Category: Tech

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I’m sure you’ve seen spam that includes random bits of text, maybe out of novels or legal documents or lists of sayings. They do this to confuse filters that learn based on messages people classify as spam or non-spam. The idea is that if there’s enough garbage mixed in with the spam, these filters will see non-spam patterns in the spam — or just miss the spam patterns in all the noise — and be less effective.

Well, one just came across my desk that started with this highly appropriate phrase:

Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.

This was followed by sensationalist “best product” and “unbeatable” deals. (You know, the $50 copy of Windows XP that they’ll probably claim fell off a truck or something.)

In other words, the kind of post that just needs more salt.

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This one was sent to ftp@(a domain name we host):

Your Loan/Mortgage Application has been processed and
we can finance you at a low 3% rate.

Funny, I don’t remember “applies for refinancing” on our FTP server’s list of capabilities!

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I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many misspellings of “college” in one email! Excerpts:

Real Cllgeoe Girls

Neeswt Tnocoelhgy for Gteting Off!

Find out what these cleolge girls REALLY learend at shocol….

And my favorite bit, the label for the unsubscribe link:

Hold Off This Rubbish

All the obfuscation did nothing to disguise the spam – it still got labeled – but it does make for some entertaining reading!

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Yahoo has finally released its specification for its DomainKeys email authentication scheme. Included is the following patent license (emphasis added):

Yahoo! will grant a royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive license under any Yahoo! patent claims that are essential to implement or use any Implementations so that licensees can make, use, sell, offer for sale, import, or yodel Implementations; provided that the licensee agrees not to assert against Yahoo!, or any other Yahoo! licensees of Implementations, any patent claims of licensee that are essential to implement or use any Implementations.

Yodel?

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I was about to post this over at my LiveJournal, when I discovered my journal was offline due to a massive server outage. Nice timing, as you’ll see:

Well, the phone’s acting up again. Oddly enough, DSL is working most of the time, even though we can’t get a dial tone. An SBC tech is scheduled to come out tomorrow afternoon, but the guy I spoke with had some suggestions for self-troubleshooting (since if it turns out to be a problem with our equipment, we get charged.

So now that we’ve moved the full-height bookshelf out of the way of the phone jack, I’m about to disconnect the last phone line and see what I can find out. Whee.

On the other hand, now that the shelf is out of the way, I can try rearranging cables to see if it gives us the full DSL speed. We’re supposed to get about 600K, but only ever get half of that, and I suspect it’s the ancient 20-foot phone cable. If I move the modem closer to the jack and use a short phone cord and a long network cable, it might speed things up.

Mood: Resigned.

Update 9:32 PM

Well, that was a colossal waste of time and effort. After disconnecting everything, rearranging the DSL/network structure while I waited, then hooking phones back up one at a time, it seemed everything was working. Same old DSL speed, but at least we had a dial tone on each phone. So I canceled the call forwarding, and called SBC to cancel the dispatch. Then it occurred to me I’d better try to make an incoming call. Half a ring, and suddenly there’s static (and nothing else) on both lines.

So it’s disconnect everything again, wait 5+ minutes again, and this time… nothing. Static, and only static. At least the DSL came back up. That would have really ticked me off. And another call into SBC to reinstate the tech dispatch. Fun, fun, fun! (Grumble.)

Anyway, we’re back to square one. I can only hope anyone who needs to call us before tomorrow afternoon tries one of our cell phones instead.

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