It is pure silliness to use port 25 or any of the other, open, non-encrypted ports/transfer protocols for e-mail, etc. when connecting to an entity on the internet. Any compromised machine between you and the colocation server can sniff out the password and login, leaving you with a huge security vulnerability.
SSL is free, secure, and it just plain works with any modern e-mail server/client. No ISP I know of blocks the secure ports because zombie spammers haven't found a way to abuse them yet.
If SSL is not available, or not reliable, there are a number of alternatives, such as using SSH to create a localhost tunnel to the Colocation facility, then making your plain-jane port 25 request while shielded from prying eyes.
SSH also allows you to connect with any of the other legacy transfer protocols, while remaining secure in a tunnel. Many web-hosting companies do not allow SSH connections because they have clueless sysadmins, but SSH is free and with the right hoster, it works great.
The current range of G5 Desktops is slated to ship with three PCI-X slots. The only unfortunate part about the G5 case design is the very low number of internal drives it can accomodate.
Ultra-SCSI+ continues to be an interesting option for those of us who want to free the CPU of overhead, that's why SCSI drives are still found in high-end servers and why SCSI interfaces are even used to control IDE-based RAID drives. However, for 95% of users, SATA is perfectly fine. Most of the time, the hardrive is the bottleneck...
I for one am happy to put SCSI voodoo behind me, particularly on the scanner side. Firewire was a great step in the right direction for external drives, SATA allows much easier connections internally.
However, it's also the end of an era. Todays US spammers are pretty much out in the open, with a few big boys on top, and a multitude of hungry hordes prowling below. On the other hand, it's nice to see folks like Ralsky do some time considering the vast economic damage they're inflicting.
Going forward, the indictments in the US mean that spammers will go abroad, work from abroad, and stay abroad to stay out of the clutches of the US law enforcement officials. Eventually, even the more backward legal systems will identify spam as bad business and move to stop them. However, considering the pace at which legal systems change vs. the speed at which spammers adapt, I'm not holding my breath.
From what I can tell, the spamming rings have already adopted new techniques, such as using compromised Zombie-farms of virii-infected computers to send their wares instead of a "real" server. Tracking down the guilty under such circumstances will be a much greater challenge for folks like Spitzer, pareticularly if the operations the spammers are spamming for are abroad as well.
I can only hope that this arms race between those who want to use e-mail as the legitimate tool it is and those who want to abuse it will hopefully come to a good end. However, I'm not holding my breath. Considering the vast sums of money a little spam can generate, there simply is too much incentive to find ways around blocks, identification schemes, and other ideas floating out there.
The History channel had a show on the history of fascism in the US. They mentioned and showed the US concentration camps for people of German descent. However, the detainees were not limited to Bund members... in fact, any neighbor with ill-intent could finger you and send you packing for delightful locations like the Texas desert. Italians and other "undesirables" were targeted as well.
Allegedly, one of the quandries at the end of the war was that many detainees were more pro-Nazi/fascist after internment than before. IIRC, boatloads were sent back to Europe, with many more detained even longer at wars end on Ellis island and the like while the immigration authorities decided what to do with them.
However, let's also keep in perspective that todays US detainment facilities in Gitmo, et. al. are very different from internment camps or even POW camps from the day. Arguably, they serve a very different purpose... nevertheless, I find them totally incompatible with the Constitution that we allegedly so revere.
The wheels of Justice are grinding slowly indeed. Perhaps it took just as long way back then... a book or a show on the subject has a way of compressing history, no?
Fat, overweight, and only saved by an immense engine.
For the same money, have Dauer build your own 962-based Porsche supercar... literally a race car that has been tamed for the streets. Not only is the Dauer lighter, it also accelerates 0-60 in ~2.6 seconds... with a mere 3 liter, six cylinder engine, that happens to develop 700hp. See the latest issue of Excellence for an in-depth article.
Besides, just how safe would you feel in the 1.0 supercar release from a brand that used to be associated with Econoboxes?
Yes, car parts are becoming more disposable and expensive to buy. And yes, this is by design on the part of the car companies that are sick and tired of other companies copying their designs and selling the parts to mechanics for less. To paraphrase Henry Ford "I'll give away the cars for free as long as you guarantee me the replacement parts market".
