I was very surprised to find out, but iTunes actually lets you access a podcast protected through the regular HTTP basic or digest authentication.
When you subscribe to such a feed iTunes will ask you for a username and a password.
Try subscribing to this feed in iTunes, for example:
private feed
So if your server lets you setup your own HTTP protection through.htaccess or what not, you can password protect your podcast. If you combine this with SSL, you have a pretty solid protection mechanism, but for just family stuff I would think that the digest authentication is good enough. Just don't use basic authentication because that will send the password over in cleartext.
Uhm... so instead of rewards based on hits they would move to rewards based on actual sales. I think that's how they already operate anyway.
No matter what all the technical solutions people can come up with, the fundamental problem with spam is that there are still actual people who respond to these things with their wallets.
I'm more ANGRY at those people who buy stuff from spam than spammers.
On the other hand, I think it is much easier to fix the spam problem by "educating" these people instead of constantly playing chase-the-tail with the spammers.
The solution doesn't have to be technologically fancy and it doesn't have to involve words like whitelists, blacklists, trusted source, digital signatures, bayesian, etc, etc...
Just tell everybody you know not to buy anything from spam and to spread the message. Explain to them how spam is a problem and that it is jacking up everybody's bandwidth costs. Sure, most of the times (especially the Slashdot crowd) you will get lauged at for pointing out something sooo obvious, but if enough of the people get the message this should be the most effective measure against spam.
Either that or somehow find out who's buying from spam and turn their spam filters off.
Of course I'm assuming that there aren't too many people out there who actually enjoy spam... I might need therapy for many years to come if my assumption was proven false.
Slashdot Mirror
I was very surprised to find out, but iTunes actually lets you access a podcast protected through the regular HTTP basic or digest authentication.
When you subscribe to such a feed iTunes will ask you for a username and a password.
Try subscribing to this feed in iTunes, for example: private feed
So if your server lets you setup your own HTTP protection through .htaccess or what not, you can password protect your podcast. If you combine this with SSL, you have a pretty solid protection mechanism, but for just family stuff I would think that the digest authentication is good enough. Just don't use basic authentication because that will send the password over in cleartext.
More on this topic in my blog
(Disclaimer, I write podcasting software for the mac os x)Hey, congrats on getting post #11000000 it only seems like yesterday that we had the 10 millionths
huh?
It is also open source.
Uhm... so instead of rewards based on hits they would move to rewards based on actual sales. I think that's how they already operate anyway.
No matter what all the technical solutions people can come up with, the fundamental problem with spam is that there are still actual people who respond to these things with their wallets.
I'm more ANGRY at those people who buy stuff from spam than spammers.
On the other hand, I think it is much easier to fix the spam problem by "educating" these people instead of constantly playing chase-the-tail with the spammers.
The solution doesn't have to be technologically fancy and it doesn't have to involve words like whitelists, blacklists, trusted source, digital signatures, bayesian, etc, etc...
Just tell everybody you know not to buy anything from spam and to spread the message. Explain to them how spam is a problem and that it is jacking up everybody's bandwidth costs. Sure, most of the times (especially the Slashdot crowd) you will get lauged at for pointing out something sooo obvious, but if enough of the people get the message this should be the most effective measure against spam.
Either that or somehow find out who's buying from spam and turn their spam filters off.
Of course I'm assuming that there aren't too many people out there who actually enjoy spam... I might need therapy for many years to come if my assumption was proven false.
This is a perfect example of why I stopped using Linux. Too often the simplicity of things just working is a luxury in Linux.