I’ve upgraded the site to Movable Type 2.661 and installed the CloseComments plugin.  From this point forward I will be automatically closing comments on all posts that are more than 30 days old.  Hopefully this will cut down on some of the comment spam that is coming in on year-old posts.

Gateway will be closing all of its remaining retail stores (188 of them with approximately 2500 jobs).  I’m not terribly surprised by this.  Last year when I still lived in Denton I went on the hunt for a new laptop.  I drove down to Lewisville and went to Best Buy, the Gateway Store, and Compusa.  I previously wrote about my dislike for Best Buy.  However, the experience at the Gateway Store was also disappointing, but for a different reason.  The store was simply a front for their web/phone order system.  You would go in and most of the equipment wasn’t available in the store.  When I go into a retail store I generally expect to be able to walk out with the product.  It was frustrating to me when they said that the model I wanted had to be ordered and would be shipped.  Since my goal was to have a laptop in hand when I returned home that day I left and went back across I-35 to Compusa.  A few weeks later that Gateway store closed. 

I can understand the need to custom order certain configurations of a system.  In fact, I know that some stores do this.  But a computer store is also expected to have stock on hand for immediate delivery.  If all they’re doing is acting as an order taker and then shipping it to your house, that’s next to useless for most people who go out to buy something that day.

Throughout the day yesterday my hosting company (Dreamhost) was the target of a major distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) (it was actually aimed at one of their main routers), making it nearly impossible to access my website or my email server.  This also affected The Bitch Girls, as they are hosted on my account.

The title of this post is taken directly from the subject line of a spam that I just received on my work email.  Our company’s mail servers have spam filters that block out tremendous amounts of spam each day, but lately I’ve seen a number of these getting through.  The use of unusual words is the latest attempt by the spammers to get around Bayesian filters.  It works to some extent, but by rendering their messages nonsensical it makes it quite simple for me to delete their messages unread. 

Further, they are being forced to insert random words and punctuation into the body of the emails, which makes them almost unreadable.  If we can at least continue to force the spammers to make themselves spout gibberish then we may eventually win this war.  Spammers have to push a product at some point in their messages, but that’s hard to do when they’re forced to write gibberish to get past the filters.  Or at least that’s my hope.  Given that spammers are fiendishly clever technically, but abysmally stupid socially, I may be hoping for too much.

Alternately, we may be able to take advantage of the gibberish nature of the spam to enhance the Bayesian filters with another layer of filtering that looks at grammar and structure.  Granted, this might require the current generation of IM-kiddies to learn to spell and to write in complete sentences, but I think of that as a feature rather than a bug.

New blogger Gnu Hunter came across my site and saw my previous rantings on the topic of spam and thought I’d be interested in his analysis of Bill Gates’ junk mail solution.  Bill seems to think he can solve the spam problem in two years through the use of micropayments.  Gnu analyzes just a few of the problems with this approach.

Given that spammers are unscruplous bastards who will lie, cheat, and steal to get their crap into our inboxes, I’d still like to recommend stringing a few of them up by the toes and bleeding them slowly to serve as an example to others.

As usual, government attempts to “help” have come to naught.

MX Logic looked at a random sample of over 1,000 unsolicited commercial emails during the course of a seven day period beginning New Year’s Day and found only three of the messages complied with the CAN-SPAM Act.

“Calling this a high rate of non-compliance would be a gross understatement,” said Scott Chasin, MX Logic’s chief technology officer. “It is no surprise that rogue spammers would fail to comply, but the non-compliant messages we saw appeared to be from all types of companies.”

Actually, I saw that this law would not help.  In fact, given the way it’s written, we would all be guaranteed to get more SPAM.  As an example, I’ve already received one SPAM that alleges that it’s just a “Crazy State Law” of the week list and that it’s not a commercial email, but that while they’re sending me the email I should know about their wonderful offer to “Email Advertise Your Web Site to 1,850,000 0PT-IN Email Addresse= s for FREE!” (fulltext in the extended entry if you’re morbidly curious).  Of course, I don’t give a damn about protestations of being noncommercial.  I reported the bastard via Spamcop.  I hope he got spanked appropriately.

Given the economic realities of SPAM, stopping it isn’t going to be handled by the law, especially when most of the spammers are operating outside the US.  It’s something that will require technical and human intervention (like perhaps hanging a few of them from lightposts as examples for others).

Link via Slashdot.

From: “Brian Durham” <782iybjm@everyone.net>
Reply-To: “Brian Durham” <782iybjm@everyone.net>
To: <one of my many email addresses>
Subject: State Laws that you wont believe
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 04 09:36:44 GMT
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

“It is illegal to put tomatoes = in clam chowder” – In Massachusetts
The Primary Purpose of this Email is to Deliver You a “C= razy USA State Law of the Week” – The Secondary Purpose of this Email is t= o Let You Know:

Clic= k Here to Email Advertise Your Web Site to 1,850,000 0PT-IN Email Addresse= s for FREE!

