Knowing how Messagelabs works myself, just to refine it, it probably went something like this.
Emailserver1 is setup to relay outbound through Messagelabs all of the email. Emailserver1 is compromised and used as a mail relay itself Messagelabs receives spam generated by Emailserver1 and because all outbound email is filtered, they recognize it after a few hundred pieces of mail and begin to throttle/stop connections from the server A few pieces of the hundred are delivered to destination recipients SORBS places the entire Messagelabs/24 on their lame block list in response and because they suck as a service take forever to remediate bad blocks
The answer to all this is Messagelabs IP ranges should never end up on SORBS' list because of what they are, an output pool for tens of thousands of people which is maintained by a company with a repuation. The fact SORBS feels it within their power to blacklist Messagelabs IP ranges shows how much power they feel that they have, power derived merely from the fact that some people use them.
This should prove to people who use SORBS why not to use them. It's SORBS fault, not Messagelabs. The whole idea of a list like SORBS is to be a well maintained list of "bad ip's". If they add Messagelabs'/24's to their list, this proves it is not well maintained. The act of sending a small number of spam emails is inherently unpreventable almost by definition, and ML has the infrastructure in place to protect against 99.9999% of it.
This is a very poorly written article which seems to cast Symantec's Messagelabs in a bad light when infact it should be SORBS.
SORBS is a horrible black list and no one should use it. They are slow to de-list unless you pay an extortion fee. They probably put Messagelabs on their block list at the slightest provocation. I work with Messagelabs frequently and I have seen first hand how Messagelabs throttles connections from IP's and shuts them off automatically when they detect spam. I think the scope of the "spam" problem was likely limited to a couple hundred pieces, at most, more likely even less.
I question the source of the article and whether the writer received some sort of payment to create it to look so good towards SORBS. Now that Messagelabs is owned by Symantec, they may be considered a "big dog" in the industry and prone to these sorts of negative press articles designed to attack at them. I don't feel that this is legitimate.
Lost amidst all of the desire to permanently archive and hold on to every bit of past memory is the idea that we're supposed to forget. It's built into our DNA. I'm not convinced that it is a practical or necessary goal to hold on to and remember every little thing, especially video game heritage.
Some people may choose to make it a hobby, or an obsession, and that's their prerogative, but as a society and as a species there's certain things that once they're lost they're just gone. And future generations will not be robbed of some great cosmic truth when there are no longer any more NES machines capable of playing an NES cartridge. We will keep this memories in our own minds until we ourselves perish, and then the next generation takes over and creates something new themselves. I don't feel there's any sense pining over this eventuality.
Keep it simple, stupid, as they say. Remove local administrator and the person using the computer will find it impossible to fuck it up no matter how hard they try.
who the hell could possibly know? the bill has more pages than a dictionary. no one really knows what's in it. i doubt even the people voting on it for us know what's in it.
Pretty dumb question. Like a lot of other things, license plates weren't intended to be this easily accessed for their location and traffic habits. I did a lot of work managing municipal data and one of the concerns is that the ease of access of "public" information is causing a major headache.
For instance, lots of public records were public records because in order to get them you had to go to the court house, fill out a request, pay some money and receive them. Removing the barrier to access by opening certain public records up to electronic access is causing a notable and legitimate concern for privacy where none existed before.. The clear reason is because before it used to require a concerted effort and will as a barrier to entry. When things are made easier it removes the barrier which previously existed as a bulwark that satiated existing privacy concerns.
Speed of information should legitimately be a concern in the digital age where our laws and regulations what is publicly available information just don't adapt well to the modern age.
I don't know, I just hope it's kept within reason. A civil judgment against the school district would be like robbing from yourself and other local taxpayers to give money to yourself at the expense of your children's education.
Maybe they have an insurance policy or something but I doubt it.
I am absolutely shocked and appalled at the manner this software was deployed implemented and used. Fortunately the FBI and courts are involved and this matter will be put to rest quickly and justly.
That said, I think it's important that there be a metered and purposeful response to this problem. I fear that the parents of children going to this school district will seek some sort of civil damages for what occurred in this school district. That's probably the worst thing that could happen because where does that money come from? The school district, and that will cause irreparable harm to other programs at the school.
I hope that the parents and other involved parties realize that a civil judgment against the school district awarding significant damages will not help anyone. I think most of the administrative staff at the school should lose their jobs and be replaced, but to see this go to the point where lawyers are making tens of thousands in pursuit of a civil reward is unjust as well. It does the school district and students no good when the goal is to cease the activity and create a better school district.
Leave your poor friends and family alone. Unless they specifically ask for it or there is some tangible benefit to you changing their OS from Microsoft to Linux, you are just being pushy.
