SOMETHING!

SOMETHING!!

Happy Joie? hahaha ;)

I get bored sometimes

Yeah well who doesn't right? Well I started thinking about it and I really don't have a reason to be bored. I mean with all my interests I should always have plenty to do! And I do. I have books, my computer, my camera, etc etc. So what's the problem?

The problem is I have no challenge! I'll stumble across something that interests me and I'll run with it for a little while, but as soon as the challenge is gone I drop it. The initial challenge is the learning. If something interests me I enjoy learning about it.

Occasionally someone will challenge me. Work and Melly usually. When that happens I'm forced (in a good way) to dive back into what caught my interest to start with. This also gets my perfectionist tendencies working in a positive direction. In other words, when I'm challenged I do my best work.

I realized this evening that is why I get bored sometimes on the weekends and evenings. If I'm in learning mode I'm ok, but otherwise i need something to do. Ok so it sounds a bit pathetic, but I need a task master. I need a wife! LOL ;) I have just the woman in mind too. :)

In all seriousness this is an important revelation for me. I know I'm an intelligent guy but I had a terrible time in college, with a few exceptions. I have to learn a certain way. The class has to maintain my interest and without an instructor/professor who can or will challenge me personally I will loose interest in the class and I won't do well. In other words I need an instructor who can work with me one-on-one. Any one who's been to today universities and colleges knows that one-on-one work with your instructor is nearly impossible, unfortunately. There are exceptions, but not many.

I think this is why most of my knowledge has been self taught. When I got into computers professionally, I had taught myself roughly 90% of all the computer skills I had. Now it's probably closer to 98-99%. Lots of trial-and-error as well as reading. I'm doing the same now with physics. I'm doing a lot of reading and thinking. I've even considered trying to reteach myself calculus.

I could probably do better now back in school, but at this point I can't see why I should. If I can teach myself with less cost and more interest, isn't the savings worth it? With a professor I'm going to be forced, challenged, to learn more and in a more well rounded format. Doing it myself I can put the cart before the horse.

Actually one day I want to teach. I want to challenge kids to learn more about their world around them. I think why I want to teach is because I suspect there are many other kids and adults who learn like I do. The idea you can teach en mass and expect people to really be able to do anything with that knowledge seems a little off to me. You should WANT to know more than what is in the text book. That book is only a guide. I had instructors like that in college. I had one tell the whole class that if you couldn't memorize the things in the book and in his lecture we wouldn't pass. I didn't pass, twice! The third time I had a different, better instructor and got an A.
Well I've strayed from the point, but the basic point is that I've learned some thing very important about myself and why I didn't do well in college. Perhaps this knowledge can help me in the future, as I'll have to go back to school if I want to be a teacher some day.

WinDVR2

I get a lot of search engine hits on this product so I felt it was important to note my experiences with this piece of software.

IT SUCKS!

The first time I loaded it, I was running an ATI TV Wonder card. It never even let me into the interface. I assumed it was an interfacing problem as the TV Wonder isn't as popular as the full ATI All-In-Wonder card. I uninstalled it and forgot about it.

I just loaded it again because I got an ATI All-In-Wonder Raedon 8500 DV card. I figured, 'hey, I've been getting a lot of hits on this application, let me check it out. I bet it'll work fine now that have a better card."

BZZZZZTTT!!! WRONG!

The results were worse. I got a message saying there was an application error and pop-zoom, my computer rebooted. This happened twice. I gave up and uninstalled it again.

Sure there are probably trouble shooting FAQs I could read, but that's not the point. Software like this should work first try. This is version 2 of the software even. I think I'll just stick with the DVR capibilities built into the ATI software. InterVideo's WinDVR2 plain didn't work at all for me. Buyer beware. Their website is slow as molassis too.

I'm done

I'm dropping this spam vs. anti-spam vs. me thing. There is a lot more going on here than I care to dive into any further. I'm walking away from it. I'll deal with it when I have to but outside of that I dont have the time to deal with it. I have more important things in my life than this.

