ICANN is levying a new TAX onto domain holders. Their last attempt at a one dollar per domain tax failed a few years ago. They are now pushing for a .75 US per .net domain tax. The idea is that by going straight for the individual domain "owners" they will have less of a chance of them uniting like the Registrars did to beat their last attempt.

2004-12-16 16:57:21 ICANN domain tax .75US per .net domain (Your Rights Online,The Internet) (pending)

2004-12-16 16:57:21 ICANN domain tax .75US per .net domain (Your Rights Online,The Internet)(rejected)

This will be submitted to ask slashdot

Today I have been assaulted by spam.
It turns out that my email address is being used by spammers both as a destination AND as a forged from line.

To compound the problem, well meaning postmasters have set up their mail systems to bounce back to the "sender" mail that can not be delivered.

This includes email marked as SPAM for whatever reason.

The problem that I have with this is that I did not send these messages. Looking at the headers it is clear that the listed address is not from the same domain as the actual system that the email came from.

I see no way to stop this onslaught.

I have even taken the outlandish step of .forward-ing all incoming messages to /dev/null

Any better Suggestions?

this spam fest started coming in at 1 per minute.
I am now, 3 hours later, running at 4 per minute.

Is agism legal in other countries?
While doing my daily jobsearch I came across this opening in Italy
 
  Young Electrical/Lan Systems Worker in Rome, Italy
25 years old max. Limited contract hire
 
Why 25years old max?

This Article from infoworld purports that IT may never recover and may infact be going away for good in the US. Education programs are not doing their job, and US children are not inspired by techical innovation.. Forget a lack of girls in Tech, they report a serious lack of anyone in tech.

2003-09-21 05:10:11 Intel, Sun say IT in death spiral for US (articles,tech) (rejected)

I have been a fulltime employee for the last 12 years performing all manner of Systems and Networks Administration tasks. As I find my current employer is scaling back from what was once a glorious worldwide presence to a skeleton crew of mainly F&A folks, I have decided to embark on a change of career focus.

Rather than be tied to the whims of a single large player I am searching several small companies in need of proven talent but without the need for a FTE. To this end I am investigating something that has been in common use for lawyers... the retainer.

I would be available to work on projects or tasks set out in a monthly or quarterly basis as well as being available on an as needed basis for troubleshooting and support. Most work would be performed off-site further reducing costs to the client.

This would be considered a part-time contract position renewable in 3-12 month units. The particular needs of each individual client would be taken into account when hourly rates are set.

To ensure that I am able to stay in business providing for the slow times when all is "working well" I would require from my clients a "retainer fee" or commitment for a minimum set number of billable hours monthly. Those hours would usually be spent on specific tasks and projects set out in the employment agreement (maintenance, support, administration, etc.)

What do you do when you have a bunch of USB floppy drives and an iMAC running OS X ? Why you build a Floppy Raid of course!! ... Now if only we could still buy LS-120 drives...

2003-04-05 19:56:23 USB Floppy Disk Drive RAID (articles,apple) (rejected)

While we have all been looking the other way, Microsoft has sold their secrets to Russia. As reported by Reuters in this Yahoo article, Russia will be the first to see some source code for Windows. Please hold off the 'In Soviet Russia' jokes.

"Russia's chief demand was to get access to Microsoft's full code, with no omissions," said Yevgeny Karavayeshnikov, head of the FAPSI state intelligence and surveillance agency, which had authorized the agreement on behalf of the Russian government.

2003-01-20 18:08:17 Microsoft Sells Secrests to Russia (articles,microsoft) (rejected)

Looking for people to work with me on mobile wireless points of presence to be used in automobiles.

These would run off of either vehicle generated power (engine running) or off of their own sealed rechargable battery and re-charged while engine running.

The goal is to turn the congested freeways into informationfreeways.