There's no money savings because they've already paid for the license and that's about 99% of Linux's value proposition. I can't think of many compelling reasons to go out there and harass people you know with a new OS.
I know it would not work for me because my friends and family rely on the Windows platform for video games and easy access to any software they want. Also, I do not want the trouble that comes with helping to continue to support my friends and family after I ruin their whole PC experience with an operating system that will cause them all kinds of headaches.
Just leave your family alone, let them use their PC's in peace. You don't need to terrorize them with changing OS's and ruining their whole daily routine.
Yeah, I don't disagree, maybe I'm even well aware of that, but if I had admitted that in my original post I'd have no room to indict the continued problems. I think they should aspire to be better even if Slashdot is everything you say it is.
I've been around for a while. Enough to understand, nay, love the fact that you are linux supporters and all that. But I remain an ardent supporter of truth and speaking in ways which are concise and leads the reader in the direction of truth. Nothing in this news story is inaccurate, but to make it a point to say that Windows XP is incompatible with no mention of Vista and 7 being perfectly compatible should be an embarrassment of journalistic integrity.
Windows XP may not work with the new WD Green drives, but Vista and on have been perfectly comfortable with 4096 byte sectors. A lay reader may read this story and not "Read between the lines" as I have learned to do here. Their take away may be that Microsoft operating systems are broken in some way (which they are in a lot of ways), but not this one!
I like your post, Dave, and can relate. I think a lot of people on Slashdot have been in similar positions.
It can be difficult to balance the "I know what I'm doing" arrogance with restraint when necessary. What I do is try and remember that there's some possibility I'm wrong and don't want to be too embarrassed. That seems to make people more willing to help me too when I call tech support myself.
That's the impression I got of the original poster when reading his missive about his experience with his hosting provider. It seems like he knows what he's doing and is very smart but he's not being reasonable.
If your provider wants access to logs without root, maybe you can just allow them access via ftp to the log files or some reasonable compromise? I think that would foster a more cooperative relationship with your hosting provider than the hostile one the poster has now.
An ounce of cooperation can go a long ways to helping people solve problems, especially if you turn out to be right in the end anyway.
I might ask for more evidence that the provider actually rooted the server before pronouncing judgment. I'm not saying that the person posing the question is lying, but simply because I don't have enough evidence either way.
Highly intelligent people tend towards a sometimes unreasonable paranoia and sometimes make conclusions (i.e. my server was rooted to look at the logs) that are not exactly true.
That said, I don't know either way really. It could be argued one way or another. If I were a provider, I might even insist upon the ability to access systems running on my network simply because of liability concerns as the provider. I as the provider can't be allowing untoward activity on my network.
That all said, and without actually proclaiming judgment one way or another, in the end if you're not happy with your provider for any reason, whether reasonable or not, you should just leave them and find a new one.
The guy writing this article is some loony activist one man army who's been arguing this issue since at least 2004. Who knows his motivations, but let's not read into this article as though it's some sort of concerted effort that Washington Legislators are taking seriously.
I don't think the guy who writes this article really understands tax law. Neither do I really, but atleast I'll admit it. It seems to me that I remember Tax Avoidance being perfectly legal and accepted. I really think he misunderstands the idea that there's some existing tax law to be enforced that applies to Microsoft's actions. The software is licensed out of NV, hence, NV law applies. There are major jurisdictional issues inherent in taxation law and so far as I can tell as a layman, there's nothing afoul of any regulation going on here.
If there were, you can be sure Washington State would have their hands in Microsoft's pockets already.
That's kind of why most corporations are incorporated in Delaware, too. There's jurisdictional issues being blatantly ignored by this person in order to make a point and that is not justified.
You'll notice, a year ago, he supposedly already addressed all the issues everyone here could possibly present. Unfortunately, he's also completely ignored the one about the constitutionality of taxation and jurisdiction and focuses more on wishy washy sort of justification arguments made that appeal more to a sense of right or wrong, rather than the case law regarding jurisdictional tax issues.
Career campaigner on this issue, hey Jeff? Too bad you've wasted 5 YEARS on this subject and you're never going to get anywhere because Microsoft is DOING NOTHING WRONG.
I read your post with interest because my career is in this specific area of IT. I work for an IT firm which provides services to small, medium and large business, and I must admit it does make me very happy we have built our reputation as a business to be 100% trusted by customers who have very large annual revenues. We gain that trust through tireless service and offering our customers value they simply cannot achieve with hired staff. One of our core values is in that we can accomplish equivalent (and better) work as an on-site IT resource for a lower price, and also offereing a level of service to SMB that they are unfamiliar with because they cannot afford full time IT staffing and/or have previously worked with a one-man IT shop.
