The credo list you have (1. to the customer 2. to the employees 3. to the community 4. to the shareholders) was a short term abberation that virtually no company in the world today would agree with.
All companies today use the following order 1. shareholders 2. shareholders 3. shareholders 4. company executives.
Companies today have a vision that is about 3 months out to the next quarterly report. The reason is that shareholders will trash a companies stock if they don't exceed all expectation each quarter. And companies have no loyalty or responsibility toward employees. Employees are the first ones cast adrift so a company can show a short term improvement on their bottom line. As to customers, I have to think that most companies feel their customers are morons and idiots. Just look at the commercials they run.:) It has been long known that many companies calculate just how bad they can perform customer service without running off most of the thier customers. Why do you think companies want you to input your account numbers when you call customer service? So they can identify really good customers from the rest of and drop you into a long wait queue in India. Really good customers (read high dollar value customers) get put at the head of the line and get routed to customer service centers here in the US.
J&J was in a shear panic over that incident. And they did what they did because they felt the company was dead if they did not. Bottom line. Nothing more nothing less.
Actually in the corporate world you will find that companies don't want to loose $5 mill in revenue. The department and the managers that that money is credited to will fight tooth and nail to prevent loosing that kind of revenue. You can bet some salesman is getting a nice commision on that sale.
I suspect MCI makes more money that that anyway. Remember that is just money from the spammers. They also get money from all their other customers which have to have bandwidth to handle the spam. So the real numbers are going to be much much higher.
Now when the military looses one of those new robot SWORDS that are autonomous like the roombas then we have a news story. Time to get the popcorn and turn on the news.
"It has been three hours and there is no signs that the chase will end. Facinating sight really, small robot running down the freeway with a string of 80 police vehicles creeping along behind it. The police are having to re-think how to stop this little robot. Their last attempt ended in failure when the vehicles placed in front as a baracade where blown apart to make way for the robot. It is not clear just how many rockets are still on the robot. Of course their first idea was to let it run its systems down. However everyone was surprised when it looted several cars for their batteries. At this point the chase could go on all night....."
How can you expect privacy when your electronic ID is stored on a Windows system? As soon as you input your ID information the spy ware on the system will broadcast it to the world.
This is going to be a boon to the identity theft rings.
Let me guess, they are using DES encryption in Bulgaria due to export restrictions.;)
So one of these dark matter clouds may pass through the solar system every few thousand years? Have they taken the next step and hypothesized that such an event could account for major climate changes? Like the event that killed off the dinosaurs?
How about a study like this against the varous NAT/routers being used out there? How easy is it to own systems sitting behind those? This appears to be the standard anymore for the millions of cable/dsl connections.
Did you ever get to see the pie incident? It is really good. Gates was going into a meeting over in France, I believe, and some joker rushes him and nails him in the face with a pie.:)
The only way this kind of service could work is if there is wireless Internet available everywhere. In addition there has to be good security for the network connection as well as for any network bases storage being used for the users data.
Managed service offerings will become the big thing for companies over the next few years. There are economies of scale that companies can take advantage of by using a managed service that performs management and monitoring of various services over a network connection. This can permit companies to concentrate more of their resources on their core business instead of IT related services.
As to pushing this to the individual, as I said up front the only way that is going to work is if there is Internet access anywhere and everywhere on demand. Another few years we may get to the point that there is wireless network available anywhere you go. At that point having all your stuff "on the network" really becomes feasible. There will always be those of us that will choose to keep a lot of our data "off network" and we will maintain our own systems to do that. But for the bulk of the public all they want is a system that works everytime they need it. If a user can access the web, email, games, and a few office type applications they will be more than satisfied.
Network computing will only work and be usable when there is a wireless network in place that can be used coast to coast and world wide. In order for network computing to become a reality people must be able to access the network when ever and where ever they are. Until that happens laptops will continue to have a requirement to carry the OS and all applications and data on them.
In addition to global access to the network, secure methods of accessing applications and data must be in place that are truely secure. Without secure access network computing will become the bane of any users that dare use it.
