Borderware Elron/Zix IronPort ISS McAfee Mira point Proofpoint (which also uses SVM, by the way!) Sophos(?) Symantec/Brightmail Tumbleweed (which actually has a PATENT on "Email Firewall")
By the way, why does everyone always mention Barracuda when these threads come up? CipherTrust, McAfee, and Tumbleweed (et al) had these concepts as actual products long before Barracuda put SpamAssassin in $300 bargin basement hardware and called it a "firewall".
Sure, but since you can now stream with something *OTHER* than iTunes, that means all the Linux kiddies can do it too (not just the elites with their shiny PowerBook G4s).
Great, so for the second time a team of wacky Linux devels are going to try to defile the beauty of Apple and the coherence and focus of BSD. Look, OS X is built on BSD (Free and some Net, to be exact), so why are people trying so hard to port _LINUX_ package systems to it?
Fink is a port of apt-get, which is basically a knock-off of FreeBSD's ports system. Portage is just a more modern knock-off of Ports. Why are you trying to port Linux copies instead of just using the real thing (which is already designed for BSD systems). Oh wait, such a thing exists already (DarwinPorts) and, unlike Fink, it actually works well and most of the packages are up to date. I tried to get nmap and other libpcap-dependent apps to install on 10.3.3 with Fink for weeks until I gave up and tried DarwinPorts--then they all worked on the first try (and had much more recent versions).
Never mind, lets muddle things up Linux-style, because every n00b knows that 101 low-grade options to choose from is much more l33+ than 3 solid options ("I use Slack/RH/MDK/SuSE/Gentoo/Lin------/Foonix/Barix/L0 0nix/Etcux--they kick M$'s @$$!!! I install a new.ISO every three hours, it's great!!"). Keep on porting! Next we need RPM-X, iMDK, SlackPkg, etc, etc... quantity over quality I guess...
There's a reason I use OS X rather than Linux for my desktop... let me try to remember... oh yes, I've got it: BECAUSE IT'S NOT BLOODY LINUX!!!
Bayesian filtering is very simply the probability that a word will appear in one context or another. Once you've done this for a huge selection of words you select a few thousand and put them in a dictionary.
There are other techniques that go much further than just checking the "score" of a message based on what keywords show up in it. There are some techniques that try to parse the message for it's grammatical structure and the "intent" of the message. These are much more accurate techniques that what is essentially glorified keyword filtering (Bayesian).
I _personally_ do not call the GPL Communism, but that's the criticism that's been leveled against it by the likes of Microsoft and SCO. By the way, big corporations are more likely to view it that way, regardless of the GPL zealots screaming otherwise.
It's quite simple, if you look at software that has a license that says "do whatever you want, just give us credit" vs. a license that says "do whatever you want and also give it away for free and give it back to us", which are you going to choose (as a corporation, trying to make money)?
If you look at where Open Source code is being used in the industry, it's mostly in networked servers, appliances, or dedicated networking hardware (switches, routers, load balancers, etc). The majority of the larger players (Cisco, Juniper, F5, what was Alteon, etc) use BSD licensed code rather than GPL, while the smaller players going for SMB/SME markets often opt for Linux/GPL based software.
The big corps. are much more concerned with holding onto IP and being able to use what they know/what they've created competitively, where as the smaller players just want to be able to bring a product to market quickly and start shipping it. The smaller players aren't nearly as concerned with IP and long-term issues, they're concerned with buying able to make money quickly.
So no, I don't think the GPL is Communism, but I also don't think it fits will with giant corporations trying to dominate markets. Now you and RMS can argue that this is the root of all evil and it must be abolished, but the investors of those large corps. are more likely to want market domination and proprietary inventions that do not get shared for free.
And by the way, to your point about Red Hat I actually don't see them stealing MS's business, I see them stealing from Sun. Why do you think Sun has switched from attacking Microsoft (and losing) to attacking Red Hat? Because Red Hat is more of a threat to replace them now.
I do not think Red Hat will ultimately profit immensely from Linux, I think IBM, HP, and perhaps Novell will. It's not Windows that's dying out, it's UNIX. There will simply be a shift from Sys V-based proprietary OSs to Linux-based proprietary OSs. I mean, look at Red Hat, their Linux doesn't really look like anyone else's Linux now any way. The utilities and commands are fairly proprietary to RH and RH knowledge isn't all that portable to other Linux-based OSs.
Just in case someone gets the impression I'm a Microsoft fan (20% troll??), let me assure you that I'm not. Interestingly enough, I actually work for a company that sells Linux-based appliances (after previously working at a company that sold BSD-based appliances). At my previous employer we never had to worry about the license, because they were safe. With this company I'm suspicious that they're violating the GPL because they've done a fair amount of tinkering with the kernel and of course we don't release the source. I'm also willing to bet that there are a ton of other companies doing the same thing, but the FSF just isn't pursuing anyone about it.
