was way more expensive than using public transport, and travelling 60 km daily (at todays rates, one round trip is about 60 cents after currency conversion) with no parking hassles was just an added bonus.
This system transports about 18 million people daily. Why the hell don't people in the US campaign for better public transport?
As a Unix user, anything that does not use X11 is broken, IMO. I would really prefer that OS X move to X11 (and become a decently usable system).
It might be worth buying a Mac at that point, but till then, I'll stick to my regular x86 boxen.
Read "Interface", by Neal Stephenson for a similar idea.
Neal Stephenson already did that.
He had millions of them, and they were really small.
Read the Diamond Age