A while back, I hosted holla-front.com for a user of mine until it used up too much bandwidth.

Tonight the problem came back in the form of an mp3 being posted by the same individual. Unfortunately I do not have the bandwidth to host media (hence why the main site was moved the first time). Please update links pointing to the MP3.

Nate: contact me at some point, we should talk.

Spammer story

Recently Wired Magazine spoke about online journals (like this one) being used by spammers to help increase their rating in google when someone does a search. The spammers post so that google will see that "X site is apparently popular or important" so it increases the chance that when someone searches for whatever the site sells, that it will appear at the top of the list.

Using this style of spam, RXPAINRELIEF.NET at 209.68.61.41 has posted ads to my journal. The domain is registered at DOMAINSBYPROXY.COM at 63.241.136.143 which doesn't seem to care about their abuse situation. I've noticed that PAIR.COM is involved and their DNS servers at 209.68.1.61 and 216.92.61.2 are the ones involved. I've since contacted PAIR.COM to see if they will at least respond. The orders are actually processed on RXORDERSYS.COM [1-702-990-3870] which is at 65.59.187.12 and uses the DNS server at 65.59.187.3 (NS1.HACKERJACKS.NET). Of course, Tom is the contact for rxordersys.com, abuse@domainsbyproxy.com people and the customer's address of rxpainrelief@domainsbyproxy.com all have chosen to not respond to my requests to have the domain removed (or to pay the advertised cost to post ads on powertrip.net). The lack of response is the part that probably annoys me the most. It's not that they're working with the customer about the issue or that they don't believe that journal posts are against their AUP, they're flat out ignoring the issue..

The 2 responses I've received so far were:
1) Domains By Proxy mailed me telling me to include the e-mail headers... obviously they've not figured out that this was WEB spam.
2) When I called and spoke to someone at Domains By Proxy they told me to mail abuse at godaddy.com which isn't related in any way to the above as far as I can tell (I did mail them, got 1 automated response, nothing more)

If anyone has any legal ways to deal with this problem, I'm open to ideas.

UPDATE! 9:34am - DOMAINSBYPROXY finally got annoyed with my mails about the abuse and called me back (gee, 1 month of mailing and finally they call - what service!) I've told them I'll wait up to 1 month for contact back about this issue. I did forget to ask on the phone why the hell they forwarded me to godaddy and other addresses and why if they have a "no tollerance, instant removal" of spam policy why it's taken a month... I assume I'll find out soon.

UPDATE! 10:49am - Tom from RX Medical called.. he's since canned the affiliate's account. Not sure why he never got the previous hundred mails about the issue over the last month, however this got his attention. Congrats Tom, took a bit of mail, but good to see that you do run a good show which finally dealt with the problem. Next time try going to the affiliate site to at least see if their "contact us" button works - that would be a hint to show if they're legit or not.

Advertisers beware

MESSAGE FOR THOSE WHO ATTEMPT TO ADVERTISE COMMERCIAL WEBSITES ON THIS BLOG OR ANY OTHERS HOSTED HERE.

Advertisers will be charged $150/month for posting their ad here. To remove the ad you must send US postal mail to the mailing address for "powertrip.net" including the date/time that the ad was posted along with the URL (website address).

I'm currently in contract negotiations with a collections agency and have every intention of collecting advertising fees, taking people/companies to court and affecting the credit ratings of anyone who does not follow the terms posted here.

You have been warned.

Speakeasy update

After 2 times of trying to order DSL from Speakeasy and 15 days wait on this 2nd time, they finally have determined that I am out of range. The order has now been cancelled. It took 15 days to have them figure out that I am too far for DSL. *bangs head against wall* It took 15 days!

