Tag Archive for 'network'

The internet is a scary place!

If you are an IT professional providing customers with Internet connectivity solutions you know that the internet is a scary place. Back in the dark ages (before 1993) when things started out everyone using the internet trusted each other. Unfortunately things changed drastically and trust is a thing of the past on the internet.

When you set up an internet connection for a customer you do everything you can to protect them, you set up a restrictive firewall, you have a proxy that enforces policy for web surfing as far as possible. You also use all possible means to block spam and viruses in e-mail before they reach the lusers that still believe Bill Gates will give them free Nokia cellphones.

After you did all the technical stuff, you tell everyone (you know it falls on deaf ears, but you have to try) that they must not visit those porn sites, that they must copy links in e-mail and paste them into their browser rather than simply clicking on them etc. So what happens when one of the lusers that actually listened goes to a legitimate website and still have his windows computer exploited? Or if they are lucky the lusers get a warning from their anti-virus software and the site gets blocked.
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Will they ever learn?

The big media companies and their cronies are getting more and more desperate to try save their totally outdated business model. Modern computers make it ridiculously easy and cheap to copy and distribute any media. The media companies are however trying very hard to overcharge people for what they can do very easily themselves. Most people know that it is illegal to make unauthorised copies of copyrighted materials, but if the holders of the copyright charge way too much and chances are that you will not get caught people will simply copy the material illegally.
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How to fight Zombies

Anyone that runs a mail server very quickly learns how to fight spam if he wants to do his job properly. It is also one of the favourite pastimes of the clueless to think up stupid ways to fight spam. Today I saw a brilliant answer to one of these ideas on the postfix mail list. more....