| Friday, January
11, 2001
Begin with, alas, bad news:
Subject: Bad news for Blackberry
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/01/10/020110hnmotient.xml
Gregory W. Brewer Flow-Cal, Inc. Energy Software
Solutions mailto:gregb@flowcal.com http://www.flowcal.com
Indeed. I find the RIM Blackberry one of the most
useful tools there is for conferences and trips. I don't usually go out
much when I'm not on a trip, so it's less so for me during
"normal" times, but if I went to an office or did the kind of
work that required me to move around a lot, I'd use it all the time.
Dear Mr Pournelle,
I have just stumbled on your web page of December
10th - 16th. Your comment in relation to spam struck a chord with me. You
said:
The real question is, do we have a right to send
anonymous email as some kind of right of privacy, or do the rest of us
have a right to know who is spamming us and sending DDoS attacks? I think
the two are mutually exclusive.
I agree with you, and have held this point of view
for a long number of years. When faced with the frustration of trying to
track down spammers who are abusing your email address to steal your
bandwidth, time and diskspace, it can be seem very tempting to DDOS them,
send them an anonymous flame or otherwise lash out. But to do so is to
stoop to their level and add to the already huge volume of rubbish on the
internet. This rubbish hogs resources which might otherwise be used for
better pruposes.
Attack is not always the best form of defence.
Anyone sending any email, should have the decency to
identify themselves and include a valid "reply to" address.
That is why, despite a number of requests, we do not
and will not allow subscribers to send email from their mailexpire.com
accounts. We will only facilitate the anonymous receipt of email, not
anonymous sending.
Thanks for your time, and for many hours spent
reading your work,
Jack Healy Combustion Productions Ltd.
I don't mind some anonymous email. What would be
ideal would be a way to limit it: say to 500 recipients per day. I confess
I have no idea how to do that. This would preserve the anonymous
"pamphleteer" kind of publication that is important to a
Republic without making life all that easy for spammers.
I suspect that The Godfather Corporation is the
only solution, and it won't happen. As Eric Pobirs observed long ago, the
only way spam will cease is when something violent, physical, and
extremely unpleasant publicly happens to some spammers so the the others
are afraid.
Following was two letters, not one broken into
pieces:
Incidentally, I'm told that it wasn't just my
satellite this time: Others got that same spam, and because it calls for
messages from a server that was being overwhelmed because the gentlefolk
had sent out millions of copies of this, Outlook was waiting for responses
from a server that couldn't respond. Lockups in the preview window from
one to five minutes weren't uncommon. Do I hear more votes for the Fool
Killer Corporation?
While I am unamused by spam, I just don't see any
way to deal with it which is not dangerous to free speech, one way or
another. Your real problem, unfortunately, is that you are forced to deal
with an M$ product, which is not overly well devised. It does a few things
you want real well, but lacks, for example, something that Netscape has
always had: a "Stop" button that works, no matter what is being
loaded. If I had gotten the same e-mail, I could have hit "stop"
and gotten control back. The notion that you, the user, might, actually,
want to do such a thing was lost on some idiot M$ programmer.
I'm not arguing for you to switch away from Outlook,
but unless you're someone who has a major use for its specific strengths
(like the rule-based sorting), such as you, it is to be avoided like the
plague.
I get various crap from virus victims at home all
the time (Since I use Netscape, I can actually run without a virus
checker. I have to pay attention to what an attachment is before I open
it, but that's about it), from OE users who have gotten The Virus Of The
Day, and often momentarily turn on "full headers" to see what
mail client they are using -- it's always Outlook and/or Outlook Express.
In about 7 years sending and recieving e-mail, using Netscape, I've never
caught a virus (Note: I do check from time to time to be certain I don't
have a virus I'm unaware of). I realize you, personally, are a specific
target, unlike me (and hence could never get away with that), and people
write viruses for OE rather than NS -- but that's also partly because they
(M$) make it sooooooo easy.
-- Nicholas Bretagna II Flad & Associates of
Florida, Inc. 352-377-6884
"Those who will give up essential liberty to
secure a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin -
Actually, if you put a couple of buttons on the
toolbar (see next month's column) Outlook can switch previews on and off
well enough: and if you don't open unexpected attachments it's extremely
unlikely you will be affected by a virus. It's even less likely if you
have Norton or McAfee running. You are more courageous than I to run bare:
viruses can get at you in ways other than through Outlook even if Outlook
has got lots of attention lately.