Speakeasy DSL review

I don't think I could put it any better than I did in the letter I mailed them when I got the letter asking for feedback, so here it is:

From: Aaron Schultz
To: Speakeasy
Subject: DSL installation problems

Comments regarding my new DSL installation (non functional at the time I
write this):

The communication for my DSL installation has been horrendous. There are
never updates on the ticket and calls are never returned. So far I've had
to call DAILY to find out updates. Even the 1st time I opened the ticket
through the website I had to call 3 hours later to get someone to start
work on it. I also get mixed responses as to when someone will be on site
and if I should remain available on site or not. One day I'm told that
Covad will most likely send someone on site between Friday and COB Monda,
as of 2pm today I was told that they "may" be here between noon and 4
tomorrow. Escalation to "Grant" at extension 2212 was also useless.
According to his entry in the ticket I was to receive information by close
of business Friday as to what the status was.. I left 2 voicemails at his
extension and an update on the ticket and it took until Sunday at 2pm
before the TICKET was updated to "The commit is 4 business hours, which
would be mid day Monday" which doesn't tell me ANYTHING about the update.
What happened to the Friday call?

A secondary issue which is too odd to be a coincidence is that the same
day that the DSL line was supposed to be activated, my phone line was
switched to use the 2nd pair of wiring (ie: line 1 became line 2).. there
was no line 2 here and it took me about 3 hours to figure out that my
dialtone could be heard using a line 1/2 splitter to force my phones to
talk to line 2. The only thing I've heard was "that's a telco thing" but
that doesn't explain what happened. An educated guess might be that Covad
coordinated with telco to find a cleaner pair of wires to work with but
didn't think far enough that they were moving the main phone line, however
nobody wants to investigate this.

--
- Aaron Schultz
- EXTREMELY frustrated

How To Talk To Technical Support

Many people would define their dealings with tech support as "annoying" at
best. Strangely enough most tech support people see it the same way. The
most basic issues usually come down to communication. The tech is too
technical for the user. The user does not understand the tech and/or
answers questions with information irrelevant to the problem. The
combination ends up being that the tech is frustrated and does not want to
deal with the user and the user feels that the tech is not being helpful
and/or has an attitude.

........................... Click the more button for the entire article ...................

MORE...

Being Considerate

(article to appear in the next issue of the DALnet zine)

Title: Being Considerate
Author: Aaron Schultz (aaron@powertrip.net)

Recently I've noticed a growing problem both online and in RL. People are
forgetting how to be considerate to those around them. This ranges from a
complete lack of patience for simple items to people doing things that
they normally wouldn't do. On IRC it comes across even more because,
after all, "IT IS ONLY IRC!!".. which although yes, like many of you, IRC
is a part of my "real life" it still can be turned off and walked away
from.. yet people find issues on it which seem to require "real life"
retaliation.

A "real life" example of this lack of consideration was recently found at
a local shopping center where they have a movie theater playing the
recently released NEMO movie for kids. Ideally, parents would be
level-headed when taking their kids to this, planning ahead, they would
know that parking would be bad since it is opening weekend and such...
instead, I found people almost fighting it out with fists in the parking
lot, minivans full of toddlers with parents cussing and honking and waving
fists at other cars that just stole their parking place, people taking the
mustard container form a local restaurant across the parking lot (and
leaving it there) because it was "too crowded to eat near the theater" and
many other similar examples.

Online, everyone seems to think they have a "right" to have something that
either isn't theirs or was taken away for abuse. Yes, part of this comes
from being an oper as I do get those people who like to come to me and
request things they have no business requesting, or they have broken the
rules and don't realize that there is punishment. I somehow think that
these same people would be asking the guard in jail "hey, I didn't really
do anything wrong.. I realize you have a video of it, but it wasn't me.. I
mean it wasn't that bad and I won't do it again." ..and when someone is
denied what they were asking for, they decide that retaliation is the
answer.. everything from flooding a user or channel to posting their
target's phone number and info on public areas to flat-out calling
people's homes and making death threats.