Note: This has nothing to do with my blog. My blog will remain up, just no more spam articles. I'd rather talk about idiots not using their blinkers. LOL

Counter Arguement

Jason, a happy user of SPEWS (not affiliated with SPEWS), has graciously allowed me to post an email that he sent to me regarding SPEWS. My coorespondaces with Jason have been pleasent and professional. We don't agree 100%, but I do respect his opinion.

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Hi Marc,

Thanks for the follow up. I read (and replied) to your followup post this morning, as well.

Your issue/disagreement with SPEWS methodology is common, and I actually used to have the same opinion as you. But when I really watched what was happening for a while, I changed my opinion.

The rest of this email is not important, but I'm going to write it anyway, just in case you are interested. Often it IS hard to filter through the more abrasive posts in NANAE to get the real info. I try to help people understand why SPEWS is a really good system, even though it IS highly controversial.

I actually found out about SPEWS when my email server got listed. A client of mine had allowed a spam campaign to be sent out on their behalf. I didn't know this had happened, and my client didn't know that he was spamming. He was employing what he thought was a legitimate email marketing company. We got out of SPEWS in less than a week by fixing the problem, and I enacted new policies in my company to prevent us from ever being listed again.

SPEWS doesn't start out listing a whole Class C. They list the spammer's IP address first, (immediately to stop the spam) and complain to the ISP. Most ISP's have Acceptable Use Policies that expressly forbid spamming. A few ISP's don't enforce their AUP.

When an ISP doesn't stop a spammer, but allows them to continue spamming, it can be reasonably assumed that that ISP is "spam-friendly." Or, at the very least that they are slow to act. Spammers keep track of ISPs who are spam friendly and migrate to them. Verio is a prime example of this.

So, how does one convince an ISP that allowing spammers on their network is "bad business?" An organized boycott is one way. SPEWS essentially facilitates an organized boycott, but they don't normally list a major ISP's _entire_ address range. They list increasingly larger blocks of that IP space until someone finally acts.

A few years ago, the U.S. Congress stated that they didn't want to pass any laws regarding spam. They specifically stated that they wanted the free market to handle the problem if at all possible.

Hundreds of companies have tried just blocking the IP addresses of spammers. But, spam supporting ISP's learned that they could just move the spammer to a new IP address, and then the block would be useless. So, private system administrators spent hours just trying to keep up with what IP addresses spammers were using on any given day. This is called "playing whack-a-mole" (like the carnival game).

SPEWS has accomplished a few things in the free market fight against spam (which will cost businesses an estimated $10 Billion this year).

(1) Because of SPEWS agressive methods, there has been a lot of media attention on "how to stop spam." This is good, because it is forcing our elected officials to look at the issue.

(2) It has virtually stopped the "whack-a-mole" game. ISP's are learning that just moving spammers around doesn't work anymore.

(3) ISP's are being forced to make a decision as to whether they will support spam or not. If they do support spam, they are tending to move their spammers into more consolidated netblocks, effectively "containing" spammers.

Believe me, I don't think that SPEWS is the _best_ way to handle the spam problem, but I do think that it is a good way. I've got a few better ideas, but don't have the time or inclination to build them.

Which comes to the final point. SPEWS is run by a group of anonymous volunteers. A bunch of very intelligent system administrators have found a good way to fight spam, and they are donating their work to the internet at large. Until a commercial service that is accountable to its paying customers creates a more effective solution, or governments create effective anti-spam laws, then we have to rely on outfits like SPEWS to create a temporary fix with "consolidated power."

One could also argue that a commercial service solving the problem is a bad thing. Why should I have to pay "protection money" to keep spammers from abusing my email server?

I'm not going to go into the whole "why spam is bad" thing, because I think we agree on that. But spam is more than an inconvenience. 38% of all internet email is spam, and spammers rely on a number of destructive techniques to operate. The spam problem truly threatens the viability of email as a useful communications medium, and it has got to be stopped.

Best wishes,

Jason

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Jason is also known as Ziggy in the NANAE (news.admin.net-abuse.email) newsgroup.

Clarification

SPEWS does not block anything. They simply provide the blacklist which email admins then elect to use.

Frankly I dont see the problem from their point of view. Spam sucks and we get our share of it here too, but I and the managment here are not going to block spam in a wide sweep as SPEWS does. That said I should refrain from bad mouthing those who elect to use it. They may have very legitimate reasons for doing so.