I do believe that managed services for corporations are about to become a major factor. Companies will jump at the chance to outsource the support functions for major portions of thier infrastructure. That is nothing new, companies have been going in that direction for some time. In the next few years managed services where a company manages and controls various portions of a companies infrastructure either over the Internet or over private networks will become a major component of many companies infrastructure. It gets companies back to what their business should be instead of having large portions of their organizations dedicated to providing support services. And with economy of scale that can be applied if managed services are done correctly most companies should realize a cost savings.
Why is blocking port 25 a "really bad idea"? As I said block it but provide users an easy method to request that port 25 be opened. This lets the few people that want to run an MTA do so. The vast majority of people don't run MTAs or even know what the hell they are.
Secure email is a different problem than fighting spam. Using your approach will result in everyone having to either pay for a certificate or the systemm will have to allow self signed certificates which would defeat the purpose.
As to the delay grelisting imposes, set up a process to whitelist your customers, no delay then. This would do two things, eliminate 90 to 98 percent of spam that is probably bombarding you now, and give you a verified list of customers with valid email addresses. It also would not be that difficult to request the customer's email address and add it to the whitelist while you are updating the ticket. Not an insurmountable problem and a heck of a lot better than getting all those spam messages. And what does greylisting have to do with a customers PC being locked down by another company's IT department to only run Word and Outlook? I also wonder about anyone signing up to resolve a problem in a fixed amount of time. Any company that does that is walking into real problems since not all problems can be resolved in a fixed amount of time. I have heard of companies that have a fixed time to respond to the problem and get an action plan in place but actually resolving some unknown problem in a fixed amount of time is just asking for trouble.
I agree with your suggestion to implement a delay between initial HELO/EHLO and sending a respone. Most zombies will just spew and this will help block a lot of those just as greylisting will.
Going after the spammer by getting a CA to provide information or initiate action is going to be problematic. Spammers will use throw away identities or stolen identities to get certificates. It will work better to either prevent the messages from being delivered, depriving the spammers of income (blocking port 25, greylisting and spamassassin do this) or some how tracking down the people that buy from spam and keeping them from doing so. Eliminate the spammers income and they will stop spamming.
Second, if you want to cut delivery of spam down by 90% to 98% get all ISP's to implement greylisting and spamassassin and block port 25 (but provide an easy way for users to request port 25 be opened if they want to run an email server).
Third, track down the dolts that buy from spam messages and permenately take them off the Internet. If the spammers can not make money from these dolts they will have to go get a real job. (to track the dolts down send out spam and wait foor them to reply, go to their homes and cut their power and take their computers away. Get the ISPs to refuse to provide them connectivity.)
So get a wallet that has an inner layer of material that blocks radio frequencies. Then only when you take your license out of your wallet would it be able to be scanned.
This is a bad idea. First point that someone most likely has already pointed out, email from legit MTAs will be queued by default for as much as 5 days before it is bounced back to the sender. Spammers don't use legit MTA's very often, they use primarly zombie systems from unspecting newbies running unsecured systems.
Turning off your server for some period of time will eliminate a large amount of spam for that time period. As soon as you turn the system back on the spam will start up again since the lists the spammers use will be the same. They do not look at rejects or any other kind of error codes. They just spew messages as fast as they can.
So do you want a set of tools that will eliminate 95% or better of the spam?
Then implement greylisting on your server. Seriously, greylisting will reject the vast bulk of the zombie spam being circulated. Then implement spamassassin to tag the few that do get through. Once you have bayes trained and have added few additional rule sets virtually no spam will get through to your users.
Implementing real solutions should be the priority. Most likely the reason the poster saw such a dramatic drop was that he forgot to re-enable his MTA software.:)
Actually if ISPs did the following spam would not be the problem it is now.
1. block port 25, permit users to request port 25 be opened as needed but start with it blocked for everyone in and out of the network.
2. implement greylisting on the ISP email servers. This will block 90% to 98% of the spam with out taking huge amounts of resources.
3. implement spamassassin on the ISP email servers to tag the remaining spam and let the end users filter based on that.
Why don't the ISPs take this action? Because in the short term it would impact thier bottom line. They get lots of money from spammers. As such they have little incentive to take effective action against them. The more spam saturates the Internet the more bandwidth the need and the bigger the ISPs have to grow to handle the volume.