This value proposition is bolstered only by customer references and the trust our customers place in us. They gain this trust because they work with the same people every day. It is very important you trust your IT provider. In finding an IT provider you can trust, you should look for a company which has a very low turnover in technicians, a place that values the people and sees them as more than a resource. This may be a golden goose in your area, I am not sure, but we are that type of company and that is why we gain the customer's trust. Most of our customer's, I would say, trust us way more than rank and file employees. After all, we do have the "keys to the castle" so to speak, and are trusted to maintain permissions to important resources such as HR information, revenues and, well, everything. The only other people with access to this information are officer's of the company.
The point is, you have to trust them. There's really no option. Just do a good job finding a partner you can trust; value personality traits, employee retention and honesty over cost and certifications.
exactly. The alternative is that GM goes completely out of business and is no longer a going concern, and then the liability of cleanup still falls on government, if it ever got done at all.
So, there's not really good news anywhere in all this. I hate it just as much as anyone else, but we need to be practical.
I can tell from reading his blog post that Mike is very excited to be wrapped up in this whirlwind affair of being the first person in the world to ever catch a meteorite through a telescope, the guy is absolutely giddy in his writing and awe of the world wide attention. It has a sort of innocence about it that is rather charming. It absolutely comes through in his writing, reading it makes me smile from how genuine it comes across. He's in for some fun and exhausting times for the next few days. he must be having a hard time sleeping and all that, how exciting for him, way to go mike!
I take a general offense to the nature of this article, presenting this as though it is some sort of surprise. Researches along time ago classified people into 3 groups and this is merely genetic confirmation of the original findings. They classified people in 3 groups a long time ago, I suppose this is DNA confirmation of the initial categories: Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid.
non-PC names these days I suppose, but that's what they were called.
Slashdot Mirror
"There's a big problem, says man with solution to said problem"
While funny, it misses the bigger picture of the OpenBSD stack/code being hidden in other devices, especially vpn/firewall appliances.
Extra points for his profile photo being a cross-eyed 3d photo!
Knowing how Messagelabs works myself, just to refine it, it probably went something like this.
Emailserver1 is setup to relay outbound through Messagelabs all of the email. /24 on their lame block list in response and because they suck as a service take forever to remediate bad blocks
Emailserver1 is compromised and used as a mail relay itself
Messagelabs receives spam generated by Emailserver1 and because all outbound email is filtered, they recognize it after a few hundred pieces of mail and begin to throttle/stop connections from the server
A few pieces of the hundred are delivered to destination recipients
SORBS places the entire Messagelabs
The answer to all this is Messagelabs IP ranges should never end up on SORBS' list because of what they are, an output pool for tens of thousands of people which is maintained by a company with a repuation. The fact SORBS feels it within their power to blacklist Messagelabs IP ranges shows how much power they feel that they have, power derived merely from the fact that some people use them.
This should prove to people who use SORBS why not to use them. It's SORBS fault, not Messagelabs. The whole idea of a list like SORBS is to be a well maintained list of "bad ip's". If they add Messagelabs' /24's to their list, this proves it is not well maintained. The act of sending a small number of spam emails is inherently unpreventable almost by definition, and ML has the infrastructure in place to protect against 99.9999% of it.
This is a very poorly written article which seems to cast Symantec's Messagelabs in a bad light when infact it should be SORBS.
SORBS is a horrible black list and no one should use it. They are slow to de-list unless you pay an extortion fee. They probably put Messagelabs on their block list at the slightest provocation. I work with Messagelabs frequently and I have seen first hand how Messagelabs throttles connections from IP's and shuts them off automatically when they detect spam. I think the scope of the "spam" problem was likely limited to a couple hundred pieces, at most, more likely even less.
I question the source of the article and whether the writer received some sort of payment to create it to look so good towards SORBS. Now that Messagelabs is owned by Symantec, they may be considered a "big dog" in the industry and prone to these sorts of negative press articles designed to attack at them. I don't feel that this is legitimate.
Best buy pretty much has to object, because if they allowed the God Squad they'd have to allow the Allahu Akbar Squad..
Lost amidst all of the desire to permanently archive and hold on to every bit of past memory is the idea that we're supposed to forget. It's built into our DNA. I'm not convinced that it is a practical or necessary goal to hold on to and remember every little thing, especially video game heritage.
Some people may choose to make it a hobby, or an obsession, and that's their prerogative, but as a society and as a species there's certain things that once they're lost they're just gone. And future generations will not be robbed of some great cosmic truth when there are no longer any more NES machines capable of playing an NES cartridge. We will keep this memories in our own minds until we ourselves perish, and then the next generation takes over and creates something new themselves. I don't feel there's any sense pining over this eventuality.