I'm hoping to post a counter arguement in favor of SPEWS. I want to be fair about this. I'll be honest, my knowledge of email administration is small. As long as it's working that's all I care about.

One question that still hangs out there for me is where is the costs? How does spam cost us millions? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but honestly asking what I feel is a legitimate question.

SPEWS, Blacklists and Vigilantes

I wasn't going to post about this, but I've changed my mind. It's really got me worked up. A non-centralized entity called SPEWS (www.spews.org) has created a list of spammers. These lists can be used my email admins all over the world. If an ISP or company employs this list then you're e-mail will be bounced back to you with a note to go here (http://www.spews.org/bounce.html).

Here you find out that you're email is blocked and will remain so until your ISP (or your ISPs ISP) stamps out spammers on their systems. You are basically told your options are:

1. Live with it, there is nothing you can do.
   
2. Call your ISP and tell them to stop supporting spammers.
   
3. Get a new ISP.
   

I don't know about you but to me those options stink!

Why am I making a fuss over this? Because my companies email server is being blocked. We have never sent spam and never will. We sell mid-range software that costs thousands of dollars. Spamming isn't going to get us customers. We don't usually even bother with companies that have less than 50 employees, so why would we want to send your grandma an email?

However someone in an IP block next to ours was spamming. Think of an IP block as a section of town. Our section of town has three streets; 161.58.0.0, 161.58.1.0 and 161.58.2.0. Each street can have 254 houses on it. My companies house is on street 2, house 130. The spammers house was on street 1, house 38. Our neighborhood association (ISP) is Verio, a big host and ISP.

The watchdog group SPEWS noticed that house 1.38 was sending out lots and lots of spam. They contacted Verio and the residents at 1.38. The residents replied:
“i dont care about being blocked. nor will i try to get off the block list. i just think its funny how upset people get from getting mail. i told the person who sent the mail out that there were certain rules they had to follow such as a link for the recipient to remove themselves from the mailing and a return email address. they followed the rules. but in any event people are taking this Spam mail wayyyyy tooo serious, there is a delete button on your keyboard. its the same as watching t.v., when a commercial comes on use your remote if you do not want to watch it. are you going to black list the t.v. station?? LOL.. or when you get junk mail from usps, you do have the option of putting it in the trash can. good luck with your anti spamming efforts :)”

I won't speak for Verio but apparently they didn't feel the need to drop 1.38 as a customer.

So SPEWS chose to block the WHOLE neighborhood. 'Your neighborhood sucks. Get a new one or complain until the spammers move out.'

Do you see the problem yet?

SPEWS makes this list. Some hosts choose to use this list to block spam and unfortunately innocent companies as well. But who now has to do all the work? Oh the list maintainers have to constantly add more and more bad guys to their list (until the whole Internet is blacklisted) but all they have to do is wait until the spam comes in, run a few network checks and add them to the list.

The innocent by-standards on the other hand have to figure out how to get around the problem, spending valuable time and resources investigating the problem and searching out a solution with their ISP. Now if they choose to go to another ISP they are then burdened with the task of moving all their services to a new host and HOPE they don't get blocked again with this ISP. The time spent researching ISPs, prices, relocating data and servers could potentially sky-rocket for larger companies and be a dangerous load on resources for a smaller company.

Now assuming that all that goes well, what about legitimate communications lost and the possibility of lost sales (non-spam email communications)? I've seen it suggested that you bill your old “spam friendly” ISP for all these costs. Yea, that's gonna happen.

On the flip-side the argument is that all this spam is eating up tons and tons of bandwidth. And there are potential liability issues for companies when their employees are receiving XXX porn spam, with embedded images, so the recipient gets to see the full glory of the spammers wares, even when web filtering software, like NetNanny is being used.

I don't disagree with those arguments. However lets look at a couple interesting things. The big ISPs that are accused of allowing all this spam are also the major providers of Internet access and hosting, companies like; XO Communications, Verio, and Uunet. So blocking these guys is like blocking out entire cities. SPEWS does seem to at least pay attention a little bit and doesn't stop ALL traffic from Verio or XO, but smaller 'neighborhoods'. But if you have the misfortune of moving in next door to one of those spammers, you're S.O.L.

