While funny, it misses the bigger picture of the OpenBSD stack/code being hidden in other devices, especially vpn/firewall appliances.

Extra points for his profile photo being a cross-eyed 3d photo!

Knowing how Messagelabs works myself, just to refine it, it probably went something like this.

Emailserver1 is setup to relay outbound through Messagelabs all of the email.
Emailserver1 is compromised and used as a mail relay itself
Messagelabs receives spam generated by Emailserver1 and because all outbound email is filtered, they recognize it after a few hundred pieces of mail and begin to throttle/stop connections from the server
A few pieces of the hundred are delivered to destination recipients
SORBS places the entire Messagelabs /24 on their lame block list in response and because they suck as a service take forever to remediate bad blocks

The answer to all this is Messagelabs IP ranges should never end up on SORBS' list because of what they are, an output pool for tens of thousands of people which is maintained by a company with a repuation. The fact SORBS feels it within their power to blacklist Messagelabs IP ranges shows how much power they feel that they have, power derived merely from the fact that some people use them.

This should prove to people who use SORBS why not to use them. It's SORBS fault, not Messagelabs. The whole idea of a list like SORBS is to be a well maintained list of "bad ip's". If they add Messagelabs' /24's to their list, this proves it is not well maintained. The act of sending a small number of spam emails is inherently unpreventable almost by definition, and ML has the infrastructure in place to protect against 99.9999% of it.

This is a very poorly written article which seems to cast Symantec's Messagelabs in a bad light when infact it should be SORBS.

SORBS is a horrible black list and no one should use it. They are slow to de-list unless you pay an extortion fee. They probably put Messagelabs on their block list at the slightest provocation. I work with Messagelabs frequently and I have seen first hand how Messagelabs throttles connections from IP's and shuts them off automatically when they detect spam. I think the scope of the "spam" problem was likely limited to a couple hundred pieces, at most, more likely even less.

I question the source of the article and whether the writer received some sort of payment to create it to look so good towards SORBS. Now that Messagelabs is owned by Symantec, they may be considered a "big dog" in the industry and prone to these sorts of negative press articles designed to attack at them. I don't feel that this is legitimate.

Best buy pretty much has to object, because if they allowed the God Squad they'd have to allow the Allahu Akbar Squad..

Lost amidst all of the desire to permanently archive and hold on to every bit of past memory is the idea that we're supposed to forget. It's built into our DNA. I'm not convinced that it is a practical or necessary goal to hold on to and remember every little thing, especially video game heritage.

Some people may choose to make it a hobby, or an obsession, and that's their prerogative, but as a society and as a species there's certain things that once they're lost they're just gone. And future generations will not be robbed of some great cosmic truth when there are no longer any more NES machines capable of playing an NES cartridge. We will keep this memories in our own minds until we ourselves perish, and then the next generation takes over and creates something new themselves. I don't feel there's any sense pining over this eventuality.

What he said, tenuous link at best. slow news day, stupid conclusions, etc etc.

Keep it simple, stupid, as they say. Remove local administrator and the person using the computer will find it impossible to fuck it up no matter how hard they try.

who the hell could possibly know? the bill has more pages than a dictionary. no one really knows what's in it. i doubt even the people voting on it for us know what's in it.

Pretty dumb question. Like a lot of other things, license plates weren't intended to be this easily accessed for their location and traffic habits. I did a lot of work managing municipal data and one of the concerns is that the ease of access of "public" information is causing a major headache.

For instance, lots of public records were public records because in order to get them you had to go to the court house, fill out a request, pay some money and receive them. Removing the barrier to access by opening certain public records up to electronic access is causing a notable and legitimate concern for privacy where none existed before.. The clear reason is because before it used to require a concerted effort and will as a barrier to entry. When things are made easier it removes the barrier which previously existed as a bulwark that satiated existing privacy concerns.

Speed of information should legitimately be a concern in the digital age where our laws and regulations what is publicly available information just don't adapt well to the modern age.

I don't know, I just hope it's kept within reason. A civil judgment against the school district would be like robbing from yourself and other local taxpayers to give money to yourself at the expense of your children's education.

Maybe they have an insurance policy or something but I doubt it.

I am absolutely shocked and appalled at the manner this software was deployed implemented and used. Fortunately the FBI and courts are involved and this matter will be put to rest quickly and justly.

That said, I think it's important that there be a metered and purposeful response to this problem. I fear that the parents of children going to this school district will seek some sort of civil damages for what occurred in this school district. That's probably the worst thing that could happen because where does that money come from? The school district, and that will cause irreparable harm to other programs at the school.

I hope that the parents and other involved parties realize that a civil judgment against the school district awarding significant damages will not help anyone. I think most of the administrative staff at the school should lose their jobs and be replaced, but to see this go to the point where lawyers are making tens of thousands in pursuit of a civil reward is unjust as well. It does the school district and students no good when the goal is to cease the activity and create a better school district.

Leave your poor friends and family alone. Unless they specifically ask for it or there is some tangible benefit to you changing their OS from Microsoft to Linux, you are just being pushy.

There's no money savings because they've already paid for the license and that's about 99% of Linux's value proposition. I can't think of many compelling reasons to go out there and harass people you know with a new OS.

I know it would not work for me because my friends and family rely on the Windows platform for video games and easy access to any software they want. Also, I do not want the trouble that comes with helping to continue to support my friends and family after I ruin their whole PC experience with an operating system that will cause them all kinds of headaches.

Just leave your family alone, let them use their PC's in peace. You don't need to terrorize them with changing OS's and ruining their whole daily routine.

Yeah, I don't disagree, maybe I'm even well aware of that, but if I had admitted that in my original post I'd have no room to indict the continued problems. I think they should aspire to be better even if Slashdot is everything you say it is.

Dear Slashdot,

I've been around for a while. Enough to understand, nay, love the fact that you are linux supporters and all that. But I remain an ardent supporter of truth and speaking in ways which are concise and leads the reader in the direction of truth. Nothing in this news story is inaccurate, but to make it a point to say that Windows XP is incompatible with no mention of Vista and 7 being perfectly compatible should be an embarrassment of journalistic integrity.

Windows XP may not work with the new WD Green drives, but Vista and on have been perfectly comfortable with 4096 byte sectors. A lay reader may read this story and not "Read between the lines" as I have learned to do here. Their take away may be that Microsoft operating systems are broken in some way (which they are in a lot of ways), but not this one!