Thus, the emphasis on superior materials that also happen to be harder to copy by others. That raises the cost of market entry and hopefully thus reduces third-party competition for parts. Who said that car companies have your interests at heart? They exist to make money, and the repair business is where it's at.
What the writer of this article missed, however, are the costs displaced by all this superior technology finding its ways into cars. Tell me, have you looked at a serious hospital bill lately? My appendectomy (1 day stay) cost over $7,000. Do you have any idea what the cost of major trauma is? I have yet to experience a roll-over like the kid in the BMW, but any kind of head-injury is bound to be expensive. The bags (and presumably the seatbelt) saved the kid from that.
The going rate for surgery is $25 a minute. Never mind intensive care and more pedestrian regular ward stays. If a car requires $15,000 repairs but the hospital costs were reduced by $50,000 (sample 1-month stay) then society comes out ahead. However, this medical cost reduction benefit may be less applicable in countries with lower medical costs than the US.
Furthermore, my understanding is that any kind of roll-over usually totals a car by default, much like complete floodings and other damage that may result in frame, electrical, or other damage that is hard or uneconomical to rectify. Granted, you can repair said damage, but would you trust a frame that has been bent once before? Ever wonder why the salvage title category even exists at the DMV?
Similarly, if a $1,500 HID system allows a driver to avoid several accidents, then the system pays for itself rather quickly. When most of todays cars were designed, the folks in the car companies probably did not forsee the popularity of HID or even air-bag theft (which is more popular than radio theft in the USA, apparently). I know that HID theft certainly made me more paranoid on where to park my car.
As you all know, the costs of developing new chip architectures is escalating. However, once designed, chips can be replicated at relatively low cost (at least by comptent fabs like IBMs). So, to maximize profits despite the high upfront costs, what is one to do?
Design a kick-ass chip, sign up a lot of partners to establish street credibility, maintain processor improvement momentum, deliver chips on time, then sell as many chips as possible, of course! AMD performed in some, but certainly not all of these aspects, hence their current standing in the chip industry. Don't even get me started on the slow train wreck called Motorola.
The power architecture was always meant to be flexible, ranging from the $10,000+ quad-core uber-chip Power5's on down... So it's only logical that we will find stripped-down versions of the Power5 architecture in everything from Apple Desktops to next-gen consoles from Sony and MS.
As I see it, this is a great PR step by IBM to get some mindshare from the growing Linux camp. When you combine the incredible performance, lower prices, etc. of the 970 architecture, folks like Intel will have to take notice sooner or later, particularly when it hits their most profitable processor lines. However, Apple may not be happy to face competition in a market segment that it has had to itself for now.
As for MS and their PowerPC line of NT or whatever, who cares. If they need to make the switch, they'll find a way. In the meantime, it's the Linux/Unix folks who'll benefit the most from no longer being squeezed between SPARC and XEON pricing.
... unlike the US. While precendents can be set, there is the Bundesgesetzbuch (BGB) that pretty much lays out the law. However, the real kicker WRT to German court law is that the loser has to pay the court costs for both sides.
This has several interesting effects: Frivolous lawsuits are rarer, lawyers are paid much lower hourly billing rates, and health insurance is much more affordable. IMHO, this is a much more equitable way to run a legal system than the parasitic mess we have in the US.
Frankly, the folks at SCO should be forced to post bond to assure their countersuers will have something to collect on if SCO goes out of business. Furthermore, I hope that the current management will be held personally liable for their actions while at SCO. Once pointy-headed managers see that there are reprecussions that reach beyond the destruction of a company, perhaps they'll lay off the roullette-wheel approach to attain profits.
IANAL, but IIRC you can only sue for dumping as long as you can show that a US manufacturer is being hurt by said dumping. Just how many TV manufacturers are left in the US? My understanding is a big, fat zero. Units are assembled in the Far East and Mexico, AFAIK.
It should be very interesting to note what will happen as hybrid vehicles are started to be produced by US manufacturers. My understanding is that both Honda and Toyota are selling their vehicles below cost. Now that Ford has licensed the Toyota technology, what will happen next? Did Toyota insert a "thou shalt not sue" clause in Fords licensing terms?
Which brings us around to consoles. Once again, there are no US manufacturers. Thus, no one can sue anyone for dumping. Considering how much of the US manufacturing sector has already wandered off to greener pastures, I wonder how much longer the US will be able to sue for dumping...