Also, if these big ISPs are providing access to so many. Having HUGE data pipes through out the world, don't you think they'd be the first ones cracking down on bandwidth abuse? But lets say that the spammer is sending out a 250K message. That's a pretty reasonable guess based on the spam I see. Let's just say they send out 2000 messages a day. While this is a small amount for a serious spammer, some other companies that are being listed as spammers probably get listed for less. That's 50 MB's per day. I have users on my network at work who surf the net more than that. The bandwidth usage is insignificant by the ISPs point of view.

Now from a customers point of view, perhaps a email admin using SPEWS, the inflow of spam is too high. Perhaps they pay for their Internet access by megabyte, though I don't think that happens as much these days in the business world. Perhaps their company has strict content rules and regulations and they want to make sure no porn spam makes it through.

However there are a LOT of very good applications designed to filter spam at the server and at the desktop. Larger companies would obviously do the filtering at the server. Yes it uses server resources. Yes they can fail and block legitimate email. Yes they can fail and let spam in. But this scenario allows for the recipient and the bounced email sender to communicate and say, 'hey, what's the deal?' (Which is what I'll be doing.) It also allows the recipient to perhaps see that the email may in fact be legitimate. That's why personal spam filters don't just delete spam. They move it so you can make sure nothing legitimate is lost.

SPEWS doesn't suggest contacting the ISP who blocked you but tells you instead to yell at your ISP. The list and the people who use it don't care if your email is lost. All they care about is stopping spam at all costs, even if that means innocent companies and individuals have to suffer for it.

These are the old west vigilantes who made their own “laws” and damned anyone who chose to disagree with them. I expect to be flamed for speaking out against SPEWS, but that's fine. They go to far. They are no better than the spammers themselves. They both hide in the shroud of Internet anonymity.

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To respond to some of the questions that were posed to me regarding this issue:

You say you are angry and frustrated at not being able to contact SPEWS. If you COULD contact them, what would you say? What difference could it
possibly make? SPEWS will not de-list you if you ask, plead, pay, or threaten.

My problem is the fact that even if I COULD talk directly to the individuals behind SPEWS is that they will not 'white list' legitimate companies. They spend plenty of time researching and tracking down spammers, certainly they have the skill and insight to go look at our company's website and see that we have nothing to do with the spamming that was going on around us. They are holding innocent companies accountable for 'crimes' they didn't commit. That's not right. And no I will not accept that they are holding the ISP accountable. The ISP isn't suffering, its customers are. Because an anonymous organization states that they are doing wrong.

How dare you come here and say SPEWS is irresponsible while you give your money to a provider that has allowed this crap to go on for well over a year? You should be ashamed of yourself for using the title Sys Admin and not knowing how screwed up your ISP really is.

Hey I never said Verio wasn't responsible for it's spam issues. However those issues did not effect our company until SPEWS “black listed” 3 class C subnets. So pardon me if I see the problem being with SPEWS. As for shame in my title, well I never said I was a Sys Admin. I'm a Systems Engineer. I make things work. I have to work within certain financial limits. For the little we pay per year for what has been very good service from Verio I have little incentive to try to explain to the President of our company that we should change web/email hosts because an anti-spam vigilante group says that it's the “right” thing to do. And I have many other more important things to do within my company rather than sit and chase down spammers all day long. I wish I was afforded that luxury.

I wrote: “If they refuse (to white list our IP address) we can talk to the prospective customer and explain why their ISP will not let them communicate with us."

They responded: “I hope you'll also explain to the prospective customer that it's your supplier that's at fault.”

Actually I won't. I'll tell you why. Our prospect will not care why outside of the fact their ISP is preventing it. These are payroll and human resources people. They aren't tech savvy. Some perhaps are, but in general they aren't. Now trying to explain IP blocks and blacklists and SPEWS and the whole situation would take time out of both of our busy schedules and would not change a single thing. I will not spread your propaganda.

Well until I hear more, that's the story. This was something I was completely in the dark about. I bet most of my blog readers were too.