So there are effective technical solutions. But the ones that really need to implement them are not doing so. Many companies have implemented what I listed above and spam is virtually non-existent on their networks.
And your assertion that taking spammers to court has put a dent in spam? That is ridiculous. There has been nothing but an increase even after they put some spammers in jail. To effectively combat spam you need to block the bots from sending it or prevent the bots from being created.
Then only other option is to take away the incentive for sending spam, track down the idiots that buy the crap spam advertises and put them in jail. Without a source of income spammers will go away.
Could we all be missing a good deal here? What happens when SCO is shown in court that they do not own the license to Linux? Can those that did buy licenses get their lawyers to extract double or triple the cost of the license plus court costs from SCO? This could actually be a shrewed investment. If SCO by some twist in the fabric of the universe actually wins they are covered already. If SCO looses those companies sue and double or triple their money. hmmmmmm........
Who says that has not happened already? We have the example of the rock that reached earth with signs that some interpet as fossil single cell organisms. It very well could be that life on earth was orginally seeded from such rocks from Mars. But the only way to really find out is to go to Mars and establish long term/permanent colonies that can spend a few generations searching for evidence of what has really happened.
That's the problem, none of the people we vote for can really make any difference. If they did do you think things would have started going down hill before Clinton left office if he was so good for the country? Assigning credit or blame to the one in the Whitehouse is like blaming the Pope for a natural disaster. The PACs and lobbiests are the ones that wield the power. They buy enough politicians to get their plans passed and to line their pockets with our money. Like I said before there is not real difference in the two major parties. The only real difference is who the money goes to.
The Democrats are going to be unhappy until they get their guy into the Whitehouse. Regardless of how well the country is doing they will paint it in the worst light ever. The Republicans would do the same thing if the situation was reversed. I have read of groups of Democrats figuring out if they can move to a swing state to get it to fall their way next time. The election has become a game for a lot of people to figure out how they can game the system to get a win for their side. It is kind of like two sports teams, each side does not really care how they do it they just want a win. I really think both groups have lost site of what the reasons are that we have a government to start with. All they care about is being in power.
All the while if you really look at what each side says they want to do there is really very little if any difference. You are correct, most of us are just glad it is over for now and we won't have to worry about it for at least 2 or 3 years. But we all know it will start again and this next time around will be even more contentious than last time.
There are no mass protests here because everyone knows deep down there is really very little difference between the two parties we have to choose from. Both candidates say what ever they think they need to say to each group to get their votes. About the only real difference is who gets OUR money. And the change is really a surface change. The same groups that have always run the government run it regardless of which group gets in power. These are the ones that are appointed and work behind the scenes pulling the strings. They get the various laws passed that they want and kill those they don't. You really think the constinuatancy is anything more than a herd the politicians get their votes from? Do you really think they care about the people that vote for them? The only thing they care about is getting into office where they can make deals to line their own bank accounts. The PACs and lobbiests own virtually all of the politicians (or at least enough to get their items passed).
Grass roots activisim is a myth in todays society. The last time it worked with the Revolutionary war. The last time it was tried the Civil war resulted. I doubt we will go through either of those again. But the time is ripe for a third party to rise that actually offers a change. It would not be the first time a party has disappered to be replaced by another party. Maybe it is time for the Whig party to come back.
hmm, your list starts with a. and ends with 16. Plus it jumps from b. to 6. Maybe that is why Democrats can't vote correctly, they are unable to count or make a list the enumerated correctly.
BTW: it is time to get over it. The election is over lets move along. Nothing more to see here. Give it try next time. But if the economy continues to improve over the next 4 years and the war in Iraq is concluded the Democrats major issues will have gone away. hmm, wonder what they will try then?
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The credo list you have (1. to the customer 2. to the employees 3. to the community 4. to the shareholders) was a short term abberation that virtually no company in the world today would agree with.
:) It has been long known that many companies calculate just how bad they can perform customer service without running off most of the thier customers. Why do you think companies want you to input your account numbers when you call customer service? So they can identify really good customers from the rest of and drop you into a long wait queue in India. Really good customers (read high dollar value customers) get put at the head of the line and get routed to customer service centers here in the US.