If You Meet the Criteria of Being A Non-Prof= it Organization That Helps People Defend Themselves From Unfair State Laws= .
Once at Our Web Site, Mail Us With Your Non-Profit Organization Informatio= n & We Will Provide Details on How to Receive Your Emailing.

Leave From Our “Crazy USA State Law of the Week” Ema= il List

DISCLAIMER: This is Not a Commercial Email Message and i= s Exempt From Guidelines Outlined in US Code S.877
The Primary Purpose of this Email is Not a Commercial Advertisement or Pro= motion of a Commercial Product or Service.
The Secondary Purpose of this Email is a Non-Commercial Offer for Non-Prof= it Organizations That Defend People From Unfair State Laws

Literally.  -100C cool.

The guy who wrote that article took two vaporphase freezers from a lab and ripped their guts out to use to cool his 3GHz P4 down to -83C and overclock it up to 4.4GHz.  It wins points for psycho insane overclocking, but I think someone has too much time on his hands.

Link via Slashdot.

If you’re running a wireless network at home it’s always a good idea to enable WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy).  If not enabled, of if enabled with an easily guessable password, anyone who can get within range of your access point will be able to access your network.  This could allow them the ability to access network shares on your PCs (if you have any enabled) or even for them to use your broadband connection. 

While it’s tempting to think that having someone “borrow” your broadband connection is relatively harmless, consider this.

Wireless security for home networks is in the spotlight following an unusual arrest in Canada, where a man stands accused of downloading child pornography over a hijacked Wi-Fi connection.

Toronto police said they stopped a car last week for a traffic infraction when they found the driver naked from the waist down with a laptop computer on the front seat, playing a pornographic video that had apparently been streamed over a residential wireless hot spot. The driver was charged with possession, distribution and creation of child pornography, as well as theft of telecommunications—a first in Canada, according to local authorities.

If the “authorities” decided to trace your broadband usage, it would be difficult for you to prove that you didn’t access the child porn site (although forensic analysis of your computer would not show any evidence that you accessed it, that wouldn’t necessarily exonorate you, since they’d have evidence to show that the stream came through your router).

While it wouldn’t land you in jail and get you listed as a sex offender, another possible problem would be if a wardriver used your connection to send spam.  Since almost every ISP outlaws spam as part of their AUP (Acceptable Use Policy), and the spam would have your IP address on it, they’d just assume that you sent it and cancel your account.  You would have a difficult time proving otherwise, unless the spammer was caught in the act (and they’re a lot less likely to be sitting outside your house with their pants down ).

That’s the main question that always comes to mind when I get spam for various dodgy items (like “enlargement” pills).  Obviously, someone is buying something or we wouldn’t be getting spam (although given the economics of spam, there don’t have to be very many people buying to make it worthwhile for the spammer).  This Wired article helps to answer this question.

A security flaw at a website operated by the purveyors of penis-enlargement pills has provided the world with a depressing answer to the question: Who in their right mind would buy something from a spammer?

An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products’ websites revealed that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company’s Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle.

Holy crap!  That’s a lot of people (and a lot of money for the spammer).  Even more surprising was the number of people you’d think would be smarter (which I suppose proves that the cream doesn’t always rise to the top).

Among the people who responded in July to Amazing’s spam, which bore the subject line, “Make your penis HUGE,” was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number to pay for six bottles, or $300 worth, of Pinacle. The coach of an elementary school lacrosse club in Pennsylvania ordered four bottles of the pills.

Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm, a chiropractor, a veterinarian, a landscaper and several people from the military. Numerous women also were evidently among Amazing Internet’s customers.

All were evidently undaunted by the fact that Amazing’s order site contained no phone number, mailing address or e-mail address for contacting the company. Nor were they seemingly concerned that their order data, including their credit card info, addresses and phone numbers, were transmitted to the site without the encryption used by most legitimate online stores.

“There was a picture on the top of the page that said, ‘As Seen on TV,’ and I guess that made me think it was legit,” said a San Diego salesman who ordered two bottles of Pinacle in early July. The man, who asked not to be named, said he has yet to receive his pills, despite the site’s promise to fill the order in five days.

So if something is ‘As Seen on TV’ that makes it legit.  I think these people deserve everything they get.  Heh.

Link via Slashdot.

Here’s one more from News.com(.com).  According to this article Amazon.com is in the process of creating a searchable text index of the contents of a number of nonfiction books.  This would allow the user to enter a search term and get back books that contain the term in their text, along with a short excerpt from the book to show the context in which it was found.  Amazon itself is not saying anything about it, but it appears to be scheduled for activation on their site in the fall.  I like the idea, since it would allow me to see if the book is truly relevant to the topic I was looking for.  Of course this wouldn’t necessarily be helpful for doing immediate research (i.e. I’m looking for something right now), since I’d have to wait for the book to be shipped to see all of it.