Most big software companies are very opposed to the "communist" nature of the GPL. Software companies want the freedom to innovate and profit from their innovation without giving away the "secret sauce".
Microsoft is definitely listening to their customers here. The customers want access to source so they can make modifications, but without being forced to release their improvements to others.
Now the interesting thing will be to watch Sun's response. If Microsoft yet again beats Sun, will it force Sun's hand to tip their cards more? Pass me the popcorn, this should be interesting.
You see BSD booths at Linux cons because there aren't a whole lot of BSD cons. Linux is the media's baby right now, so it's what gets all the press and all the buzz. The BSD people are merely trying to get peoples attention to the fact that they are doing kool things too.
As for the original statement, yes it is true that most BSD users (pick any of the BSDs) prefer not to be associated with Linux and avoid Linux users. Don't take my word for it, read the archives for any of the BSD mailing lists.
The reason Linux gets the buzz is because Linux users and developers are extremely loud and abrasive. Meanwhile, BSD developers keep their heads down and plod along, not caring to "evangelize" and not making outrageous comments to the press and analysts.
Your last comment about "a win for..." is exactly the difference between Linux and BSD. Linux is trying to "win" something (so far as I can tell, it's putting Microsoft out of business and pissing on the ashes). BSD developers are just trying to develop stable and secure operating systems (full OSs mind you, not just kernels) that can be used in production environments. BSD is not trying to "win" anything.
"Clearly on one side of the battle" you say, well lets see what side that is, shall we? A little trip through the WayBack machine is in order, I think...
Hmm, what is that? Oh yes, it's the first product IronPort Systems ever sold. What does it do? Why, it sends up to 500,000 messages an hour and opens up to 10,000 simultaneous connections! Yes, those certainly look like "anti-spam" measures to me.
Wow, most of them talk about "maximizing your e-marketing dollars" and "are you emails getting through?". Yep, looks like fighting against spam to me...
Here's another snippet, notice how they make mention of how well they deal with spam filters on the recipient's end. Also notice the words about multiple "campaigns" happening simultaneously and being able to assign 256 IPs to one device, hmm, why would you need 256 IPs to send e-mail?
buy our servers because we try to evade spam filters!
In fact, while the first archive of www.IronPort.com is from Aug 26, 2001 it wasn't until Apr 02, 2003 that their "C series" was displayed. For close to 2 years they exclusively sold and marketed "marketing" servers before they ever came out with e-mail "protection" servers.
Even today, the bulk of the anti-spam functionality in their products comes from an OEM agreement with Brightmail, so that shows you how many of their own resources they been dedicating to "fighting" spam.
Now, I have some friends at IronPort and they're actually nice people (no sarcasm this time). One of them actually works in the Bonded Sender program and the people working in that program aren't exactly tolerating spam, so it's not like the company is pure evil.
If you look at the company history, though, it should be apparent which side they're on. Actually, just look at the featured customers on their website. Nearly all of them are customers of the e-mail sending servers, not the e-mail receiving models. I'm sure everyone is familiar with what an upstanding corporate citizen click.doubleclick is... featured IronPort customer.
All right, that's about enough. Hopefully I don't get k-lined tomorr... er, today:-\
P.S. Nothing personal, I'm just setting the record straight.
Yeah, but you have to admit the concept of non-repudiation for all messages is a great thing, and also the trusted cloud approach... I never saw spam in any of the X.400 systems that I monitored.
Of course, this system is much different since it's basically a pay-to-spam type of thing.
Since when does "pretty much the same" give "exactly the same" results? Even an off-by-one can change things drastically.
By the way, this isn't the first time I've heard that NetBSD's TCP/IP stack is the superior of the three. I once met the head of networking for a semi-conductor testing equipment company that did extensive tests between all three of the BSDs and Linux, and he said that NetBSD was the clear winner in TCP/IP performance.
Sure you can come up with examples, but I'm talking about the general rule. I mean, have you looked at Linux man pages? It's clear why they're so bad: Because documentation isn't *fun* so no volunteer will do it. On the other hand, commercial products (generally speaking) actually have someone assigned to creating documentation, and their projects usually include requirements for documenting proceedures, features, etc...
The whole difference is that commercial products usually have a list of requirements, which is often followed, and that generally contains a requirement for documentation, support procedures, etc. All the people working on the project are accountable to someone, so if they aren't accomplishing the goals, they're corrected.