All companies today use the following order 1. shareholders 2. shareholders 3. shareholders 4. company executives.
Companies today have a vision that is about 3 months out to the next quarterly report. The reason is that shareholders will trash a companies stock if they don't exceed all expectation each quarter. And companies have no loyalty or responsibility toward employees. Employees are the first ones cast adrift so a company can show a short term improvement on their bottom line. As to customers, I have to think that most companies feel their customers are morons and idiots. Just look at the commercials they run.
J&J was in a shear panic over that incident. And they did what they did because they felt the company was dead if they did not. Bottom line. Nothing more nothing less.
Actually in the corporate world you will find that companies don't want to loose $5 mill in revenue. The department and the managers that that money is credited to will fight tooth and nail to prevent loosing that kind of revenue. You can bet some salesman is getting a nice commision on that sale.
I suspect MCI makes more money that that anyway. Remember that is just money from the spammers. They also get money from all their other customers which have to have bandwidth to handle the spam. So the real numbers are going to be much much higher.
So this roombas problem is that it needs glasses?
Won't the other appliances make fun of it? B^)
This may make it go hide in the corner more often.
Humourous story!
Now when the military looses one of those new robot SWORDS that are autonomous like the roombas then we have a news story. Time to get the popcorn and turn on the news.
"It has been three hours and there is no signs that the chase will end. Facinating sight really, small robot running down the freeway with a string of 80 police vehicles creeping along behind it. The police are having to re-think how to stop this little robot. Their last attempt ended in failure when the vehicles placed in front as a baracade where blown apart to make way for the robot. It is not clear just how many rockets are still on the robot. Of course their first idea was to let it run its systems down. However everyone was surprised when it looted several cars for their batteries. At this point the chase could go on all night....."
How can you expect privacy when your electronic ID is stored on a Windows system? As soon as you input your ID information the spy ware on the system will broadcast it to the world.
;)
This is going to be a boon to the identity theft rings.
Let me guess, they are using DES encryption in Bulgaria due to export restrictions.
Or accounts for the various ice ages we go through. But that is probably due to variations in our own sun and orbit most likely.
:)
Much more likely reasons for global warming than other theories.
So one of these dark matter clouds may pass through the solar system every few thousand years? Have they taken the next step and hypothesized that such an event could account for major climate changes? Like the event that killed off the dinosaurs?
Interesting study, not all that surprising.
How about a study like this against the varous NAT/routers being used out there? How easy is it to own systems sitting behind those? This appears to be the standard anymore for the millions of cable/dsl connections.
They have done this. It is called taking speed.....
I was hoping they had a bunch of them with their skulls cracked open.....
That guy on the corner waving his hands all over and yelling is not crazy, he's just making a phone call.
Did you ever get to see the pie incident? It is really good. Gates was going into a meeting over in France, I believe, and some joker rushes him and nails him in the face with a pie. :)
The only way this kind of service could work is if there is wireless Internet available everywhere. In addition there has to be good security for the network connection as well as for any network bases storage being used for the users data.
Managed service offerings will become the big thing for companies over the next few years. There are economies of scale that companies can take advantage of by using a managed service that performs management and monitoring of various services over a network connection. This can permit companies to concentrate more of their resources on their core business instead of IT related services.
As to pushing this to the individual, as I said up front the only way that is going to work is if there is Internet access anywhere and everywhere on demand. Another few years we may get to the point that there is wireless network available anywhere you go. At that point having all your stuff "on the network" really becomes feasible. There will always be those of us that will choose to keep a lot of our data "off network" and we will maintain our own systems to do that. But for the bulk of the public all they want is a system that works everytime they need it. If a user can access the web, email, games, and a few office type applications they will be more than satisfied.
Network computing will only work and be usable when there is a wireless network in place that can be used coast to coast and world wide. In order for network computing to become a reality people must be able to access the network when ever and where ever they are. Until that happens laptops will continue to have a requirement to carry the OS and all applications and data on them.
