The Indian Ocean earthquake tsunami death toll is now 16,000 and still expected to rise fast. Words fail me.I spent most of the 26th with family, disconnected from the world in Christmas stupor. This is certainly a subering event.
Scoble has is right when he implied that all the hype about blogging being more nimble then mainstream media is BS. I can't believe he's getting pilloried for it.
Scoble also has some good links to first-hand accounts of this disaster.
Boy, how to enrage a passionate community! See here, here, here, and here. And I thought I'd get away with it, 'cos Ed's on vacation? Nah...
The thing is, I knew more than I was letting on about the Edge Services roadmap (or lack thereof). But I had to be careful what I said, 'cos Ferris Research had agreed to an "embargo" (a kind of informal NDA). David Via also weighed in with a nice post, also during the embargo. The news wasn't announced until Wednesday 6pm my time. Chris Williams had written up a great post about it, which was all queued up to go once the embargo was lifted.
What's the blogging equivalent of biting one's tongue? Whatever it is, I was doing a lot of that all day.
Please, no. Tell me it's not true. Could the Chip&PIN folks have been so dumb as use the same PIN for ATMs and the new smartcard readers? El Reg thinks so. So does The Torygraph.
The obvious security problem here is that an unscrupulous employee can steal the PIN, skim the magstripe, and clean out your account at an ATM. Admittedly, they might have to (gasp!) go abroad to do it. Even easier, they could just use email to send the PIN and magstripe data to an overseas accomplice.
Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Ever read a news report about what somebody did and said to yourself, "That's really dumb"?How about the Italian dude who texted his wife in mid-air, telling her that his plane was being hijacked? Stoopid enuff for ya? Naturally, the police weren't too impressed.
Yeah, he probably looked a bit like this guy, albeit with more clothes. And Italian (this guy's probably Belgian). Oh, and jammed into a tiny aircraft seat. What seat pitch does Lauda Air use on long-haul anyway? SeatGuru doesn't know. Wait, what was I talking about again..?
In InformationWeek, Bob Evans polled for ideas to stop spam. Also noted in Sarah's blog.Can't say I'm too impressed with the answers he got. (Reading between the lines, I don't think he is, either.)
The best contribution turned out to be Tempfailing. In case you've not come across this before, the idea is that if a receiving MTA "tempfails" an incoming connection, spammers will give up and go somewhere else. An example of a tempfail is, "4451 4.7.1 Please try again later." Legitimate MTAs will just pause and resend, so the theory goes. (Note that many people call this "Greylisting," however other people use that term to describe other anti-spam techniques.)
Nice idea in theory, but as I've said before, it doesn't work any more. These days, most spam is sent by botnets (armies of virus-infected PCs, remote-controlled by spammers). The spamming software running on these "zombie" PCs is quite capable of queueing and retrying, just like any regular MTA is.
I can't help thinking that greylisting advocates have an exaggerated sense of spammers' technical stupidity.
Version 1.6a (updated with fixed link to zip file) -- Richi Jennings richi (at) richi (dot) co (dot) uk—feel free to e-mail me with suggestions or corrections.
Based on the original posting on NT Compatible by myan1 (at) san (dot) rr (dot) com Perhaps this works on Windows XP as well? I dunno: I have an iPod now...
Previously, we talked about people who don't get spam because their email address isn't known by spammers. The bad news is, this is changing. If you're feeling smug because you're one of these fortunate people, get ready to join the rest of us. Spammers may not know your address yet, but... [more]
Ferris Research: What's wrong with online dating?
Just a quick thought—it seems to me that the economic incentive for a dating website to provide a good service is broken. Most businesses thrive on repeat business, or a regular cashflow from a subscription model. Customer retention being less expensive than customer acquisition, as any MBA could tell you.
Think about it; online dating isn't like that. If the service succeeds in bringing two customers together into a lasting relationship they're both going to be canceling their subscription, aren't they?
Inspired by this NYT article, E-Dating Bubble Springs a Leak.
How cool is this? Web apps just get more and more interactive. As you type, it suggests search terms, based on the most popular searches that other people are making.Why am I getting all nostalgic for cc:Mail? ;-)
Oh dear. If I owned stock in WebEx, I'd be selling it on Monday.Of the last three webinar experiences involving WebEx, all three had serious problems. Anecdotal evidence tells me I'm not alone, either.
We've got to stop meeting like this...
The Law of Unintended Consequences is hard at work...