It's a growing problem and getting WAY out of hand. Parents, it starts
with you being able to control YOUR tempers and realizing for yourselves
that YOU need to have patience and control or your children will NEVER
have it. Kids - look around you, decide what really IS and IS NOT
important and react accordingly. If someone isn't taking away your
shelter, your food or your family, then you need to sit back and consider
dealing with things in a more responsible manor. And no, apologies are
not a sign of weakness, so use them - they just indicate that you're
smarter than the other guy who hasn't realized they've made a mistake yet.

Vienna Teng

If you get ANY level of enjoyment out of hearing a piano and voice creating a full range of professional quality, beautiful and moving sound then I highly recommend Vienna Teng as an artist to look in to. She is able to create impressive sound for such a small body and I have yet to hear anything that was not unique (in a good way) and played well (including the 2 live shows I've now seen).

Powertrip updates

FYI - my personal jounal is finally being seperated from this area, so you will be able to expect more powertrip updates and articles here in the future and not as much about my personal life.

Having said that.. here's some powertrip updates:

• Spam is being rejected at the server level more now
  
• The machine is happy overall - next objectives include SSL web hosting, more webmail programs, VPN support again and groupware suites to simplify online calendar and such.
  
• Filesystem quotas are also around the corner - don't get too comfortable
  

Spam

Over 900 mails rejected at the mail server in the past 3 days, over 100 per day in my personal account being filtered by spamassasin, other users of mine get over 200-300 per day.. it's insane. I keep adding filters though. Hopefully someday I'll get back to only having 10-20 legit mails in my mailbox (not including the mailing lists)

The bird named Skye

Skye's a little lovebird. Tonight while giving him a bath he ended up taking flight and running off. Initially he seemed to be staying near the house, but I lost track after a while. I had to run to dinner.. when I came back he was still nowhere to be found. I'm optimistic that with as paranoid as he is that he won't become some other animal's dinner.. and that he'll eventually miss his home and come back. Currently his travel cage is outside waiting for his arrival. Tomorrow I'll be going outside often during the day to do a bird call he normally responds to and see if I can get him back. It seems that the "normal" delay for a bird to be lost and return is about 2-3 days.. the maximum being about 2 weeks. More news as it becomes available.

Powertrip upgrade

Powertrip's hardware and software upgrade is mostly complete as I write this. New spam filtering has been added, more software is on the way.. life is good.
New items to keep in mind:
- You are restricted to use ONLY your IP or the main box IP
- You will have quotas on the amount of space you can use
- you need to check the users area of this page (comming soon) for your e-mail options and such (Squirrel Mail is still here).
Powertrip users who notice any problems should e-mail me - the sooner the better.

Back on DALnet

Ok, I went back to DALnet. To clarify for those who wander here without knowing about me or DALnet or IRC.. DALnet is a free IRC chat network which I've been involved in for about 2 years... a few posts earlier from this I had resigned my positions on DALnet and left. I've decided to return and they've allowed me to. Now that I am back I will *NOT* be resuming my previous positions and will just start slow and see where it goes - just someone involved with helping out. I still handle the hosting of the webserver and some DNS, but that's it. ..and yes, it's good to be back.

Honda Accord LX '03

I traded in the spyder for an accord. It saves me some cash and also lets me fit more than 2 people "comfortably". I had planned on deciding between the Nissan Altima and the Honda Civic, but at the last minute my parents stepped in and asked "did you look at the Accord? It's only a couple thousand more and has a bigger engine and more room"... and after driving it there was no comparison. The room, engine noise, pep, overall handling was definately better. I'm still saving money over the Spyder, but now I have a more "sensible" car. I am happy with it though - it has pep, it holds many people & their stuff, it has a good audio system and seems to be all around stable. The almost 400 miles per gas tank is really handy too. Now I need to take a road trip somewhere again... Oh, and I got the 100,000 mile warrenty on it too.

Resigning from DALnet...

For those who weren't aware, I was part of the DALnet chat network as a staff member for around 2 years. I worked my way up to CSOP, was in the webteam, exploits team, testsnet team and head of the hostmasters team. I was also the backup contact for most of the systems that carried the core of DALnet including mail & even occasionally services. I also spent time in #dalnethelp and shortly before my resignation was promoted to a status of "technical director".