In addition to global access to the network, secure methods of accessing applications and data must be in place that are truely secure. Without secure access network computing will become the bane of any users that dare use it.
I do believe that managed services for corporations are about to become a major factor. Companies will jump at the chance to outsource the support functions for major portions of thier infrastructure. That is nothing new, companies have been going in that direction for some time. In the next few years managed services where a company manages and controls various portions of a companies infrastructure either over the Internet or over private networks will become a major component of many companies infrastructure. It gets companies back to what their business should be instead of having large portions of their organizations dedicated to providing support services. And with economy of scale that can be applied if managed services are done correctly most companies should realize a cost savings.
Why is blocking port 25 a "really bad idea"? As I said block it but provide users an easy method to request that port 25 be opened. This lets the few people that want to run an MTA do so. The vast majority of people don't run MTAs or even know what the hell they are.
Secure email is a different problem than fighting spam. Using your approach will result in everyone having to either pay for a certificate or the systemm will have to allow self signed certificates which would defeat the purpose.
As to the delay grelisting imposes, set up a process to whitelist your customers, no delay then. This would do two things, eliminate 90 to 98 percent of spam that is probably bombarding you now, and give you a verified list of customers with valid email addresses. It also would not be that difficult to request the customer's email address and add it to the whitelist while you are updating the ticket. Not an insurmountable problem and a heck of a lot better than getting all those spam messages. And what does greylisting have to do with a customers PC being locked down by another company's IT department to only run Word and Outlook? I also wonder about anyone signing up to resolve a problem in a fixed amount of time. Any company that does that is walking into real problems since not all problems can be resolved in a fixed amount of time. I have heard of companies that have a fixed time to respond to the problem and get an action plan in place but actually resolving some unknown problem in a fixed amount of time is just asking for trouble.
I agree with your suggestion to implement a delay between initial HELO/EHLO and sending a respone. Most zombies will just spew and this will help block a lot of those just as greylisting will.
Going after the spammer by getting a CA to provide information or initiate action is going to be problematic. Spammers will use throw away identities or stolen identities to get certificates. It will work better to either prevent the messages from being delivered, depriving the spammers of income (blocking port 25, greylisting and spamassassin do this) or some how tracking down the people that buy from spam and keeping them from doing so. Eliminate the spammers income and they will stop spamming.
First, good going, if it's true.
Any reduction in spam is good.
Second, if you want to cut delivery of spam down by 90% to 98% get all ISP's to implement greylisting and spamassassin and block port 25 (but provide an easy way for users to request port 25 be opened if they want to run an email server).
Third, track down the dolts that buy from spam messages and permenately take them off the Internet. If the spammers can not make money from these dolts they will have to go get a real job. (to track the dolts down send out spam and wait foor them to reply, go to their homes and cut their power and take their computers away. Get the ISPs to refuse to provide them connectivity.)
So get a wallet that has an inner layer of material that blocks radio frequencies. Then only when you take your license out of your wallet would it be able to be scanned.
This is a bad idea. First point that someone most likely has already pointed out, email from legit MTAs will be queued by default for as much as 5 days before it is bounced back to the sender. Spammers don't use legit MTA's very often, they use primarly zombie systems from unspecting newbies running unsecured systems.
:)
Turning off your server for some period of time will eliminate a large amount of spam for that time period. As soon as you turn the system back on the spam will start up again since the lists the spammers use will be the same. They do not look at rejects or any other kind of error codes. They just spew messages as fast as they can.
So do you want a set of tools that will eliminate 95% or better of the spam?
Then implement greylisting on your server. Seriously, greylisting will reject the vast bulk of the zombie spam being circulated. Then implement spamassassin to tag the few that do get through. Once you have bayes trained and have added few additional rule sets virtually no spam will get through to your users.
Implementing real solutions should be the priority. Most likely the reason the poster saw such a dramatic drop was that he forgot to re-enable his MTA software.
Actually if ISPs did the following spam would not be the problem it is now.
1. block port 25, permit users to request port 25 be opened as needed but start with it blocked for everyone in and out of the network.
2. implement greylisting on the ISP email servers. This will block 90% to 98% of the spam with out taking huge amounts of resources.