What he said, tenuous link at best. slow news day, stupid conclusions, etc etc.
Keep it simple, stupid, as they say. Remove local administrator and the person using the computer will find it impossible to fuck it up no matter how hard they try.
who the hell could possibly know? the bill has more pages than a dictionary. no one really knows what's in it. i doubt even the people voting on it for us know what's in it.
Pretty dumb question. Like a lot of other things, license plates weren't intended to be this easily accessed for their location and traffic habits. I did a lot of work managing municipal data and one of the concerns is that the ease of access of "public" information is causing a major headache.
For instance, lots of public records were public records because in order to get them you had to go to the court house, fill out a request, pay some money and receive them. Removing the barrier to access by opening certain public records up to electronic access is causing a notable and legitimate concern for privacy where none existed before.. The clear reason is because before it used to require a concerted effort and will as a barrier to entry. When things are made easier it removes the barrier which previously existed as a bulwark that satiated existing privacy concerns.
Speed of information should legitimately be a concern in the digital age where our laws and regulations what is publicly available information just don't adapt well to the modern age.
I don't know, I just hope it's kept within reason. A civil judgment against the school district would be like robbing from yourself and other local taxpayers to give money to yourself at the expense of your children's education.
Maybe they have an insurance policy or something but I doubt it.
I am absolutely shocked and appalled at the manner this software was deployed implemented and used. Fortunately the FBI and courts are involved and this matter will be put to rest quickly and justly.
That said, I think it's important that there be a metered and purposeful response to this problem. I fear that the parents of children going to this school district will seek some sort of civil damages for what occurred in this school district. That's probably the worst thing that could happen because where does that money come from? The school district, and that will cause irreparable harm to other programs at the school.
I hope that the parents and other involved parties realize that a civil judgment against the school district awarding significant damages will not help anyone. I think most of the administrative staff at the school should lose their jobs and be replaced, but to see this go to the point where lawyers are making tens of thousands in pursuit of a civil reward is unjust as well. It does the school district and students no good when the goal is to cease the activity and create a better school district.
Leave your poor friends and family alone. Unless they specifically ask for it or there is some tangible benefit to you changing their OS from Microsoft to Linux, you are just being pushy.
There's no money savings because they've already paid for the license and that's about 99% of Linux's value proposition. I can't think of many compelling reasons to go out there and harass people you know with a new OS.
I know it would not work for me because my friends and family rely on the Windows platform for video games and easy access to any software they want. Also, I do not want the trouble that comes with helping to continue to support my friends and family after I ruin their whole PC experience with an operating system that will cause them all kinds of headaches.
Just leave your family alone, let them use their PC's in peace. You don't need to terrorize them with changing OS's and ruining their whole daily routine.
Yeah, I don't disagree, maybe I'm even well aware of that, but if I had admitted that in my original post I'd have no room to indict the continued problems. I think they should aspire to be better even if Slashdot is everything you say it is.
Dear Slashdot,
I've been around for a while. Enough to understand, nay, love the fact that you are linux supporters and all that. But I remain an ardent supporter of truth and speaking in ways which are concise and leads the reader in the direction of truth. Nothing in this news story is inaccurate, but to make it a point to say that Windows XP is incompatible with no mention of Vista and 7 being perfectly compatible should be an embarrassment of journalistic integrity.
Windows XP may not work with the new WD Green drives, but Vista and on have been perfectly comfortable with 4096 byte sectors. A lay reader may read this story and not "Read between the lines" as I have learned to do here. Their take away may be that Microsoft operating systems are broken in some way (which they are in a lot of ways), but not this one!
I like your post, Dave, and can relate. I think a lot of people on Slashdot have been in similar positions.
It can be difficult to balance the "I know what I'm doing" arrogance with restraint when necessary. What I do is try and remember that there's some possibility I'm wrong and don't want to be too embarrassed. That seems to make people more willing to help me too when I call tech support myself.
That's the impression I got of the original poster when reading his missive about his experience with his hosting provider. It seems like he knows what he's doing and is very smart but he's not being reasonable.
If your provider wants access to logs without root, maybe you can just allow them access via ftp to the log files or some reasonable compromise? I think that would foster a more cooperative relationship with your hosting provider than the hostile one the poster has now.
An ounce of cooperation can go a long ways to helping people solve problems, especially if you turn out to be right in the end anyway.
I might ask for more evidence that the provider actually rooted the server before pronouncing judgment. I'm not saying that the person posing the question is lying, but simply because I don't have enough evidence either way.