In OSS you aren't accountable to anyone, in the few cases when there are project leaders it's basically to just make an arbitrary decision about whether to include a bit of code, and there isn't a chain of responsibility or any plan for supporting the product once it's rolled into production. Those are things that commercial products take into account that frankly just aren't important (from what I've seen) in free software projects.
Now, you try going to your boss and telling him that you're implementing unsupported software that hasn't been QA'd and doesn't really have any documentation to speak of, what do you suppose a boss in a corporation is going to say to that?
On the other hand, if you tell the PHB that you want to buy this software that comes in a nice shiny box, has telephone support, provides regular security updates, does QA, has crontrolled releases, etc isn't PHB going to be much more receptive? Note: It doesn't matter *which* company this software comes from (Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Red Hat) it just matters that it's commercial-grade!
I reiterate, "free" Linux will never make inroads into corporations, but I completely expect commercial Linux offerings from IBM, HP, Sun, Novell, and Red Hat to continue to gain market share.
Mr. Pratt actually completely missed the boat with that comment. Those thousands of people aren't "working on this thing" to "produce the best quality product" (half of them would probably revolt at it being called "product"), they're working on it because: a) They're allowed to b) They wanted something to exist that didn't before, or they wanted the same function to be performed with a different interface, options, etc...
Quality is not an overriding goal, as witnessed by the fact that Linux has generally horrible documentation (man pages, heh!). There are misspellings, factually false statements, incorrect or misleading statements, and worst a general incompleteness.
As has already been discussed to death, useability is not a goal either and as a result the software is often confusing for anyone other than the authors to use (because, after all, the authors didn't write it for YOU, they wrote it for themselves).
People fundamentally misunderstand the actual process of OSS (and especially GPL) software. It's not created because thousands of volunteers are trying to create a high-quality, competing set of products, it's created by and for the authors, and other people are allowed to download it (but God help them if the instructions aren't sufficient).
Perhaps to IBM it's about creating a better quality product, because their business has a huge interest in that, but that's not really community volunteerism, that's people who are getting paid by IBM, HP, Novell, Red Hat, etc to work on Linux. That would be like saying there are thousands of people in Redmond trying to make Windows a quality product... well, no kidding!
I'll make a prediction, and it is that there will be no penetration into the corporate market by "free" Linux, it will all be the commercial sort, that you pay for, just like any other software. The key features of this software will not have been designed by volunteers, but by paid coders for major corporations.
Don't believe me? Well have you been in a corporate data center recently? My job involves travelling to new customer sites every week and I've seen all of two Linux distros being used corporately: Red Hat in 99.9999% of the cases, and one small shop where the network admin was a Linux zealot and had a Debian box performing some utility functions, but again their blade server ran Red Hat...
I met him in person and talked for a few minutes, then again several times over IM. He doesn't come across as having "mental problems", just different priorities. I would draw a comparison and say he's somewhat like other very gifted, but misunderstood people, but that would probably be too grandiose.
Why not just take him at his word? He doesn't see things like other people do. That's how he describes himself, and it seems like the most accurate characterization to me.
Host firewalls are "A Good Thing(TM)". With the abundence of malware, trojans, and application attacks that are allowed to breeze through firewalls (because that's not what network firewalls were designed to block), having a host firewall is an asset, not a liability.
It's not like an on-chip firewall is going to slow down your box, and no one said you have to configure it to allow access to the rest of your network (like a gateway firewall), it's just an extra layer of protection that you can tailor much more specifically to that host's needs.
This doesn't mean you have to throw away your current firewall, this means you get more (and better) protection. In fact, features like this would be great for deployed application servers. Each DMZ host can be protected from the others even though they're on the same switch, and it doesn't require buying licenses and installing more software (like ZoneAlarm).
"NVIDIA is even letting third-party software developers take advantage of the nForce3 250Gb's dedicated firewall hardware."
It doesn't say that they've published the necessary APIs and/or documentation for taking advantage of this feature, only that they're "letting" people take advantage of it. Does this mean it will remain closed and non-free like the nForce ethernet driver on previous chipsets? While they do release a "tainted" Linux driver, they don't allow groups like the OpenBSD project access to the documentation in order to write their own driver.
All that hardware off-loading of processing from the CPU is not going to benefit everyone unless they freely provide documentation for using it.
Here's hoping they release the necessary documentation instead of hoarding it like Intel has done with their on-NIC IPsec off-loading.
Other than that, I really like the integrated firewall for two reasons: 1.) It starts before the OS would have the ability to start a firewall 2.) It (apparently?) works regardless of OS (that's a big question mark)
As if MS has been deliberately holding back on making Win* "secure and robust" all along? I personally think Windows security sucks, but it's no longer because they just don't care, now it's because a) the have massive code bases on a magnitude no one can really grasp and b) they have to maintain backwards compatibility.
