by R.I. Pienaar | Aug 11, 2004 | Front Page
A few of the guys in the office installed SP2 to start testing out and see what problems we will have from users. So far we discovered that where we could mount WebDAV folders on our FreeBSD Apache WebDAV server using the Map Network Drive dialog in explorer this now fails. It does not send the username in the HTTP request at all. Accessing it via File->Open and selecting “Open as Web Folder” using IE still works.
For now the work around we chose is to use Novell Netdrive, it seems like it is a free download and it allows you to mount WebDAV, FTP and Novell iDrive folders on your windows machine. It is much nicer than the mess of doing it through Map Network Drive and having to fiddle usernames etc.
by R.I. Pienaar | Aug 9, 2004 | Front Page
Lots of fanfare today about the release of XP SP2, I think I will install it on one of my machines and see how that goes. I had a bit of hassle getting a proper url for downloading it, so here it is. It’s a 250Mb download so unless you have bandwidth to burn wait for the auto updates version to come available that is apparently highly optimised.
by R.I. Pienaar | Aug 5, 2004 | Front Page
Since last night I saw some domains are acting up, turns out the whole of .web.za is fubar. Got this from them:
“Yes we have moved .web.za off to new nameserver’s and it seems there are some teething issues with regards to some other NS’s picking up the entries, things will probably act up for 24-48 hours and then resolved itself.”
by R.I. Pienaar | Aug 3, 2004 | Front Page
Tonight I saw The Mission in Norwich and as always they were FANTASTIC, I really liked this gig they had a good atmosphere however their set was much shorted than the previous ones I have been to. They were supported by 2 bands, The Faces of Sarah and NFD.
NFD is the reason I took time off work, came to Norwich, paid a hotel and it was absolutely worth every second of it. NFD is better known as Fields of The Nephilim, they have reformed under a new name now. Their new album is due out in October and if tonights set is anything to go by it is going to be fantastic. The music is as powerful as I remember it, was a real step back into almost 10 years listening to them tonight. They finished the set with an absolutely amazing version of Psychonaut and it fit in perfectly with their new music, which should give anyone who know them a good idea of what is to come!
The Faces of Sarah was a very big surprise, they were also very good and you can see they take inspiration from Fields and a few other bands, they were great, together with NFD they really set the bar very high for The Mission.
UPDATE: I have uploaded some photos from the gig here, these were taken with my little Canon iXus.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 29, 2004 | Front Page
I have a unhealthy interest in product recalls. I cannot walk past a sign of them in the shop and I am subscribed to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission‘s RSS feed of new recalls. It’s fascinating to see just what kind of blatant things can slip through quality control in companies, and its always interesting to wonder just how many people complained – or worse – before the company would do a recall.
Some of my favorites:
CPSC, Coaster Co. of America Announce Recall of Bunk Beds
Hazard: A gap between the step of the built-in ladder and the top bunk allows enough room for a child’s body to slip through but will not allow for a child’s head to pass through. This poses a serious strangulation risk. Federal standards for bunk beds are designed to protect children against entrapment and strangulation.
CPSC, First Samco Inc. Announce Recall to Replace Gun Holsters
A plastic or leather strap on the gun holster can catch the trigger of the gun when inserted into the holster causing the gun to unintentionally discharge, posing an injury hazard to the user.
Re-announcement of Recall of Ames True Temper Wheelbarrows
The plastic wheel assemblies on these wheelbarrows can break when the tires are being inflated. This can result in plastic pieces exploding from the rims of the wheels, possibly hitting nearby consumers and causing lacerations and other injuries.
Recall of Georgia Boot Steel Toe Boots
The boots may have been mislabeled to indicate that they are resistant to electrical current, which is incorrect. This may result in a serious shock or electrocution to consumers.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jun 22, 2004 | Front Page
There is an interesting piece detailing motives and method used by a spammer.
Interesting to me is the note about how the spammers pay for mail delivery and to me this is just yet another point proving that rejecting mail at SMTP time is a stupidest idea ever in the fight against spam.
There are many reasons why I believe this to be a bad idea. Most spam thesedays go directly to the secondary MX rather than the primary, this I can prove by looking at my spam checking on my own 2 machines. In the period 7 June 2004 till now my secondary machine handled 10568 emails 6913 were from dynamic blocks and blocks lists in 2 RBL lists – that is about 65% spam. On my primary server I handled 15288 messages in the same period with only 2521 being classified as spam using the same black lists but also running stuff through Spamassassin – that is 16% spam.
For anyone that hosts a secondary relay for a friend or other business this is a killer, typical mail servers reject mail at SMTP time using a 4xx class error and so the mail sits in the secondary mail queue trying over and over to deliver, each time wasting CPU and bandwidth resources. Eventually when it fails – and this happens on a 5xx class error as well – the secondary gets stuck with trying to delvier the bounce message to the source address – always faked – this attempted delivery goes on for a number of days and wastes more CPU and bandwidth resources. A much more friendly approach would be to accept the mail and bin it right away, this will actually save you and your secondaries a lot of resources – and as this quote shows it will actually end up costing the Spammers money if you accept it rather than reject it at SMTP time.
For USD 50 excluding VAT he buys his first 400,000 credits; one credit equals the sending of one spam mail. Because they have a special offer running that month, send-safe.com doubles his credits for free, which enables him to send no less than 800,000 spams for 50 dollars.
After these preparations, the spam can be sent. The program supplied will set up a connection, routing the spammer to an open proxy server and from there to the mail server where the spam is to be sent. If that mail server accepts the connection, the spam mail will be sent and a credit will be deducted from the spammer’s account. If the mail server does not accept the connection because the IP of the open proxy is blacklisted, the e-mail will not be sent and no credit wil be deducted.
In one specific case of stupid mail rejection I calculated that the repeated attempts to deliver the email over a period of 5 days used up 680 Mb of bandwidth between my secondary and the primary, off loading that kind of bandwidth waste onto your secondaries is really not a good idea.
As things stand now I am considering refusing to host a secondary domain for anyone who is rejecting mail at SMTP time, I am simply sick of having to deal with the ever growing problem of bounce messages sitting in my mail queues and never delivering.