So.. that's the past. I've resigned from my duties on DALnet.. all of them. A combination of politics, personal conflict and a definate difference in direction all combined and brewed to a point of frustration. I have nothing but the best wishes and hopes for DALnet, however I will no longer be a part of them.

I understand that a petition has been passed around opers trying to bring me back, however it was not DALnet that let me go to begin with and I am standing by my decision to leave. I'm going to re-dedicate my time to other things (my real job being one of them) and move on with my life. I will be around to chat online and for now I am going to continue to pay part of the hosting fees for the websites and DNS for DALnet.

Thanks to all who I worked with over my time here. I'm glad that you all respect me, my decisions, my points of view and my track record for trying to get things done. Hopefully when I find something else to get involved in I can find as wonderful of a group of people to work with.. especially on a volunteer basis like this.

This space for rent...

For those few who visit this regularly watching for new updates, sorry... here's an update.. lets see, now what to write that will fill more than a small blurb...

Here's a bit about what's been going on with me recently:
- Comming up on 1 year since I bought this condo, doesn't feel like it
- My bird Java is still plucking his feathers, although seems much happier that I've started spending more time in his room
- Car is happy and running well - overdue for an oil change though
- Work is slow but moving - For those tech types out there: I'm involved in setting up a thin-client system using Tarantella for my office's users to remotely connect in. It'll be an interesting setup when it's done.
- Personal hosting - gotta love having your own server so when some other company screws up their DNS or something similar you can put your own entry in and get around the problem.
- DALnet - I've been promoted to "technical director" within the organization. This means I keep track of technical things like server availability and make the appropriate announcements on the website and mailing lists. It also lets me take a bit more control of the network and hopefully change the general apathy that's been there for a while.
- My small bird Skye is doing well - lets me even hold him sometimes - that's always a plus to having a pet.. being able to pet it :P

I think that covers most recent events... now I don't have to post again for another month, yay! ..ok ok ok ok! just kidding!

PIA...

PIA... "Pain in the ass" PIA was the name of a friend's dog. Today I was called to help pick up the friend and their dog. Apparently PIA had stopped walking about a block from home and dropped to the ground. PIA hadn't been able to get back up and her owner couldn't move her. PIA.. at the age of 14 had a history over the last 6 months of failing health, so this wasn't as big of a new occurance as it could have been. I was called to pick them up.. and when I arrived we went to the animal hospital where PIA was to be put to sleep. I stayed with PIA in the small room until the final tech came in to administer the anistetic.. I rubbed her down and got one last wag before leaving PIA in the custody of the tech and driving PIA's owner home.

Anyway, figured I'd post something here about it for rememberance. PIA was a good dog, always loyal to her family and friends.. and was a trooper until the end. Only today did she finally release a wimper about her decreasing health, but the tail wag in the end, even when I believe she knew what was to happen, I think the wag was her saying goodbye back.

School reunions..

For anyone who has the chance... go to your 10 year highschool reunion. I went to mine a couple weeks back and it was a blast. Time is the great equalizer.. all of the little groups from highschool and the petty things people fight about are all gone. Most people are more adult and there to actually chat and find out where people went and what they're doing. Definately highly recommended.

San Diego Wireless Users!

A new user group was recently formed - see sdwu.net for the new website (will be active 8/20). The site is dedicated to wireless technology - mainly networking however the site is not dedicated to it exclusively.

A mailing list was also setup. Note that the list is not limited to San Diego people only, however we would like to keep any location-specific chat to the Southern California region.

Linux thin-client idea..