3. implement spamassassin on the ISP email servers to tag the remaining spam and let the end users filter based on that.
Why don't the ISPs take this action? Because in the short term it would impact thier bottom line. They get lots of money from spammers. As such they have little incentive to take effective action against them. The more spam saturates the Internet the more bandwidth the need and the bigger the ISPs have to grow to handle the volume.
So there are effective technical solutions. But the ones that really need to implement them are not doing so. Many companies have implemented what I listed above and spam is virtually non-existent on their networks.
And your assertion that taking spammers to court has put a dent in spam? That is ridiculous. There has been nothing but an increase even after they put some spammers in jail. To effectively combat spam you need to block the bots from sending it or prevent the bots from being created.
Then only other option is to take away the incentive for sending spam, track down the idiots that buy the crap spam advertises and put them in jail. Without a source of income spammers will go away.
Could we all be missing a good deal here? What happens when SCO is shown in court that they do not own the license to Linux? Can those that did buy licenses get their lawyers to extract double or triple the cost of the license plus court costs from SCO? This could actually be a shrewed investment. If SCO by some twist in the fabric of the universe actually wins they are covered already. If SCO looses those companies sue and double or triple their money. hmmmmmm........
Intelligence in the univers is a constant. The population is growing. You do the math. If you still can.
Who says that has not happened already? We have the example of the rock that reached earth with signs that some interpet as fossil single cell organisms. It very well could be that life on earth was orginally seeded from such rocks from Mars. But the only way to really find out is to go to Mars and establish long term/permanent colonies that can spend a few generations searching for evidence of what has really happened.
That's the problem, none of the people we vote for can really make any difference. If they did do you think things would have started going down hill before Clinton left office if he was so good for the country? Assigning credit or blame to the one in the Whitehouse is like blaming the Pope for a natural disaster. The PACs and lobbiests are the ones that wield the power. They buy enough politicians to get their plans passed and to line their pockets with our money. Like I said before there is not real difference in the two major parties. The only real difference is who the money goes to.
The Democrats are going to be unhappy until they get their guy into the Whitehouse. Regardless of how well the country is doing they will paint it in the worst light ever. The Republicans would do the same thing if the situation was reversed. I have read of groups of Democrats figuring out if they can move to a swing state to get it to fall their way next time. The election has become a game for a lot of people to figure out how they can game the system to get a win for their side. It is kind of like two sports teams, each side does not really care how they do it they just want a win. I really think both groups have lost site of what the reasons are that we have a government to start with. All they care about is being in power.
All the while if you really look at what each side says they want to do there is really very little if any difference. You are correct, most of us are just glad it is over for now and we won't have to worry about it for at least 2 or 3 years. But we all know it will start again and this next time around will be even more contentious than last time.
There are no mass protests here because everyone knows deep down there is really very little difference between the two parties we have to choose from. Both candidates say what ever they think they need to say to each group to get their votes. About the only real difference is who gets OUR money. And the change is really a surface change. The same groups that have always run the government run it regardless of which group gets in power. These are the ones that are appointed and work behind the scenes pulling the strings. They get the various laws passed that they want and kill those they don't. You really think the constinuatancy is anything more than a herd the politicians get their votes from? Do you really think they care about the people that vote for them? The only thing they care about is getting into office where they can make deals to line their own bank accounts. The PACs and lobbiests own virtually all of the politicians (or at least enough to get their items passed).
Grass roots activisim is a myth in todays society. The last time it worked with the Revolutionary war. The last time it was tried the Civil war resulted. I doubt we will go through either of those again. But the time is ripe for a third party to rise that actually offers a change. It would not be the first time a party has disappered to be replaced by another party. Maybe it is time for the Whig party to come back.
hmm, your list starts with a. and ends with 16. Plus it jumps from b. to 6. Maybe that is why Democrats can't vote correctly, they are unable to count or make a list the enumerated correctly.
BTW: it is time to get over it. The election is over lets move along. Nothing more to see here. Give it try next time. But if the economy continues to improve over the next 4 years and the war in Iraq is concluded the Democrats major issues will have gone away. hmm, wonder what they will try then?