If the new features of W2K3 don't convince you that MS is really trying to be more secure and robust, then I guess you've been covering your eyes and ears. Oh, and the MS server platform has been more or less stable since a few SPs into W2K.
It should be self-evident that this solution is not workable. Anything that requires this massive type of retooling of the whole method of using e-mail is doomed to failure.
Any proposed solution cannot cause this type of massive interruption of normal e-mail usage.
Yeah, but who says it *has* to be GPL to be acceptable? The FSF lists the BSD license as being an "Open Source" license. If all of Microsoft's stuff was released under BSD license (which of course it won't be, because this is just a desparate ploy to deflect some of the criticism against MS), would you people still whine about how closed it is? Oh that's right, you'd all chant "Windows is Dying".
Everyday I find myself more in agreement with that sig that says "Linux is good, but I can't stand the users". Or to put a common bumpersticker saying in context "Linus, save me from your followers".
Had it ever entered your mind that perhaps I have a good reason for needing the PC, such as the fact that VMWare is not offered for non-x86 architecture, or that some of the live-CD tools I use for work also do not run on PPC?
That's OK though, I'll bet it makes you feel big to use grade school insults in place of well reasoned arguments.
I have to disagree. I'm a firm believer in the superiority of vi over the eeeeeevil emacs, I live, eat, breath, and sleep *BSD (Open and Free), and I attempt to slay Windows where ever I find it (insecurity riddled beast), but I bought a Mac.
I don't regret it, either--in fact, I plan to buy more. I'll soon get one for my wife, and when my daughter is older she'll have one as well (heck, maybe I'll pick up one off eBay, just like commodity PCs). I don't think I got gouged, either. Granted I got an employee discount from a friend, but still a 15.2" PowerBook G4 1GHz w/512 MB RAM, CD-R/DVD, 60GB HDD, ATI 64MB video, built-in 802.11b/g, bluetooth, firewire, and USB 2.0 cost my just over $2,000. I think that's very competitve with PC laptops.
Don't think people like me are rare, either. Recently I took my PB G4 and my company laptop through security at SJC airport for the first time (I've been flying 1-3 times weekly since mid last year) and I said the to security screener "I'll bet this is the first time you've screened someone with *two* laptops". To my surprise, the screener said "oh no, we see lots of people every day with a PC and an Apple". So Silicon Valley, home to probably the highest population density of geeks in the world, is also home to a huge number of Apple users (who are one in the same). Go figure.
Well anyone can put shapes or text in a.ppt, but what about transitions, builds, grouping, etc? NONE of that is intuitive in PowerPoint, while it's extremely intuitive in Keynote.
Think of it this way, I've been a UNIX geek all my life, doing security and network administration, I haven't taken a business computing course since tech school many moons ago (aaah, dBase IV, Lotus 123, and Word for MacOS! [side note, prior to buying a PB G4 a few weeks ago, I hadn't used a Mac in about 4 years]).
Plop down both Keynote and PowerPoint side by side and attempt to create the same presentation in both. To me at least, it was immediately apparent in Keynote and infintely frustrating in PowerPoint. That's with exactly the same amount of training in both (i.e. zero). YMMV.
I have to say I'm absolutely in love with my PowerBook G4. The UI is very minimal and simple, but it has all the options that I would want to use.
For the hard core CLI stuff (such as tcpdump, etc) I can always open up a terminal, and for the part of me that goes "ooooh" at shiny objects, I can make the terminal windows transparent.
I'm particularly impressed at the ease of configuration of network devices and connections in OS X vs. WinXP.
Any way, add me to the list of UNIX geeks that is going to OS X. I'm not replacing my OpenBSD boxen, but I am trying to replace my work-issued WinXP laptop and my wife is totally willing to switch out her Win98SE box for a Mac (which is great, because she was dead-set against Linux for her desktop OS).
Oh, did I mention that it's 10 times easier to create a presentation in Keynote than in PowerPoint, and Keynote looks better to boot! For example, I created a 36 slide presentation immediately after installing Keynote, with barely a hitch and never cracking open the user manual. It took me 1 hour yesterday to modify two build slides in PowerPoint.
FAT/FAT32, CIFS, office formats, etc... Apple has Office, Sun has an Office that can import MS docs, there's a free suite that can import MS docs... FAT is the standard for removeable media. CIFS is much more popular than NFS for local file shares.
Basically all the formats that people use to share documents in one way or another (the file system, the network share, and that document formats themselves).
Slashdot Mirror
Borderwarea point
Elron/Zix
IronPort
ISS
McAfee
Mir
Proofpoint (which also uses SVM, by the way!)
Sophos(?)