Assuming spam fighters continue to be successful, email spam will decline in the medium term. When that happens, inadvertent spamming will clearly stand out. Anti-spam "vigilantes" will be ready to pounce on any such unsolicited mail.
So, organizations should make doubly sure that their employees don’t spam, by...
An increasing proportion of US anti-spam tool sales are "brownfield." That is to say, they're replacement sales—replacing products that are no longer doing their job adequately.Spam is an arms race between spammers and anti-spam tool writers, which means...
In one-to-three years' time...
- Some anti-spam vendors don't have the expertise to keep up—these vendors will either disappear or need to acquire another that has the Right Stuff.
- Others have good technology and smart people, but are are simply under-capitalized—these vendors are ripe for acquisition.
I do a bunch of independent, part-time consulting gigs. To help me get them, I just joined the Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts...The Circle of Experts is an exclusive global network of thought leaders who provide collaborative research and counsel to institutional investors. The Circle includes industry experts from the Fortune 500, leading universities, government, and nonprofits worldwide. We are now recruiting scientists, senior businesspeople, and other thought leaders, particularly in the healthcare, insurance, and chemical industries. Most consultations are on a one-to-one basis and typically take 30-90 minutes. The great majority of the Circle of Experts hold full-time positions with other employers.I'll let you know how I get on. You can apply to The Circle of Experts at this affiliated link.Applicants must have several years experience and deep working knowledge of their industry. Previous experience with consulting is a plus, but not necessary. You determine at what hourly rate you are paid, based on your academic training, years of experience, and influence over purchasing decisions. Membership in The Circle is free and coinfidential, and all consultations are at your own discretion.
The benefits of joining include an unparalleled opportunity to earn extra income, build your personal brand, receive feedback from industry experts, and work on strategic, thought-provoking projects...all with absolutely no time commitments.
Matt expostulated:
Then there is the part of me that thinks, Matt, if you get TiVo, you will spend all your leisure time watching TV and none of it ... improving myself.That's not been my experience. I own a Pace Twin (it's a DVB-T/"Freeview" box) and I figure that I'm just more selective about what I watch. Before I had a PVR, I might plonk down at an odd moment, channel surf, and put up with watching something that I'm not really interested in. Now I have a PVR, if there's nothing good on when I want to watch, I know I have a bunch of unwatched stuff in the box.
The corollary (ooo get him) of this is that I don't rush to the TV when something I want to watch is on. Yeah, well that was true of VCRs too, except the quality was always hateful. The nice thing about the Pace box is that it records the actual MPEG streams, so the picture quality is just as good as off-air.
Yay. As part of my research analyst contract work with Ferris Research, I get to blog about stuff. It'll probably be mostly about spam ;-)
I'm logged into blogger.com, but I don't see the trashcan icon by the comments, and I can only edit posts via blogger.com, and not from the blog itself.To which they replied:Can you either help me make it work from the blog, or at least tell me how to delete comments from blogger.com, please?
I've tried using IE6 as well as Firefox 1.0. OS is Win2003.
To delete a comment, first make sure you're logged into Blogger, then visit the Post Page where the comment is displayed. Next, click the small trash can icon next to the comment.Hmmm, I'm not using frames. Oh, wait, I might have been briefly while they looked at the problem. Nuts. Let's try this...The problem with your trash cans seems to be due to the fact that you are using frames within your blog. You will need to modify this in order for the trash can icons to appear properly.
Currently, Blogger Support does not support questions regarding customized template code or CSS/HTML in general. Please see our Blogger Help article for a pointers to more resources: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=115
I already tried everything you suggested. I also tried with frames and without. I also tried republishing the blog after resetting the URL to use the underlying web host (www.richi.nildram.co.uk). I also tried using Blogspot. None of these made any difference. Despite being logged in to Blogger, no trash icon appears in the Post page, whether using Firefox 1.0 or IE6.To which they came back with...
Unfortunately we don't provide support for template modifications such as these.I might want to try to have fun? What, are they telling me I need to get out more? ;-)Your best bet is to back up your custom template to a text file, then start from scratch with one of Blogger's default templates, where Blogger's template tags are listed in their original context. Then, insert the tags into your custom template with this context in mind.
Blogger Help's Template Tags section is also a good resource: http://help.blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=39
You might also want ot try changing your publishing settings to not publish through frames or try publishing to Blogspot.
You might also want to try
Have fun!