Finally: I keep hearing about the virus that
bites you through the Preview Pane in Outlook, but I have yet to see an
actual case of it happening. Does anyone know of one?
> The safest rule is not to open mail
attachments except by invoking > Notepad (or NoteTab Pro, a neat
shareware program I've mentioned > before). Open Notepad, and use it to
open the mail attachment. If > Notepad can't open it, check with the
sender.
FWIW, I think highly of TextPad (I haven't used
NoteTab, so I can't compare -- I just find it hard to believe NoteTab is
better)
http://www.textpad.com/
It allows multiple file opens, reads a number of
formats, allows full customization (and appears to offer some sort of IBM
Personal Editor emulation, which I vaguely recall you liking in the dim
and distant past) and can handle different types of files differently
(like C vs. VB vs Text, indentation rules, etc.)
Lots of nifty features....
-- Nicholas Bretagna II Flad & Associates of
Florida, Inc.
"Those who will give up essential liberty to
secure a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin -
I haven't tried that one. There are many such
utilities, of course. Thanks.
I noted this one in VIEW:
Dear Jerry,
Yet another reason why I've never regretted
abandoning Outlook:
"Gigger, a new JavaScript-based virus, has
escaped into the wild. It attempts to delete files from a computer and
format user's disk drive on restart and antivirus vendors are
characterising it as high-risk..."
< http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/23652.html
>
Cheers, Rod Schaffter
--
"Powder and artillery are the most efficacious,
sure and infallible conciliatory measures we can adopt." - John Adams
DO NOT OPEN unexpected mail attachments. Do NOT
open unexpected mail attachments. Do not OPEN unexpected mail attachments.
Wonderful, the first .NET app that's released is a
virus. http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.donut.html
Kit Case kitcase@home.com
Roland also references this on the same subject:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5101515,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp01
Heh
Hello Dr. Pournelle,
I read about this on FOX News and went to the FAA
website to make my comments favoring this. It took me a while to find the
correct comment page so I thought I would pass it along in case you or any
of your many readers would also like to make comments. The answer deadline
is 14 Feb.
http://dms.dot.gov/search/document.asp?qdocumentid=146178&qdocketid=11229
This is an invitation to comment on pilots
carrying firearms, and other flight crew carrying non-lethal weapons, on
commercial flights.
Note that it doesn't say anything about the
imbecile procedures now in place which don't enhance security but sure do
make it uncomfortable to painful to fly anywhere. Do something, even if
it's wrong.
It sure would be less expensive to make cockpit
doors more secure, put some surveillance cameras looking at the cabin door
area and piping that into the cockpit, and that sort of thing, than to
close down airports because someone with a nail file managed to get past a
high school dropout screener. Or am I being unduly cynical? I know we are
supposed to pleased that we are "safe" in flying. IN fact I
doubt we are much safer now than before, but we're sure a lot more
uncomfortable.
You correctly identify the real barrier to Linux
desktop adoption: the infuriating inability of most non-MSFT software to
display .doc documents.
I'll leave it to the lawyers and zealots to argue
about the monopolistic aspects of proprietary document formatting, and its
moving target properties.
The solution, however, is simple.
Create documents in the portable .rtf format, and
ask others to do the same.
gz ----------------------------------------- George
R. Zachar
Busts can be prevented only by moderating the
booms tht precede them. -George Soros
-----------------------------------------
It would be even better if the process were
automated.
And now a defense of Apple
Jerry,
I'm sure you've gotten many unreasonable responses
to this week's column--after all, you had the temerity to suggest that
both Apple and Linux were less-than-perfect, thus bringing on yourself the
wrath of the idiots.
This is not one of those letters :-) though it is a
bit longish :-(
I have been buying computers for twelve years. I
have been administering networks of PCs, Macs, UNIX and NetWare for ten
years. Over the three-to-five year life span of a computer, a
general-purpose Mac is always more cost-effective than a general-purpose
Windows PC. In my opinion, of course, but that opinion is backed by
hard-earned real world experience, generally in shops that are more than
50% PC.