Ok, basic idea I'm working with is a linux bootdisk that supports laptops, PCs etc - it contains just enough data to boot a system, get it on the network (DHCP) and mount a FTP site as a filesystem. Once online the next idea is to boot a BASIC copy of X11 over the 'net. So far the problem with this is that X11 itself is huge and the mini copies (ie: pxes) seems to be setup for specific paths that cannot be used in my situation. Anyone with ideas on how to compile or use a mini X11 distro is encouraged to post a comment with info. Unfortunately I am limited to FTP or Webdav for mounting the filesystem in question and I am also forced to not use BOOTP due to not controlling the DHCP servers. Please post any ideas and suggestions :)

Isaac Hayes Concert review

Ok - tonight went to the Isaac Hayes concert at the Navy pier here in San Diego. The concert was good - great music, was nice for being outdoors near the waterfront, good "in person" performer. Besides Isaac's performance there was a woman nearby (52, black, full of soul, used a cane to walk) who was "shakin' her groove thang". She was the second performance of the night (unofficially) - didn't dance too bad and even ended up with a rather large cheering section of her own. The only downer is that he didn't sing "Salty Balls" from the South Park Chef Aid album even though it was on the song list. The friends I was with felt that it was a lack of San Diego enthousiasm that he didn't come back for an encore - or that it could have been a 10pm city noise ordanance... whichever it was, it was kinda sad - I was paying good money to see the look on the 60/70yr old people's faces when he started talking about his "chocolate salty balls"... but oh well - was still a good concert and still glad I went.

Internet attacks

Recently the number of attacks on my machines has increased. Unfortunately I'm not even to blame (things would be easier..) The most recent set of attacks prompted our ISP to request that we change IP blocks to help their network routing team better deal with them. Perhaps the most annoying part of the attacks is that the attackers end up taking down sites that have nothing to do with their target. I'd like to know what they think about taking down a family's e-mail server, the San Diego Women's Chorus site or affecting the lives of over a thousand other customers, not including people trying to use the sites.

I think the problem goes back to the same thing that you see on TV these days with everyone thinking that if they feel they are "wronged" that retaliation is the only answer. It's like the students who try to shoot their teachers for not giving them the grade they think they deserve. It's like the parents at a kid's soccer game taking a punch at the ref or even worse - a kid. Everyone thinks that they're entitled to something and when they don't get it, they decide that violence (or in this case a DDOS attack) is the answer.

What ever happened to walking away? How about not using the service if you don't like how it's run? What about sending in a well phrased e-mail explaining the situation to someone in charge?

Instead of dealing with things responsibly, people these days seem to think retaliation is the only answer. We can only hope that the world changes it's way of thinking before things get too much worse.

Learning Japanese...

Yeah, guess it's time for me to go down this road yet again. I'm feeling the need to learn something and of all things, this keeps popping into my head. So the next question comes up - how to learn it? I have a bad history with school settings - so I am counting that out. I've tried having friends teach me, but schedule conflicts and such never allowed it to work. Home tutor is an idea, but you don't know if the person can "really teach" etc until you sit down with them. I already did a bit of the online types of training and those just don't fly for me. Plus, I need to read/write, not just speak it - most online and other ways to learn don't show both.

MORE...

Spam

The amount of spam and self-replicating virii out there is really getting on my nerves. Each day I receive about 100 spams (directly to me), 20-30 virii (to an alias I'm on - they total over a few MB per day), and then the rest of the spams to lists. Unfortunately there are so many people out there who could care less about filling people's mailboxes with this crud that I see no end. So far the "Spamassasin" program works to catch about 85% or more of the spam I get with only a few false-positives. At least it files it to a seperate mailbox for me so I can deal with it when I am ready. Do we all really need to have 5 e-mail boxes? One for friends, one for mailing lists, one for spam/signup lists, etc? What will happen when the technology moves more toward e-mail pagers (as commonplace, I know they exist).. will we get paged every 15min with a new spam?