So I fiddled a bit more, reset the template, and it still didn't work. Then their Tags help page got me thinking, and I went to look in the generated source for the post. There I found where it was trying the draw the icon!
OK, I saved my modified template, reset it to the original, republished the entire thing, and I still get no trashcan icon by the comment in the Post page.(can't seem to paste HTML into a post -- grrr)Makes sense, 'cos I didn't mess with that bit of the template. I can see that <$BlogCommentDeleteIcon$> is there where it should be in the template. In fact, I looked at the generated source and could see where it was trying to draw the icon. It looks like this:
So I manually went to http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.do?blogID=... and sure enough it worked! The comment got deleted. So at least I have a workaround now. Thanks for the link to the tag help page.So there you have it. If you can't delete comments, go to the post page, view source, and look for the "delete-comment.do" URL. Go there manually and voila!Could it be that you can't nest span class="..." tags? Otherwise, I'm stumped as to why it doesn't work as advertised, but thanks for the help. If you want me to try anything else to help you get to the bottom of this, let me know.
Aaaargh. £1 = $1.94!!! What are you guys doing over there? I gots to find me some more European clients. I might even have to put up my $ dayrate.
It's a weird one, this. The original message seemed to be trying to stir up fear about tsunami in Scotland, of all places...
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL WARNING!A huge 300 ft. high ocean wave is moving towards Scotland.
Edinburgh and many other cities are in a real danger.
Approximate wave moving speed is 700 km/h.Please read more about this catastrophe here: www.tsunamidanger.com
Earthlink host the websites tsunamidanger.com and danger-tsunami.com, which appear to be a ripoff of a Canadian government site. USENET groups also show signs of this being targetted at the Japanese and Australians.
Weird, or what? Possibly the site has a more malicious intent, exploiting an IE security hole, but I'm wasn't about to try opening it in an unpatched IE to find out ;-)
Anyway, the reply I got from Earthlink last night said:
The customer/account that was used in this spam has been identified and the account was secured.
Rich Smith at The Motley Fool points out that ISPs are working feverishly, blacklisting Lycos Europe to prevent their screensaver from working (or even being downloaded).Great. So they can work hard to blacklist spam fighters, but their hands are tied when it comes to blacklisting spamvertised websites? In a moment I'll post my sorry story regarding Earthlink.
Scott MacGregor writes: "I'm excited to announce that our first Thunderbird 1.0 Release Candidate is now available for testing. 1.0RC1 includes lots of bug fixes and improvements for features like saved search folders, the RSS reader, mail migration, and message grouping. The default themes have both been updated with new improved artwork as well."
Scott's post to the Thunderbirds Builds forum about 1.0RC1 has more information. The release candidate can be downloaded from the 1.0rc directory on ftp.mozilla.org.
Interesting that nobody at ZD was willing to put their name to it, eh? ;-)
Separately, I see that makelovenotspam.com is down, but Lycos claims not to have been hacked. Hmmm...
Remember: this is the country where broadband penetration is huge (and the bandwidth available to most homes is substantially higher than is typical in the US or UK). I used to work for one of the Samsung companies. It's an unusual culture: kind of Japanese, but less formal (perhaps deliberately so).
(For "mini-homepages," perhaps we should read, "blogs"?)
This from Chosun...
The email era is coming to an end because replacement communication means such as Internet messengers, mini-homepages (dubbed "one-man media"), and SMS are wielding their power. As a consequence, the stronghold of email, once the favorite of the Internet, is being shaken from its roots.
The ebbing of email is a phenomenon peculiar to Korea, an IT power. Leading the big change, unprecedented in the world, are our teens and those in their 20's. The perception that "email is an old and formal communication means" is rapidly spreading among them. "I use email when I send messages to elders," said a college student by the name of Park. For 22-year-old office worker Kim, "I use email only for receiving cellphone and credit card invoices."
A poll conducted by Chungbuk University computer education professor Lee Ok-hwa on over 2,000 middle, high school and college students in Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces in October revealed that more than two-thirds of the respondents said, "I rarely use or don't use e-mail at all."
The reasons given for shunning email are that it's impossible to tell whether an addressee has received a message right away and replies are not immediately forthcoming. Still another reason is that you send messages through SMS or messenger as if you were playing a game, while doing so through email makes you feel as if you are doing homework or performing a task. "The new generation hate agonizing and waiting and tend to express their feelings immediately," said Professor Lee. "The decline of email is a natural outcome reflecting such characteristics of the new generation."