Highly intelligent people tend towards a sometimes unreasonable paranoia and sometimes make conclusions (i.e. my server was rooted to look at the logs) that are not exactly true.
That said, I don't know either way really. It could be argued one way or another. If I were a provider, I might even insist upon the ability to access systems running on my network simply because of liability concerns as the provider. I as the provider can't be allowing untoward activity on my network.
That all said, and without actually proclaiming judgment one way or another, in the end if you're not happy with your provider for any reason, whether reasonable or not, you should just leave them and find a new one.
I like your post but can't mod. +1!
The guy writing this article is some loony activist one man army who's been arguing this issue since at least 2004. Who knows his motivations, but let's not read into this article as though it's some sort of concerted effort that Washington Legislators are taking seriously.
I don't think the guy who writes this article really understands tax law. Neither do I really, but atleast I'll admit it. It seems to me that I remember Tax Avoidance being perfectly legal and accepted. I really think he misunderstands the idea that there's some existing tax law to be enforced that applies to Microsoft's actions. The software is licensed out of NV, hence, NV law applies. There are major jurisdictional issues inherent in taxation law and so far as I can tell as a layman, there's nothing afoul of any regulation going on here.
If there were, you can be sure Washington State would have their hands in Microsoft's pockets already.
That's kind of why most corporations are incorporated in Delaware, too. There's jurisdictional issues being blatantly ignored by this person in order to make a point and that is not justified.
That all said, I did some more reading and it looks like this guy has barked up this tree before.
http://crosscut.com/2008/02/02/microsoft/11167/
which was posted to Slashdot back then
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/04/1520219
and a followup with his anti-arguments to the posts from Slashdot back then.
http://www.idealog.us/2008/02/top-reader-excu.html
Oh and 2004 too:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/01/2137228&tid=109
You'll notice, a year ago, he supposedly already addressed all the issues everyone here could possibly present. Unfortunately, he's also completely ignored the one about the constitutionality of taxation and jurisdiction and focuses more on wishy washy sort of justification arguments made that appeal more to a sense of right or wrong, rather than the case law regarding jurisdictional tax issues.
Career campaigner on this issue, hey Jeff? Too bad you've wasted 5 YEARS on this subject and you're never going to get anywhere because Microsoft is DOING NOTHING WRONG.
Hello
I read your post with interest because my career is in this specific area of IT. I work for an IT firm which provides services to small, medium and large business, and I must admit it does make me very happy we have built our reputation as a business to be 100% trusted by customers who have very large annual revenues. We gain that trust through tireless service and offering our customers value they simply cannot achieve with hired staff. One of our core values is in that we can accomplish equivalent (and better) work as an on-site IT resource for a lower price, and also offereing a level of service to SMB that they are unfamiliar with because they cannot afford full time IT staffing and/or have previously worked with a one-man IT shop.
This value proposition is bolstered only by customer references and the trust our customers place in us. They gain this trust because they work with the same people every day. It is very important you trust your IT provider. In finding an IT provider you can trust, you should look for a company which has a very low turnover in technicians, a place that values the people and sees them as more than a resource. This may be a golden goose in your area, I am not sure, but we are that type of company and that is why we gain the customer's trust. Most of our customer's, I would say, trust us way more than rank and file employees. After all, we do have the "keys to the castle" so to speak, and are trusted to maintain permissions to important resources such as HR information, revenues and, well, everything. The only other people with access to this information are officer's of the company.
The point is, you have to trust them. There's really no option. Just do a good job finding a partner you can trust; value personality traits, employee retention and honesty over cost and certifications.
exactly. The alternative is that GM goes completely out of business and is no longer a going concern, and then the liability of cleanup still falls on government, if it ever got done at all.
So, there's not really good news anywhere in all this. I hate it just as much as anyone else, but we need to be practical.
I can tell from reading his blog post that Mike is very excited to be wrapped up in this whirlwind affair of being the first person in the world to ever catch a meteorite through a telescope, the guy is absolutely giddy in his writing and awe of the world wide attention. It has a sort of innocence about it that is rather charming. It absolutely comes through in his writing, reading it makes me smile from how genuine it comes across. He's in for some fun and exhausting times for the next few days. he must be having a hard time sleeping and all that, how exciting for him, way to go mike!
I take a general offense to the nature of this article, presenting this as though it is some sort of surprise. Researches along time ago classified people into 3 groups and this is merely genetic confirmation of the original findings. They classified people in 3 groups a long time ago, I suppose this is DNA confirmation of the initial categories: Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid.
non-PC names these days I suppose, but that's what they were called.