The bird known as Java

Java is my bird. He's an eclectus parrot. First off, I have to hand it to some friends of mine who brought me in touch with Java. These birds have a natural tendancy to be good pets for many reasons... overall they're quiet, small not-so-gooey poo, they can talk and they like just being with their owners. These birds also normally don't loose their feathers all at once like normal birds, they do their feather replacement year-round which helps keep the allergies down for those who are allergic to birds. These birds do have 2 basic needs that owners need to be aware of. They are social birds - you should plan to be around the bird (if not in direct contact) much of the day if possible (ie: don't plan on just taking the bird out for 30min per day and saying "hi" to it). They are also fairly large birds and really need to have a good sized place to hang out (if they must be caged).

MORE...

A view into the mind.. re: relationships

Relationships - amusing when you detach the emotions for a moment and think about them. I'm mainly referring to long-term relationships. The basic objective - find someone who you can live with long term, who you share enough interests with that you enjoy doing things with them, someone who's different enough not to get on your nerves by knowing everything you do and having nothing left to share, and then of course there's the emotional & physical attraction.

MORE...

Hm, catching up..

Ok, since it's been a while.. lets see...
Work is better - was told that almost no matter what they're gonna have stuff for me to do. In the meantime I'm back to my 1st project doing a web database and migrating it to the official servers. I really don't like the group I'm having to work with on it as they are about as helpful as a freezer to an eskimo.

Anyway, not much else to report, life goes on - ex-landlord issue is dying down, life goes on.

Jury duty

Ok, today was my first time at Jury duty... I'll go back some day. I didn't end up on a trial, but the rest of the process was somewhat amusing. Next time I may even take people's advice and take something to do the first day.

Incidently, if people are looking to contact me, it's aaron@powertrip.net.

Advice for renters

Renters need to take extra precautions to cover their liabilities for when they leave the property. Even the nicest sounding landlords can still turn out to be interested only in their financial well being at the end of the term.

In the beginning make sure to document EVERYTHING that is wrong, substandard, cracked or in anything but in perfect condition. Take a video of the property. Have the landlord signoff on the list of problems that are acceptable to live with, but that you want to make sure won't come back to haunt you when you leave.

When preparing to leave, make sure you mail your 30 days of notice before that final 30 day mark and send it via certified mail. When you leave, do a final walkthrough and make the itemized list of problems at that time.

Remember during your stay to document anything you do to the property, keep receipts and any inspection reports.

MORE...

Another mailing list

After talking to more people online, I feel that the world needs yet another mailing list... or two.. so I'm going to start a few more up. The first is an OS (unix/windows level) help mailing list which is for helping with a smile. No put downs, no calling people names, the occasional RTFM comment permitted but would perfer not to have many of those... just a nice place to go for help and/or share cool tricks and/or ideas. More news once it comes online.

Programming

Ever notice how non-programmers come up with these huge projects that are well beyond their means and try to use them to learn to program? ...ok, that's me in a nutshell. I know what is "possible" but not "what is possible for ME".. so I end up comming up with projects like a decent network monitor or a better dynamic DNS system for DALnet or various other ideas, but they're all well above my programming abilities. If there's anyone out there that would like to take a stab at any of these projects, most are in a basic documented state where you can understand what I have in mind, it just needs to be made into a program.

Work is good

Yes, a simple concept - work is good. Even though my last project at work got stopped at the budget review, my first project needs my attention again.. so I've got another month or so of database migration, code rewrites and other fun stuff. The office VPN also works better now, so I can accomplish this even faster than before - YAY

Moving on

For the last year I have been the only person in my department working to research, setup, maintain and rollout a thin-client computing solution based on Taratella (solaris & linux based installs) and Windows 2K Terminal Services. Today our project went before the budget team and was shot down for this year's budget. This leaves me without a project with the exception of producing a summary document for the next time the project is proposed. The search is now on for additional projects or the next job.

For those who have stumbled upon this page while looking at my resume, feel free to look around - I have articles posted in the archives section. This is hosted on my hobby server which I have colocated and remotely maintain.