Symantec/Brightmail
Tumbleweed (which actually has a PATENT on "Email Firewall")
By the way, why does everyone always mention Barracuda when these threads come up? CipherTrust, McAfee, and Tumbleweed (et al) had these concepts as actual products long before Barracuda put SpamAssassin in $300 bargin basement hardware and called it a "firewall".
Sure, but since you can now stream with something *OTHER* than iTunes, that means all the Linux kiddies can do it too (not just the elites with their shiny PowerBook G4s).
Great, so for the second time a team of wacky Linux devels are going to try to defile the beauty of Apple and the coherence and focus of BSD. Look, OS X is built on BSD (Free and some Net, to be exact), so why are people trying so hard to port _LINUX_ package systems to it?
0 0nix/Etcux--they kick M$'s @$$!!! I install a new .ISO every three hours, it's great!!"). Keep on porting! Next we need RPM-X, iMDK, SlackPkg, etc, etc... quantity over quality I guess...
Fink is a port of apt-get, which is basically a knock-off of FreeBSD's ports system. Portage is just a more modern knock-off of Ports. Why are you trying to port Linux copies instead of just using the real thing (which is already designed for BSD systems). Oh wait, such a thing exists already (DarwinPorts) and, unlike Fink, it actually works well and most of the packages are up to date. I tried to get nmap and other libpcap-dependent apps to install on 10.3.3 with Fink for weeks until I gave up and tried DarwinPorts--then they all worked on the first try (and had much more recent versions).
Never mind, lets muddle things up Linux-style, because every n00b knows that 101 low-grade options to choose from is much more l33+ than 3 solid options ("I use Slack/RH/MDK/SuSE/Gentoo/Lin------/Foonix/Barix/L
There's a reason I use OS X rather than Linux for my desktop... let me try to remember... oh yes, I've got it: BECAUSE IT'S NOT BLOODY LINUX!!!
Bayesian filtering is very simply the probability that a word will appear in one context or another. Once you've done this for a huge selection of words you select a few thousand and put them in a dictionary.
There are other techniques that go much further than just checking the "score" of a message based on what keywords show up in it. There are some techniques that try to parse the message for it's grammatical structure and the "intent" of the message. These are much more accurate techniques that what is essentially glorified keyword filtering (Bayesian).
I _personally_ do not call the GPL Communism, but that's the criticism that's been leveled against it by the likes of Microsoft and SCO. By the way, big corporations are more likely to view it that way, regardless of the GPL zealots screaming otherwise.
It's quite simple, if you look at software that has a license that says "do whatever you want, just give us credit" vs. a license that says "do whatever you want and also give it away for free and give it back to us", which are you going to choose (as a corporation, trying to make money)?
If you look at where Open Source code is being used in the industry, it's mostly in networked servers, appliances, or dedicated networking hardware (switches, routers, load balancers, etc). The majority of the larger players (Cisco, Juniper, F5, what was Alteon, etc) use BSD licensed code rather than GPL, while the smaller players going for SMB/SME markets often opt for Linux/GPL based software.
The big corps. are much more concerned with holding onto IP and being able to use what they know/what they've created competitively, where as the smaller players just want to be able to bring a product to market quickly and start shipping it. The smaller players aren't nearly as concerned with IP and long-term issues, they're concerned with buying able to make money quickly.
So no, I don't think the GPL is Communism, but I also don't think it fits will with giant corporations trying to dominate markets. Now you and RMS can argue that this is the root of all evil and it must be abolished, but the investors of those large corps. are more likely to want market domination and proprietary inventions that do not get shared for free.
And by the way, to your point about Red Hat I actually don't see them stealing MS's business, I see them stealing from Sun. Why do you think Sun has switched from attacking Microsoft (and losing) to attacking Red Hat? Because Red Hat is more of a threat to replace them now.
I do not think Red Hat will ultimately profit immensely from Linux, I think IBM, HP, and perhaps Novell will. It's not Windows that's dying out, it's UNIX. There will simply be a shift from Sys V-based proprietary OSs to Linux-based proprietary OSs. I mean, look at Red Hat, their Linux doesn't really look like anyone else's Linux now any way. The utilities and commands are fairly proprietary to RH and RH knowledge isn't all that portable to other Linux-based OSs.
Just in case someone gets the impression I'm a Microsoft fan (20% troll??), let me assure you that I'm not. Interestingly enough, I actually work for a company that sells Linux-based appliances (after previously working at a company that sold BSD-based appliances). At my previous employer we never had to worry about the license, because they were safe. With this company I'm suspicious that they're violating the GPL because they've done a fair amount of tinkering with the kernel and of course we don't release the source. I'm also willing to bet that there are a ton of other companies doing the same thing, but the FSF just isn't pursuing anyone about it.
