Koozie Notes

Helpful Spam Prevention Tips

I enjoyed reading Dru Nelson's article on SPAM Prevention.

On November 19, 2002, I was getting 10-20 TCP connections per second from around 300 different IP networks to my machine at a colocation facility. I checked the source IPs and they were coming from all over the globe. The destination email addresses all conformed to a simple pattern; this indicated that something was performing a simple algorithmic attack. My computer was really sluggish from queuing all of the bounce messages. My qmail queue was over 13,500 messages at that point. In fact, I couldn't even send out email through the machine's localhost interface. The load caused all sorts of timeouts for other systems on the machine.

My worst spam problem was being the recipient of a joe job. I received around 200 bounce messages to one of my email accounts. After doing some searching on Google, I learned this is a very common problem.

I despise spammers.

-Chris

MS Drops Telephone Support on NT4

This morning I read Slashdot's article that Microsoft is dropping support for the aging NT 4.0 Server OS. Neowin and News.com covered this story as well.

I'm still using NT 4.0 Servers in my shop to support 40 users. My servers run great and are stable with SP6a. I'm in no rush to upgrade to Win2K or Win2003 server.

Active Directory does not provide any additional benefit over the NT domain model in a small business setting. Since we do not use MS Exchange for email, I really see no immediate reason to upgrade. I'm quite satisfied with NT's performance.

Any else enjoy their NT Servers? Planning to upgrade to Win2k or Win2003?

-Chris

Tivo Burns DVDs

My wife and I are huge fans of Tivo. We had our Series 2 since Oct '02 and been loving it. We just recently added the home media option to our tivo, which allows us to view our family photos on tv.

Now Pioneer comes along to makes Tivo better. They are coming out with two DVD burners with the Tivo service.

• Schedule and record programs while playing a DVD.


• Play programs from the hard drive while recording from the hard drive onto a DVD.


• Watch a program from the beginning while the recorder simultaneously finishes the recording.


• Transfer content at high speeds from the hard drive to a DVD for long-term storage.

Now I just need to scrape together $1200 for the pricey 80 hour machine.

-Chris

Update: 1 DEC 2003

The link above is dead, so try this one for the DVD burner.

RMS on SCO

RMS speaks on the SCO vs IBM debate.

I love the last line, Our community cannot be defeated by this.

-Chris

Reporting Security Breaches

Starting in July, the state of California will require businesses to notify customers of any security breaches. Ouch, this is going to hurt.

The law states the breach data must contain last name and first initial or last name and first name in combination with one of the three items listed below:

1. SSN
2. California Driver License of ID card number
3. Credit Card number and associated pass codes

I still remember the case involving a college student who pulled valid SSNs off the University of Texas web site. He captured valid SSNs by trying every possible SSN combination (brute force).

-Chris

Potter Crashing

John Kelso, a columnist and funny guy, crashes a Harry Potter Party at a local bookstore.

I spent most of my Saturday waiting for FedEx to deliver my Harry Potter book. Guess what? It never arrived. I did see about 250 copies at Sams on Sunday, which completely pissed me off. Hopefully I will get my copy today.

-Chris

[Update 24 June 2003]

When I got home from work on Monday, the book was delivered. The really strange thing about this delivery was how FedEx updated the tracking on their web site. All day Saturday, the web site said the package was in Austin. When I checked Monday morning, the site had two additional tracking items. The first was "on truck" followed by delivered to "porch." What really gets my goat is that these two entries were listed that they occured on Saturday. What a joke.

Tivo Picts

My wife purchased Tivo's home media option for me for Father's Day. The setup has to be the easiest thing I have ever done. No error messages, no config problems, it just worked.

1. Plug in the USB network adapter into the the back of Tivo.
2. Plug the other end of the Cat5 cable into my router.
3. Install Tivo's desktop software. (Shares mp3s and photos on pc)

Very well done, Tivo.

-Chris

C Compiler for Windows

During lunch, a friend of mine asked if I knew of any C compilers for windows. I thought the GNU C compiler might be an option.

I did some searching on google and found this site of free software(GPL) for windows. It looks like they have a ton of Windows software to try out. FileZilla, my favorite ftp client, was listed along with games, word processors and image editing software.

I also found the OpenCD site that has a smaller collection of Win32 software to try.

-Chris

Network Potholes

These stories remind me of those CDW commericals about Fred, the IT guy.

"Fred, I deleted my files!"
"Fred, Make sure I have the fastest computer in the office, *wink*."

-Chris

Praise Knoppix

While browsing various web sites today, I came across another success story about Knoppix.

I first heard about Knoppix from my LUG's mailing list. A member was boasting on the merits of Knoppix as a Linux Demo tool for windows users. I came to find out later, the *really* slick use of Knoppix is rescue CD. You can pop it into the cd tray of a computer, and boot up Linux. It really does a remarkable job of detecting hardware.

My Own Success Story

You have been there. The win95 computer won't boot. It just sits there displaying the Windows 95 boot screen. Arghhhh!

So I tried booting up my copy of Knoppix. I placed the CD in the computer and booted it up. I had to change the bios to boot from CD first instead of the hard drive.

After a long wait (old 200 MHz AMD K-6 computer) the Knoppix GUI came up with a default KDE desktop. I check to make sure the network was working and then I selected the option "Start SSH Server." I jumped onto my workstation and connected via ssh. I ran some pscp copy commands and I had successfully transferred data off the non-booting machine.

What are you waiting for? Get the iso.

-Chris