Technical woes

Technical stuff... this box has too much crap running on it, and unfortunately there's really no solution currently other than spending $788 to get yet another box for part of it. I don't understand how stuff ran as well as it did previously, then when I get rid of part of the problem, the situation gets worse... I know I'll have a drive failure within the next couple months at the rate we're going.. been here done this before. Meanwhile, my work laptop smells as if it's burning up from the inside out. It's probably down to it's last legs too, although I'm waiting for a "real" problem before I send it in for repairs. If there's too small of a problem, pieces will be replaced, but the main problem of having a laptop with bad air circulation will still exist and the new parts will burn out quickly just like the current ones (ie: like my hard drive with the bad sectors which causes the occasional blue screen of death)

A decent day thanks to work

While looking back on today there were a few points which can even override the previous post. My project at work is a neat thing about thin-client computing. Thin-client computing is kinda like going back to the days of dumb terminals on everyone's desk and having a big central computer - except we know how to do it better now :) ..so as of today, we've got tons of funding, other groups involved, the backing of management and job security for the next year. So work-wise, it was a good day.

Ex-friends...

It's rare that I can think of a time when I've ever decided not to be a friend with someone. I mean - it takes a long time to get to the point of being a "friend" so why would you want to let things get in the way of it? Of course there's also the line between being taken advantage of and "being a friend".. sometimes people push the envelope too far and just need to be cut off. ..and such in the case today. Although now I can get on with fixing what was broken, collecting debts without having to worry about hurting the friendship and move on. There's nothing worse than those who use others in the name of friendship. It uses excessive amounts of time and effort to try to preserve the friendship when it's really non existant to begin with.

Was a busy weekend

Weekend's over - back to work. Talk about a busy weekend... Friday night was spent preparing for a garage sale Saturday. Saturday morning started at 5am.. garage sale was busy and successful until about noon - packed up at about 2. After the sale and clean up, went to lunch at about 3... and as we're sitting down to eat, my parents call - they're curious if I'd be open for them to drop by. (This is REALLY unusual for my parents to just up and decide to come down).. so after lunch, went home and cleaned up the place which was a disaster from preparing for the garage sale. Parents came in.. was a quiet Saturday night and Sunday morning. ..and then after breakfast they left as quickly as they arrived. The rest of today was spent at the beach, then with Dal and Krys, then fixing someone's computer, taking Java for a walk, catching up on e-mail and such... been one long weekend.

People with too much time on their hands...

I'm amused by this - not necessarly in a bad way though.
In the time since I've posted the new version of the site, I've actually been having people join the chat below. I'm sure some of this is regarding DALnet since this site is hosted on the same IP block, but curious how many drop by because of snooping for that, randomly finding it by name or how many actually come here because of me. Drop a comment and let me know - I'm curious.

New look & Feel

Out with the old crappy scripts and sites I've written and in with the new and improved site which will contain the occasional article, thought of the day or various other content. I probably won't update this daily, but I figure what the hell, might as well post my thoughts since everyone else does.

Credit cards over the Internet

The media enjoys playing up the idea that using your credit card online is
very dangerous. I'd like to point out that there are very few differences
in using your card online than in person.

The largest precaution about using credit cards online is knowing who you
are dealing with. You wouldn't go around giving your credit card number
to a street vendor who is working out of the back of a run down Yugo
without knowing who they're affiliated with or what guarantees they
have. This is true for online stores too.

The second issue is actual security. Your normal name brand online vendor
will be running a somewhat secure site. The data between your computer
and theirs will be encrypted and for the most part, safer than your retail
store. Have you ever noticed the receipts at your local Radio Shack or
other stores being put into a bin behind the counter? It would be easy
for someone to walk in, take a stack of receipts and walk out in most
cases than it would be for a "hacker" to attempt to hack the server and
steal your card information.

Filtering content for corporate office use.

The current trend in the corporate world is to implement filtering of
potentially harmful material and/or applications from their
users. At first glance this is a wonderful idea.. prevent people from
running things they shouldn't be running while also filtering content that
employees shouldn't be looking at on company time. Unfortunately there
are larger problems with this system.