Most big software companies are very opposed to the "communist" nature of the GPL. Software companies want the freedom to innovate and profit from their innovation without giving away the "secret sauce".
Microsoft is definitely listening to their customers here. The customers want access to source so they can make modifications, but without being forced to release their improvements to others.
Now the interesting thing will be to watch Sun's response. If Microsoft yet again beats Sun, will it force Sun's hand to tip their cards more? Pass me the popcorn, this should be interesting.
You see BSD booths at Linux cons because there aren't a whole lot of BSD cons. Linux is the media's baby right now, so it's what gets all the press and all the buzz. The BSD people are merely trying to get peoples attention to the fact that they are doing kool things too.
As for the original statement, yes it is true that most BSD users (pick any of the BSDs) prefer not to be associated with Linux and avoid Linux users. Don't take my word for it, read the archives for any of the BSD mailing lists.
The reason Linux gets the buzz is because Linux users and developers are extremely loud and abrasive. Meanwhile, BSD developers keep their heads down and plod along, not caring to "evangelize" and not making outrageous comments to the press and analysts.
Your last comment about "a win for..." is exactly the difference between Linux and BSD. Linux is trying to "win" something (so far as I can tell, it's putting Microsoft out of business and pissing on the ashes). BSD developers are just trying to develop stable and secure operating systems (full OSs mind you, not just kernels) that can be used in production environments. BSD is not trying to "win" anything.
"Clearly on one side of the battle" you say, well lets see what side that is, shall we? A little trip through the WayBack machine is in order, I think...
:-\
IronPort's original product
Hmm, what is that? Oh yes, it's the first product IronPort Systems ever sold. What does it do? Why, it sends up to 500,000 messages an hour and opens up to 10,000 simultaneous connections! Yes, those certainly look like "anti-spam" measures to me.
Let's take another snapshot from the Internet Archive, this time look at the news items at the bottom of the page: Interesting marketing tips from IronPort
Wow, most of them talk about "maximizing your e-marketing dollars" and "are you emails getting through?". Yep, looks like fighting against spam to me...
Here's another snippet, notice how they make mention of how well they deal with spam filters on the recipient's end. Also notice the words about multiple "campaigns" happening simultaneously and being able to assign 256 IPs to one device, hmm, why would you need 256 IPs to send e-mail? buy our servers because we try to evade spam filters!
In fact, while the first archive of www.IronPort.com is from Aug 26, 2001 it wasn't until Apr 02, 2003 that their "C series" was displayed. For close to 2 years they exclusively sold and marketed "marketing" servers before they ever came out with e-mail "protection" servers.
Even today, the bulk of the anti-spam functionality in their products comes from an OEM agreement with Brightmail, so that shows you how many of their own resources they been dedicating to "fighting" spam.
Now, I have some friends at IronPort and they're actually nice people (no sarcasm this time). One of them actually works in the Bonded Sender program and the people working in that program aren't exactly tolerating spam, so it's not like the company is pure evil.
If you look at the company history, though, it should be apparent which side they're on. Actually, just look at the featured customers on their website. Nearly all of them are customers of the e-mail sending servers, not the e-mail receiving models. I'm sure everyone is familiar with what an upstanding corporate citizen click.doubleclick is... featured IronPort customer.
All right, that's about enough. Hopefully I don't get k-lined tomorr... er, today
P.S. Nothing personal, I'm just setting the record straight.
Yeah, but you have to admit the concept of non-repudiation for all messages is a great thing, and also the trusted cloud approach... I never saw spam in any of the X.400 systems that I monitored.
Of course, this system is much different since it's basically a pay-to-spam type of thing.
RTFA, it has a graph of normal bandwidth usage right in the article. It's pretty freakin far from "near-zero net congestion".
Since when does "pretty much the same" give "exactly the same" results? Even an off-by-one can change things drastically.
By the way, this isn't the first time I've heard that NetBSD's TCP/IP stack is the superior of the three. I once met the head of networking for a semi-conductor testing equipment company that did extensive tests between all three of the BSDs and Linux, and he said that NetBSD was the clear winner in TCP/IP performance.
Sure you can come up with examples, but I'm talking about the general rule. I mean, have you looked at Linux man pages? It's clear why they're so bad: Because documentation isn't *fun* so no volunteer will do it. On the other hand, commercial products (generally speaking) actually have someone assigned to creating documentation, and their projects usually include requirements for documenting proceedures, features, etc...
The whole difference is that commercial products usually have a list of requirements, which is often followed, and that generally contains a requirement for documentation, support procedures, etc. All the people working on the project are accountable to someone, so if they aren't accomplishing the goals, they're corrected.