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It is pure silliness to use port 25 or any of the other, open, non-encrypted ports/transfer protocols for e-mail, etc. when connecting to an entity on the internet. Any compromised machine between you and the colocation server can sniff out the password and login, leaving you with a huge security vulnerability.
SSL is free, secure, and it just plain works with any modern e-mail server/client. No ISP I know of blocks the secure ports because zombie spammers haven't found a way to abuse them yet.
If SSL is not available, or not reliable, there are a number of alternatives, such as using SSH to create a localhost tunnel to the Colocation facility, then making your plain-jane port 25 request while shielded from prying eyes.
SSH also allows you to connect with any of the other legacy transfer protocols, while remaining secure in a tunnel. Many web-hosting companies do not allow SSH connections because they have clueless sysadmins, but SSH is free and with the right hoster, it works great.
The current range of G5 Desktops is slated to ship with three PCI-X slots. The only unfortunate part about the G5 case design is the very low number of internal drives it can accomodate.
Ultra-SCSI+ continues to be an interesting option for those of us who want to free the CPU of overhead, that's why SCSI drives are still found in high-end servers and why SCSI interfaces are even used to control IDE-based RAID drives. However, for 95% of users, SATA is perfectly fine. Most of the time, the hardrive is the bottleneck...
I for one am happy to put SCSI voodoo behind me, particularly on the scanner side. Firewire was a great step in the right direction for external drives, SATA allows much easier connections internally.
However, it's also the end of an era. Todays US spammers are pretty much out in the open, with a few big boys on top, and a multitude of hungry hordes prowling below. On the other hand, it's nice to see folks like Ralsky do some time considering the vast economic damage they're inflicting.
Going forward, the indictments in the US mean that spammers will go abroad, work from abroad, and stay abroad to stay out of the clutches of the US law enforcement officials. Eventually, even the more backward legal systems will identify spam as bad business and move to stop them. However, considering the pace at which legal systems change vs. the speed at which spammers adapt, I'm not holding my breath.
From what I can tell, the spamming rings have already adopted new techniques, such as using compromised Zombie-farms of virii-infected computers to send their wares instead of a "real" server. Tracking down the guilty under such circumstances will be a much greater challenge for folks like Spitzer, pareticularly if the operations the spammers are spamming for are abroad as well.
I can only hope that this arms race between those who want to use e-mail as the legitimate tool it is and those who want to abuse it will hopefully come to a good end. However, I'm not holding my breath. Considering the vast sums of money a little spam can generate, there simply is too much incentive to find ways around blocks, identification schemes, and other ideas floating out there.
Pity.
The History channel had a show on the history of fascism in the US. They mentioned and showed the US concentration camps for people of German descent. However, the detainees were not limited to Bund members... in fact, any neighbor with ill-intent could finger you and send you packing for delightful locations like the Texas desert. Italians and other "undesirables" were targeted as well.
Allegedly, one of the quandries at the end of the war was that many detainees were more pro-Nazi/fascist after internment than before. IIRC, boatloads were sent back to Europe, with many more detained even longer at wars end on Ellis island and the like while the immigration authorities decided what to do with them.
However, let's also keep in perspective that todays US detainment facilities in Gitmo, et. al. are very different from internment camps or even POW camps from the day. Arguably, they serve a very different purpose... nevertheless, I find them totally incompatible with the Constitution that we allegedly so revere.
The wheels of Justice are grinding slowly indeed. Perhaps it took just as long way back then... a book or a show on the subject has a way of compressing history, no?
Fat, overweight, and only saved by an immense engine.
For the same money, have Dauer build your own 962-based Porsche supercar... literally a race car that has been tamed for the streets. Not only is the Dauer lighter, it also accelerates 0-60 in ~2.6 seconds... with a mere 3 liter, six cylinder engine, that happens to develop 700hp. See the latest issue of Excellence for an in-depth article.
Besides, just how safe would you feel in the 1.0 supercar release from a brand that used to be associated with Econoboxes?
Yes, car parts are becoming more disposable and expensive to buy. And yes, this is by design on the part of the car companies that are sick and tired of other companies copying their designs and selling the parts to mechanics for less. To paraphrase Henry Ford "I'll give away the cars for free as long as you guarantee me the replacement parts market".