The ebb of email is confirmed by a diminishing trend in pageviews, a tabulation of frequency in service used by email users. Daum Communication, the top email business in the country, saw its email service pageviews fall over 20 percent from 3.9 billion in October last year to 3 billion in October this year. By contrast, with SK Telecom, the nation's No. 1 communication firm, monthly SMS transmissions skyrocketed over 40 percent in October from 2.7 billion instances last October. Cyworld, a representative mini-homepage firm, witnessed its pageviews multiply over 26-fold from 650 million instances in October last year to 17 billion in October this year.
"Email's efficiency falls in terms of promptness, convenience and credibility," observed Yoo Hyon-ok, president, SK Communications. "With the continuous emergence of new communication means, communication formats will develop further in the future."
(Kim Ki-hong, dama90@chosun.com)
Let's say it again: Lycos Europe's position is that the cooperative screensaver system monitors the response times of the webservers, endeavouring to throttle the hits sent so as not to shut them down. Not to mention shutting down other, legitimate sites hosted on the same servers.
Here's another example of people fundamentally misunderstanding this attempt: Mr. Kulawiec, like others, doesn't seem to understand what Lycos is trying to do...
From: Rich Kulawiec rsk@...orgThe point is to eat up the bandwidth allowance of spamvertised webservers. This will either quickly shut them down, or cost the spammers a lot of money in additional bandwidth charges. Spammers' websites do not have "an infinite amount of bandwidth". Perhaps you're confusing e-commerce webservers with MTAs?
Date: November 29, 2004 9:56:33 AM EST
Subject: Lycos gets into the denial-of-service attack business
It's hard to know where to even begin trying to explain how terribly misguided this is, so I'll just confine myself to noting that trying to win a bandwidth contest with spammers -- who have an unlimited supply of it at zero cost -- reflects a stunning ignorance of reality.
Pa was in the Lincolns, but later on, in Malaya (as t'was then). Capt. Jennings was the Intelligence Officer [sniggers].
Ulimately, the book will be on Edward's site, but its temporary home is here.
However, do we really trust Lycos to pull this off? Remember, these are the guys who after 12 months, still email me even though they swear blind that I don't have an account with them any longer...
Landed at stupid-o'clock this morning in Gatwick, thanks to the kind auspices of Delta. Flight was packed out with "seniors" (as they say over there). Beats the screaming kids on the way out.
Got a fair bit of sleep on the flight, thanks to:
Larry's article is a well-argued case for Yahoo! DomainKeys. In summary:
However, there are other burdens of crypto approaches, which are more to do with key generation, key management, and cache coherency. None of this is rocket science, but it could impose significant "friction" to impede adoption.
As I also said in that eSeminar, there's room for more than one authentication scheme. Indeed Meng Wong argues that, as things stand, we need both SPF/SenderID and DomainKeys, in order to cover all the corner cases.
But there are other reasons to love SPF more than DomainKeys. I mean, what's not to love about a developer who confesses that he "remains very shy with girls" and looks like this? ;-)
I love Firefox and Thunderbird, but the Mozilla folks have been saying "you must uninstall before installing a new version" for too long now. Even as recently as 0.9.3 (the last version before 1.0PR), the release notes recommended this. What that says to me is that the installer might not get enough test exposure.
Having said all that, I still think it's reasonable to ask testers to uninstall/reinstall before reporting problems. BUT if the uninstall fixes the problem, it should still get reported, as it can highlight an underlying bug.
So I just called the Orange Retentions Dept. They offered me 120 anytime x-net minutes and 30 texts for £15/month, plus a free phone, plus (get this) £185 immediate cashback. So they're effectively paying me £105 to stay (£185, less 12 x £15, plus the £100 I'll make on ebay)!
I've been paying £25/month for 120 any/any + 250 texts for the last year. Plus I bought my phone for £120 (early Treo 600). The guy said that makes me worth keeping as a customer. Crazy if you ask me, but I'm not complaining.
Another interesting "zero-day" technology. This time out of the UK. They offer a free home version here.
...British inventions -- the gas turbine and jet engine, railways, penicillin, radar -- had become the cornerstones of several key American industries. The British invented, the Americans profited. Why? It's not because Americans are sleazy opportunists. Instead, these American visionaries were bold enough to think they could change the world and pragmatic enough to use whatever technology and information existed.
BTW, add "electronic, programmable, digital computers" to that list, would ya?
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