In OSS you aren't accountable to anyone, in the few cases when there are project leaders it's basically to just make an arbitrary decision about whether to include a bit of code, and there isn't a chain of responsibility or any plan for supporting the product once it's rolled into production. Those are things that commercial products take into account that frankly just aren't important (from what I've seen) in free software projects.
Now, you try going to your boss and telling him that you're implementing unsupported software that hasn't been QA'd and doesn't really have any documentation to speak of, what do you suppose a boss in a corporation is going to say to that?
On the other hand, if you tell the PHB that you want to buy this software that comes in a nice shiny box, has telephone support, provides regular security updates, does QA, has crontrolled releases, etc isn't PHB going to be much more receptive? Note: It doesn't matter *which* company this software comes from (Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Red Hat) it just matters that it's commercial-grade!
I reiterate, "free" Linux will never make inroads into corporations, but I completely expect commercial Linux offerings from IBM, HP, Sun, Novell, and Red Hat to continue to gain market share.
Mr. Pratt actually completely missed the boat with that comment. Those thousands of people aren't "working on this thing" to "produce the best quality product" (half of them would probably revolt at it being called "product"), they're working on it because:
a) They're allowed to
b) They wanted something to exist that didn't before, or they wanted the same function to be performed with a different interface, options, etc...
Quality is not an overriding goal, as witnessed by the fact that Linux has generally horrible documentation (man pages, heh!). There are misspellings, factually false statements, incorrect or misleading statements, and worst a general incompleteness.
As has already been discussed to death, useability is not a goal either and as a result the software is often confusing for anyone other than the authors to use (because, after all, the authors didn't write it for YOU, they wrote it for themselves).
People fundamentally misunderstand the actual process of OSS (and especially GPL) software. It's not created because thousands of volunteers are trying to create a high-quality, competing set of products, it's created by and for the authors, and other people are allowed to download it (but God help them if the instructions aren't sufficient).
Perhaps to IBM it's about creating a better quality product, because their business has a huge interest in that, but that's not really community volunteerism, that's people who are getting paid by IBM, HP, Novell, Red Hat, etc to work on Linux. That would be like saying there are thousands of people in Redmond trying to make Windows a quality product... well, no kidding!
I'll make a prediction, and it is that there will be no penetration into the corporate market by "free" Linux, it will all be the commercial sort, that you pay for, just like any other software. The key features of this software will not have been designed by volunteers, but by paid coders for major corporations.
Don't believe me? Well have you been in a corporate data center recently? My job involves travelling to new customer sites every week and I've seen all of two Linux distros being used corporately: Red Hat in 99.9999% of the cases, and one small shop where the network admin was a Linux zealot and had a Debian box performing some utility functions, but again their blade server ran Red Hat...
I met him in person and talked for a few minutes, then again several times over IM. He doesn't come across as having "mental problems", just different priorities. I would draw a comparison and say he's somewhat like other very gifted, but misunderstood people, but that would probably be too grandiose.
Why not just take him at his word? He doesn't see things like other people do. That's how he describes himself, and it seems like the most accurate characterization to me.
Host firewalls are "A Good Thing(TM)". With the abundence of malware, trojans, and application attacks that are allowed to breeze through firewalls (because that's not what network firewalls were designed to block), having a host firewall is an asset, not a liability.
It's not like an on-chip firewall is going to slow down your box, and no one said you have to configure it to allow access to the rest of your network (like a gateway firewall), it's just an extra layer of protection that you can tailor much more specifically to that host's needs.
This doesn't mean you have to throw away your current firewall, this means you get more (and better) protection. In fact, features like this would be great for deployed application servers. Each DMZ host can be protected from the others even though they're on the same switch, and it doesn't require buying licenses and installing more software (like ZoneAlarm).
"NVIDIA is even letting third-party software developers take advantage of the nForce3 250Gb's dedicated firewall hardware."
It doesn't say that they've published the necessary APIs and/or documentation for taking advantage of this feature, only that they're "letting" people take advantage of it. Does this mean it will remain closed and non-free like the nForce ethernet driver on previous chipsets? While they do release a "tainted" Linux driver, they don't allow groups like the OpenBSD project access to the documentation in order to write their own driver.
All that hardware off-loading of processing from the CPU is not going to benefit everyone unless they freely provide documentation for using it.
Here's hoping they release the necessary documentation instead of hoarding it like Intel has done with their on-NIC IPsec off-loading.
Other than that, I really like the integrated firewall for two reasons:
1.) It starts before the OS would have the ability to start a firewall
2.) It (apparently?) works regardless of OS (that's a big question mark)
As if MS has been deliberately holding back on making Win* "secure and robust" all along? I personally think Windows security sucks, but it's no longer because they just don't care, now it's because a) the have massive code bases on a magnitude no one can really grasp and b) they have to maintain backwards compatibility.