We send the Macs in for repairs less often than the
PCs. We reinstall the OS far less often on Macs than on Windows
(regardless of whether it's 95, 98, NT, or 2000). We keep the Macs in
useful service longer. Except for a really bad run during the mid-1990s,
the Apple hardware has been of comparable sturdiness to IBM and Compaq,
and exceeds the typical "white box" vendor (or Dell). I think
Apple isn't gouging me--I'm practically stealing from them.
That said, Apple will never make much headway in the
desktop market. Most buyers buy on upfront price and number of megahertz,
ignoring considerations like reliability, support costs, and usable
lifespan. I'm not rich enough to do that, so I buy Macs.
Steve S.
Well, I have been looking for the Mac to buy. The
new one may be it when it is available next month or whenever. It's time
we looked at one here. I am guessing that it won't be hard to network it
into the Windows 2000 domain.
You wrote:
>I don't mind some anonymous email. What
would be ideal would be a way to limit it: say to 500 recipients per day.
I had a thought that might be feasible. Current
email transfer agents (which means the open-source sendmail, mostly) will
accept mail from anyone for a local user; in fact, it used to be normal
that they'd forward mail for third parties, but that's the non-default
configuration nowadays, as spammers were abusing this bit of politeness to
hide their whereabouts.
One could extend the SMTP protocol for mail delivery
so that (non-favored?) senders were forced to jump through some
computationally expensive hoop before mail to local users will be
accepted.
Currently SMTP looks like this:
220 mailhost.domain.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.9.9/8.9.9;
Fri, 11 Jan 2002 16:05:32 -0500 (EST)
>>> HELO host.domain2.com 250
mailhost.domain.com Hello host.domain2.com [155.108.129.30], pleased to
meet you >>> MAIL From:<spammer@jerk.com> 250 <spammer@jerk.com>...
Sender ok >>> RCPT To:<victim@foo.com> 250 <victim@foo.com>...
Recipient ok >>> DATA 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a
line by itself <message body> 250 QAA00187 Message accepted for
delivery >>> QUIT 221 mail.domain.com closing connection
We could add something like (not real numbers):
220 mailhost.domain.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.9.9/8.9.9;
Fri, 11 Jan 2002 16:05:32 -0500 (EST) >>> HELO host.domain2.com
250 mailhost.domain.com Hello host.domain2.com [155.108.129.30], pleased
to meet you >>> MAIL From:<spammer@jerk.com> 250
<spammer@jerk.com>... Sender untrusted, please give prime factor of
34576184516935692342934759132 to continue >>> FCTR 345837444 250
Ok, you bothered... >>> RCPT To:<victim@foo.com> 250
<victim@foo.com>... Recipient ok >>> DATA 354 Enter mail,
end with "." on a line by itself <message body> 250
QAA00187 Message accepted for delivery >>> QUIT 221
mail.domain.com closing connection
The beauty of this is, putting support in sendmail
would mostly be sufficient, and it lets you effectively add a cost per
message without any sort of micropayments scheme, or giving up anonymity.
I'd be curious what your reader groupmind thinks about this, or if the
idea has been tossed around before?
- Mike Earl
I certainly like the idea...
I was going to bed the other night when my wife told
me that I had left the light on in the garage, she could see from the
bedroom window.
As I looked for myself, I saw that there were people
in the garage taking things.
I phoned the police, but they told me that no one
was in this area to help at this time, but they would send someone over as
soon as they become available. I said OK, hung up, and waited one minute,
then phoned the police back.
"Hello. I just called you a minute ago because
there were people in my garage. Well, you don't have to worry about them
now cause I've shot them all."
Within three minutes there were half a dozen police
cars in the area, an Armed Response unit, the works. Of course, they
caught the burglars red-handed.
One of the officers said: "I thought you said
that you'd shot them!"
I replied with "I thought you said there was
nobody available!"
[Ed here. This may be real; this may be a
"story". But I recall something: In the bad old days when NYC
was a crime capitol, police hardly responded to muggings in the subway.
But when one man shot three muggers, something like 1200 officers went
down into the tunnels after him. One gets the impression that they don't
like us protecting ourselves . . .]
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