| Sunday,
February 20, 2000 For all those keeping score: yes, I know
that Freewheeling Franklin used the "Marinius van der Lubbe
International Firebombing Society" war cry. So did Fat Freddy. Please
don't send me more proof of how wrong I am. I happen to have
the strip with Freddy saying it. I appreciate being corrected when I am wrong, and some issues are worth
a lot of correspondence, but this one isn't one of them.
There is a whole pot full of new bad addresses at badmail.
If you have any interest at all in the philosophy of science, I commend
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/4118/dcs/popper/popper.html
which is an eye-opener, at least to me. David Stove may be wrong or
right, but he is clear enough on what he is saying.
I note that The
Burning City is moving about rapidly on the Amazon sales list. Someone
must be buying it. Thanks
I have just got the worst spam attack ever: Hundreds of copies. More
coming in all the time. You can see it at the monster
page; it is a firm in the San Diego area, a real company with a real
phone number and address. This is an outfit that is as irresponsible
as any I have ever seen. Hundreds of this message are coming in even now.
I do not know how to stop it.
Brian Utter's problem with NoteTab seems unique; at least the NoteTab
people say so, and they're actually looking at it. Something hosed the
associations. It happened with me as well, and they sent me a way to fix it,
which I have done. Very odd. But in general NoteTab works as advertised, and
quite well too.
Does anyone know how to refer this financial services firm to the
criminal authorities? He has certainly launched a Denial of Services
attack on me. Hundreds and hundreds more of the message shown on the monster
page have appeared in my mail. It ties up my system. I have reported
it through SpamCop and uunet has responded with a "we will look into
it" message, but the stuff keeps coming.
Here come hundreds more. Hundreds.
And more. uu.net has sent a message with a phone number, and I have
used that and spoken with a security technician, so perhaps something can
be done. SpamCop reports that it's coming through uu.net which is really
all I know. I am not all that good at analyzing headers. I have of course
pasted the entire "real" header into all the reports. In a way I
suppose this is interesting in a morbid sort of way...
Another hundred copies in the last couple of minutes.
It's still coming. Meanwhile I have done a bunch of good mail.
It's 9:15 PM. The attack continues, hundreds of copies of this message
every hour, nothing I can do. I really need a way to report this to the
police; this is a criminal action, and something needs to be done.
Meanwhile
First Venture Associates, Inc., at 619-542-7883
continues to send me hundreds and hundreds of copies of the message
shown on the monster page. I seem to have no way to make it stop on a
Sunday. Neither does uu.net which is relaying the spam to me. No one seems
able to stop this. Here come 286 more copies. I get a flood of them each
time I report the Spam to uu.net or SpamCop and I am beginning to think it
is not a coincidence on the timing.
I suppose I had better subscribe to one of those services that lets you
blackhole an entire domain; uu.net in my case.
Another 148 coming in now. It is 9:25
Another 204 coming in now. It is 9:40
No one seems able to do anything. I wonder can I call the police?
9:45 another 243 coming in. I wonder how many I will have by
morning? Can nothing be done ever? Will this go one forever now?
9:52 another 245 coming in. uu.net suggests I put on some kind of
filter to reject mail from the known spammer. Fine and dandy, but I don't
know how to work that with the Netwinder in the system. I'll figure it out
of course; but that outfit seems determined to overload my system
entirely. There must be a way to stop it all at the source, and tell
IBM.NET to stop delivering messages from that source. Somehow. But I don't
know how.
I am sure I'll figure it out.
10:04 214 more coming in.
The problem is that mail to me gets in only in between these attacks.
So long as the bloody IBM.Net server keeps handing me the mail nothing
comes. I guess I will have to remove the ibm.net account from my mail
entirely. That ought to block the garbage until I get a chance to see what
to do about it.
Hah. There is a checkbox in the Outlook account properties: uncheck it
and I no longer get mail from the ibm.net pop, and I won't until further
action. Thus my regular mail will come in. I don't get a lot of mail on
that account anyway, but I presume IBM.NET will eventually respond to my
spam reports and perhaps they will send through that. Too bad. I'll get
the thousands of copies of that message another time.
I keep hearing on Jeff Levy's program about a product called 2coolpc,
so I went over to their site www.2coolpc.com
for a look. It told me the wonderfulness of their product, and offered to
sell it to me, but nowhere did I find a description of what the darned
thing IS. A fan? Ducts? Both? Noise levels? Not a clue, at least not
one I could discern. Oh. Well.
Clark Myers reports that it's a ducted fan of sorts. I can imagine that
would be useful. I don't know how noisy. I use PC Power and Cooling cases
and power supplies and I have never had heat problems since they have lots
of good air circulation, but some of the clones have very weak fans, and I
can believe that something like the 2cool gadget would be very useful. I
also have some confidence in Jeff Levy although it must be hard to take
sponsors and still do reports; it's one reason I haven't any sponsors. (If
Ford wants to advertise here I already bought an Explorer and I like it
and... Alas, I don't seem to be bombarded with offers from national
accounts...)
Well, couldn't sleep. Turned on the ibm.net account, and lo! I have
1187 messages waiting for me. All of course the same. I'll turn it back
off. No point in downloading all that.
Now to think what can be done. This looks to be a mail server gone
insane, since the messages all seem identical. I will have to compare two
of them and see if there is any difference at all. Stand by one....
Well they all have the identical message id
<xGBtziZETX8xz.SOqfsRuPavAMY@mail.power.net>
which may or may not be meaningful; I am learning more about the gory
details of email than I ever thought I would. So this is perhaps a berserk
mail server.
AM I THE ONLY ONE who is the recipient of this thing's attentions?
And on a lighter note:
COPENHAGEN, Feb 14 (AFP) - Two goldfish were cut to ribbons and
six others were kidnapped to spare them the same fate when a Danish
artist unveiled an installation at the weekend giving visitors the
power of life and death over his art.
Police, acting on a complaint by animal rights activists, asked
the Trapholt Museum in Kolding to unplug the 10 blenders, each
containing a goldfish, and warned of possible charges of cruelty to
animals.
But museum director Peter Meyer refused to budge, saying he
would defend "the principle of freedom of expression for the
artist." He added, however, that he expected the public to treat the
work as they would any painting or sculpture -- to look but not
touch.
The work by Chilean-born artist, Marco Evaristti, "gives the
public the option ... of pressing the button of death, or not. It
asks the visitor: do you want to kill?" said Meyer.
Meyer said a journalist had encouraged two visitors to push the
"on" buttons on two blenders on opening day for the exhibition
Friday, killing the goldfish.
Six of the eight remaining goldfish were stolen over the
weekend, "but the museum restored the work in its entirety for
Monday morning," Meyer said.
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