If the new features of W2K3 don't convince you that MS is really trying to be more secure and robust, then I guess you've been covering your eyes and ears. Oh, and the MS server platform has been more or less stable since a few SPs into W2K.
It should be self-evident that this solution is not workable. Anything that requires this massive type of retooling of the whole method of using e-mail is doomed to failure.
Any proposed solution cannot cause this type of massive interruption of normal e-mail usage.
Yeah, but who says it *has* to be GPL to be acceptable? The FSF lists the BSD license as being an "Open Source" license. If all of Microsoft's stuff was released under BSD license (which of course it won't be, because this is just a desparate ploy to deflect some of the criticism against MS), would you people still whine about how closed it is? Oh that's right, you'd all chant "Windows is Dying".
Everyday I find myself more in agreement with that sig that says "Linux is good, but I can't stand the users". Or to put a common bumpersticker saying in context "Linus, save me from your followers".
Had it ever entered your mind that perhaps I have a good reason for needing the PC, such as the fact that VMWare is not offered for non-x86 architecture, or that some of the live-CD tools I use for work also do not run on PPC?
That's OK though, I'll bet it makes you feel big to use grade school insults in place of well reasoned arguments.
I have to disagree. I'm a firm believer in the superiority of vi over the eeeeeevil emacs, I live, eat, breath, and sleep *BSD (Open and Free), and I attempt to slay Windows where ever I find it (insecurity riddled beast), but I bought a Mac.
I don't regret it, either--in fact, I plan to buy more. I'll soon get one for my wife, and when my daughter is older she'll have one as well (heck, maybe I'll pick up one off eBay, just like commodity PCs). I don't think I got gouged, either. Granted I got an employee discount from a friend, but still a 15.2" PowerBook G4 1GHz w/512 MB RAM, CD-R/DVD, 60GB HDD, ATI 64MB video, built-in 802.11b/g, bluetooth, firewire, and USB 2.0 cost my just over $2,000. I think that's very competitve with PC laptops.
Don't think people like me are rare, either. Recently I took my PB G4 and my company laptop through security at SJC airport for the first time (I've been flying 1-3 times weekly since mid last year) and I said the to security screener "I'll bet this is the first time you've screened someone with *two* laptops". To my surprise, the screener said "oh no, we see lots of people every day with a PC and an Apple". So Silicon Valley, home to probably the highest population density of geeks in the world, is also home to a huge number of Apple users (who are one in the same). Go figure.
Well anyone can put shapes or text in a .ppt, but what about transitions, builds, grouping, etc? NONE of that is intuitive in PowerPoint, while it's extremely intuitive in Keynote.
Think of it this way, I've been a UNIX geek all my life, doing security and network administration, I haven't taken a business computing course since tech school many moons ago (aaah, dBase IV, Lotus 123, and Word for MacOS! [side note, prior to buying a PB G4 a few weeks ago, I hadn't used a Mac in about 4 years]).
Plop down both Keynote and PowerPoint side by side and attempt to create the same presentation in both. To me at least, it was immediately apparent in Keynote and infintely frustrating in PowerPoint. That's with exactly the same amount of training in both (i.e. zero). YMMV.
I have to say I'm absolutely in love with my PowerBook G4. The UI is very minimal and simple, but it has all the options that I would want to use.
For the hard core CLI stuff (such as tcpdump, etc) I can always open up a terminal, and for the part of me that goes "ooooh" at shiny objects, I can make the terminal windows transparent.
I'm particularly impressed at the ease of configuration of network devices and connections in OS X vs. WinXP.
Any way, add me to the list of UNIX geeks that is going to OS X. I'm not replacing my OpenBSD boxen, but I am trying to replace my work-issued WinXP laptop and my wife is totally willing to switch out her Win98SE box for a Mac (which is great, because she was dead-set against Linux for her desktop OS).
Oh, did I mention that it's 10 times easier to create a presentation in Keynote than in PowerPoint, and Keynote looks better to boot! For example, I created a 36 slide presentation immediately after installing Keynote, with barely a hitch and never cracking open the user manual. It took me 1 hour yesterday to modify two build slides in PowerPoint.
Hint: It's only funny if it's based on truth. The link works fine, hence your joke is unfunny.
FAT/FAT32, CIFS, office formats, etc... Apple has Office, Sun has an Office that can import MS docs, there's a free suite that can import MS docs... FAT is the standard for removeable media. CIFS is much more popular than NFS for local file shares.
Basically all the formats that people use to share documents in one way or another (the file system, the network share, and that document formats themselves).