Thus, the emphasis on superior materials that also happen to be harder to copy by others. That raises the cost of market entry and hopefully thus reduces third-party competition for parts. Who said that car companies have your interests at heart? They exist to make money, and the repair business is where it's at.
What the writer of this article missed, however, are the costs displaced by all this superior technology finding its ways into cars. Tell me, have you looked at a serious hospital bill lately? My appendectomy (1 day stay) cost over $7,000. Do you have any idea what the cost of major trauma is? I have yet to experience a roll-over like the kid in the BMW, but any kind of head-injury is bound to be expensive. The bags (and presumably the seatbelt) saved the kid from that.
The going rate for surgery is $25 a minute. Never mind intensive care and more pedestrian regular ward stays. If a car requires $15,000 repairs but the hospital costs were reduced by $50,000 (sample 1-month stay) then society comes out ahead. However, this medical cost reduction benefit may be less applicable in countries with lower medical costs than the US.
Furthermore, my understanding is that any kind of roll-over usually totals a car by default, much like complete floodings and other damage that may result in frame, electrical, or other damage that is hard or uneconomical to rectify. Granted, you can repair said damage, but would you trust a frame that has been bent once before? Ever wonder why the salvage title category even exists at the DMV?
Similarly, if a $1,500 HID system allows a driver to avoid several accidents, then the system pays for itself rather quickly. When most of todays cars were designed, the folks in the car companies probably did not forsee the popularity of HID or even air-bag theft (which is more popular than radio theft in the USA, apparently). I know that HID theft certainly made me more paranoid on where to park my car.
As you all know, the costs of developing new chip architectures is escalating. However, once designed, chips can be replicated at relatively low cost (at least by comptent fabs like IBMs). So, to maximize profits despite the high upfront costs, what is one to do?
Design a kick-ass chip, sign up a lot of partners to establish street credibility, maintain processor improvement momentum, deliver chips on time, then sell as many chips as possible, of course! AMD performed in some, but certainly not all of these aspects, hence their current standing in the chip industry. Don't even get me started on the slow train wreck called Motorola.
The power architecture was always meant to be flexible, ranging from the $10,000+ quad-core uber-chip Power5's on down... So it's only logical that we will find stripped-down versions of the Power5 architecture in everything from Apple Desktops to next-gen consoles from Sony and MS.
As I see it, this is a great PR step by IBM to get some mindshare from the growing Linux camp. When you combine the incredible performance, lower prices, etc. of the 970 architecture, folks like Intel will have to take notice sooner or later, particularly when it hits their most profitable processor lines. However, Apple may not be happy to face competition in a market segment that it has had to itself for now.
As for MS and their PowerPC line of NT or whatever, who cares. If they need to make the switch, they'll find a way. In the meantime, it's the Linux/Unix folks who'll benefit the most from no longer being squeezed between SPARC and XEON pricing.
... unlike the US. While precendents can be set, there is the Bundesgesetzbuch (BGB) that pretty much lays out the law. However, the real kicker WRT to German court law is that the loser has to pay the court costs for both sides.
This has several interesting effects: Frivolous lawsuits are rarer, lawyers are paid much lower hourly billing rates, and health insurance is much more affordable. IMHO, this is a much more equitable way to run a legal system than the parasitic mess we have in the US.
Frankly, the folks at SCO should be forced to post bond to assure their countersuers will have something to collect on if SCO goes out of business. Furthermore, I hope that the current management will be held personally liable for their actions while at SCO. Once pointy-headed managers see that there are reprecussions that reach beyond the destruction of a company, perhaps they'll lay off the roullette-wheel approach to attain profits.
IANAL, but IIRC you can only sue for dumping as long as you can show that a US manufacturer is being hurt by said dumping. Just how many TV manufacturers are left in the US? My understanding is a big, fat zero. Units are assembled in the Far East and Mexico, AFAIK.
It should be very interesting to note what will happen as hybrid vehicles are started to be produced by US manufacturers. My understanding is that both Honda and Toyota are selling their vehicles below cost. Now that Ford has licensed the Toyota technology, what will happen next? Did Toyota insert a "thou shalt not sue" clause in Fords licensing terms?
Which brings us around to consoles. Once again, there are no US manufacturers. Thus, no one can sue anyone for dumping. Considering how much of the US manufacturing sector has already wandered off to greener pastures, I wonder how much longer the US will be able to sue for dumping...