Use "greylisting" to help eliminate spam

This article outlines another potential tool to stop spam.

http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/whitepaper.html

This method claims to help your existing spam filter strategies to identify and eliminate 95% of spam from the most obvious spam filters.

The way this works is a combination of blacklisting and whitelisting, hence the name, greylisting.

When a message comes in to an email server with greylisting, the message is analyzed for the following three pieces of information:
- incoming IP address
- advertised sender email address
- intended destination email address

These three pieces of information uniquely identifies the message to the greylisting method. If this identifier has not been seen before, the email server simply sends an RFC 821 message back to the sending server that basically states, "sorry, the message wasn't received correctly, please retry sending after a short wait."

Since email is not designed to be 100% reliable, email servers are supposed to accept this sort of reply and shortly attempt to resend an email message when the "sorry" reply is received.

So if the sending email server sends the message again, with the same identifier, the greylisting email server will add the identifier to it's internal whitelist. If the message is never resent, the greylisting server can assume the sender was a "fire-and-ignore" spam source.

This strategy is great for eliminating spam in a number of ways.
- identified servers that don't respond can be blacklisted
- identified servers that DO respond can be processed by existing DNS-blacklist services

There is an added cost of the traffic necessary on the greylisting receiver's server, as well as the extra traffic to confirm messages to and from valid senders, but this does add to the processing cost for spammers as well. Hopefully the added cost to the spammer, if they bother to respond to greylisting at all, makes spamming unprofitable to them.

In the meantime, this is yet another way to try to identify and eliminate spam email (from the most oblivious spam sources) before it reaches your inbox.

D&D, the pathway to hell!

Someone was quoting a few lines from this great Dead Alewives skit, and I had to go find the video again.

I loved the intro and 8-bit goodness of this version. Here's the link for your enjoyment.

via YouTube, 8-bit D&D video

Windows Vista is out

Today Microsoft Windows Vista went on sale. With all of their promises of improved security, I'm sure it will only be a matter of time until someone proves them wrong. Again.

I do have to say, I was impressed when Windows XP was released -- compared to Windows 98, even Windows 2000, it seemed a lot more stable of an OS. It takes a lot to invoke that infamous blue screen of death, but it is still possible.

If anyone has had experienced the new wonder child of Microsoft, feel free to leave comments here, or email me and I will post it here.

Keeping safer passwords

Bruce Schneier from Wired.com writes this article on how to pick a safer password -- and why some passwords are not as secure as you might think.

How to hook up a laptop to digital speakers

If you have been keeping up with my blog, you know that I have had my Alienware Area 51-M laptop for a while now, since my desktop computer went the way of the buffalo. 

The problem is this: how to connect the 1/8" mini-jack SPDIF output on my Alienware 51-M laptop to the 9-pin mini-DIN input on my Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 speakers?

The thing that really aggravated me over this particular problem is that I knew there should be a way to connect the two, but the solution wasn't the easiest to track down.

On the side of my laptop there is only one output jack, but the label says "headphones / SPDIF" on what looks like your typical 1/8" jack. now, the SPDIF part tells me that there is digital output capabilities.

Another factor in prolonging the situation is that for a laptop, my Alienware 51-M has decent enough sound output. The two speakers directly under the screen, and another pair on the front edge of the base do a decent job of 4-point positional surround. But they are only laptop speakers, so volume and bass are not exactly sufficient if I want to turn up some tunes to enjoy from the other side of the room.

My speakers from my old desktop system are another matter. My Sound Blaster Live! card in my desktop was connected to Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 4.1 surround speakers, meaning two front satellites, two rear satellites and a subwoofer performed amazing feats. Of course, my speakers have a 9-pin SPDIF connector, more commonly called Digital DIN or mini-DIN.

I spent 3 hours last night trying to find a bridge between the two. A cable, even a converter box of some kind that would take the output from one, and interface the input of the other. This was so aggravating to stike out again and again. The closest I got was a forum post that referenced an old offer from Creative Labs that would send the necessary cable to customers who bought newer sound cards that no longer had the 9-pin SPDIF output. And the link in the forum post was broken.

So what did I do? I went to the resident AV god at work, Jimmy. And he found The Solution. On Creative Labs website, he found the 1/8 inch to Mini Din and RCA Adapter.

So I ordered the thing. 

We'll see what happens when it gets here.

If it doesn't work, I may be selling both the laptop and speakers on E-bay out of complete frustration. Hah.

The free trade economy of music

Jason Silverman of Wired.com interviews Michael Nesmith with the opener, "You remember Michael Nesmith. He's the Monkee in the wool cap."

You'd think this would be a psychedelic trip down the road of TV fame to tragedy and the slow road of rehabilitation and recovery that so many other pop stars experienced, but Nesmith's life has been anything but stereotypical.

Nesmith invented music videos. He was the brain power that started MTV. Have your attention now?

Now he's back to writing new music, and is releasing an album soon that he plans to push to the public through filesharing services first, rather than second to the big recording industry avenues.

Silverman asks Nesmith a series of enlightening questions about the history of the music industry, and where trends such as the file sharing revolution is taking the market for music, both for the music industry and for consumers.

I was particularly impressed with the insight Nesmith offers in his prediction of the forced retirement of the recording industry as-is, "Well, its all to the good, I think... It's a new personal freedom, new individualism." He continues, "Has anybody ever put together a word that means producer and consumer at the same time? That's what's going to happen. We'll be both. We'll have the means of production and consumption under our own control. I can't imagine that being anything but good."

Read the wired.com interview in it's entirety here.

Dell buys Alienware

A friend sent me this:
It's Official: Dell Beams Up Alienware

I love my Alienware laptop. I love it. It's one of the most beautiful PC's I've ever had. Some of the best hardware available, their tech support actually speaks english, and gets me a response quickly. And I only had to call them twice since I have bought my lt a little under a year ago.

I used to really like Dell as they used to have a good reputation for the same thing: hardware that works, intelligent, useful support. In general I think they are probably the best of the mainstream comercial brands, but I don't think I will buy another Dell in the near future. Their tech support has become a masochists outsourced dream.

Leave it to say, I really, really, really hope Dell doesn't screw Alienware over.