When a company chooses to filter content, a legal loophole is
created. Consider this scenario: an employee views inappropriate content
in the office. The company fires the employee for viewing the content on
company time. The employee now has a possible loophole to counter-sue
stating that the company allowed the employee to view the content, so it
should have been acceptable. This also could be the case for another
employee being offended by content viewed by the first employee to sue the
company for permitting the content to be shown since the company chose to
filter rather than having it be completely up to the employee. This is
really an issue which needs to remain in the HR department, not IT.

The filtering of Java and Javascript programs is also
overrated. Javascript, although occasionally annoying when used for
pop-up ads and such, is often required on sites which have forms. Many
sites use javascript to validate form data, to setup dynamic forms;
ie: when a user selects something from a pull-down menu, the next menus
also change and similar uses. Java itself can be more harmful to the
network it's running on, however a network without direct TCP access to
the outside world has little to fear. The most common exploits people
create with java applications are those which create a network connection
to the outside world to allow those outside of your network access to your
files. In a standard network without direct TCP/IP access to the
Internet, this is not a problem. Java is used by many sites in search
engines because it does more processing on the client side depending on
the amount of data that needs to be looked through.

The other large problem with filtering is the big question "what gets
blocked?"... Websense which is one of the most popular filtering
software packages claims both that they visit the sites they filter, yet
also claim to do keyword filtering. There are some sites which have known
problems when using filtering software:
- Not all browsers are supported:
SOURCE: http://www.sgsales.com/WebSense/freq.htm
- Hotmail:
Hotmail uses 302 redirects which are incompatible with some proxy
and caching software. It also can write the reply and close the
socket before the complete request is sent which can cause other
problems.
SOURCE: http://ISP-Lists.ISP-Planet.com/isp-caching/0008/msg00565.html
- Refresh under Microsoft IE:
Some proxy/cache servers don't properly refresh content correctly.
This would be an issue when attempting to troubleshoot a site. The
customer may change their content, but the proxy may prevent us from
viewing the changes.
SOURCE: http://ISP-Lists.ISP-Planet.com/isp-caching/0006/msg00024.html
- Some streaming products fail under web proxies:
MP3s: http://service.real.com/help/faq/rp8/rp8known.html
Real Media: htp://service.real.com/firewall/configRP8.html (quality)
- Content listings out of date - not accurate
SOURCE: http://censorware.org/web_size/

The other part of the filter problems are the content itself. These are a
few of the webpages blocked by Websense:
The blocking techniques are also under question as shown here:
* Gay/Lesbian sites:
SOURCE: http://www.scotsgay.co.uk/text/sg34.txt
* Blocked by word association:
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/assess.html
(page about Assessment and Ruberic Information)
SOURCE: http://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/jhobson/multimed.htm
* All blocked as "pornographic" (incorrectly):
http://www.jewishteens.com
http://www.msu.edu/user/zemkedan
http://www.visionaryvoices.com
http://www.sterlingfunding.com
http://www.abohrer.com
http://165.76.244.1/yakult/swallows (Japanese baseball team)
http://www.indiatwisters.com (socker team)
http://bloodstone.globalnet.co.uk/~probon/demon1.htm
(the above is an internet policy on censorship for the ISP)
http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/notsee.html
SOURCE: http://www.censorware.org/reports/liza.html
http://www.digicrime.com (informational site about security)
SOURCE: http://www.specticle.org/cs/court.html
* Misc additional data:
SOURCE: http://www.peacefire.com/info/sample-letters/websense.txt

The best defense against inappropriate content and a safe network are:
- HR policy which is clearly spelled out as to what content is acceptable
- A properly configured network without direct outside access
- IT department which watches the logs from the proxy server for strange
activity (like http_tunnel which wouldn't be caught by most filtering
software yet is the most dangerous of all since it could create a
bi-directional tunnel for outsiders to get into the company's network.)
- Up to date (or auto-updating) virus protection software installed
company-wide which integrates with both the web browser and e-mail
software.