Spam

Spam Lawsuit Clearinghouses? 24

Posted by Cliff from the siccing-the-sharks-on-'em dept.
cloudscout asks: "Spam is getting worse. Despite complex filtering and DNSBL systems the volume of unsolicited eMail continues to climb. The only promise so far has been an increasing number of laws designed to impede the spammers while others are using existing laws to tackle the problem. So when are we going to see this legal process become a commodity? There are already countless lawyers around the country who will accept a set price to fix traffic tickets, handle divorces and get the IRS off your back. When will we see attorneys who are willing to sue the spammers on your behalf for a reasonable, fixed fee?"
Unix

Finding Decent Unix Server Hosting? 139

Posted by Cliff from the getting-the-service-you-want dept.
joesao asks: "I've hosted my website and a number of others at Communitech for 4 years now and I've enjoyed affordable, quality Unix hosting that has given me no headaches. Recently they have been bought out and the service has completely deteriorated. The online forums are on fire with people pledging to leave, calling in and taping conversations, and so forth. So now I'm searching for a decent Unix host. My requirements aren't too bad: I need PHP, MySQL, the ability to configure my server somewhat (htpasswd, htaccess), raw log files, SSH, FTP, crontab, decent bandwidth (~10 GB), POP accounts, around 300 MB disk space (I host the bulk of my images/videos elsewhere)... and I wouldn't mind paying what I pay for DSL every month (~$50). That excludes buying a T1 for my house. And I don't mind what flavor of Unix/Linux it runs on, as long as it just works (wouldn't mind XServe, either). I'm having trouble finding credible sites with rankings out there so I ask the Slashdot community for help. Any recommendations?"
Businesses

Open Source for Enterprise Management? 22

Posted by Cliff from the free-software-and-big-business dept.
acooks asks: "After a recent talk on Open Source software to a class of MBA students, someone came to me with a huge opportunity to use Open Source to manage business processes. What they want is SAP, but for small to medium sized businesses and at a price that a small business can actually afford. Furthermore, they realised that Open Source isn't going to go away anytime soon and that they might as well try to use it to save costs (If IBM is embracing Linux and SAP & IBM plays nicely, then maybe it's worth finding out more about Linux). The questions that were raised basically boils down to this: Is there Open Source software available to manage a business or some of the business processes? Where do you start looking for something like this? I realised that this isn't something that you can quickly download from SourceForge or Freshmeat, so now I'm asking Slashdot."
Operating Systems

Open Source OS that Uses BIOS for Drive Access? 46

Posted by Cliff from the is-DOS-the-only-one dept.
Int13 asks: "I noticed a question in a review of a book on RAID controllers: 'Why, the author asks, do makers of controller cards put all their BIOS utilities on DOS floppies which require us to find a DOS boot disk?' The reason for this is actually very simple. DOS is one of the few mainstream operating systems that will ALWAYS boot on a PC from any supported boot device, and it doesn't require any special disk drivers at all to accomplish this task or to support any file system that has BIOS support. RAID controllers always supply BIOS support, usually in an extension ROM. This leads directly to the question: Are there any other alternative open source operating systems that will do the same? (no, not Open DOS, since it's just a DOS clone)"
Technology

Open Source and Smart Cards? 14

Posted by Cliff from the giving-plastic-a-few-IQ-points dept.
jortega asks: "I am looking into implementing a photo ID system using smart cards, preferably using open-source and cheap components. We currently have several systems for libraries, meal plans, identification using older ID cards, and more, yet none of these systems integrate with each other. I envision a system where a smart card can accommodate all these things in addition to things like print management, purchasing books at the bookstore, meal plans, and security. I have looked extensively on Google and other sites, and while I can find a lot on information on smart cards, I haven't been able to find much on a cheap open-source system that I can build on to accomplish this. Does the Slashdot community have any advice on what to do and where to go from here."
Mozilla

Mozilla and BitTorrent? 117

Posted by Cliff from the bittorrent-as-a-web-cache dept.
mcrbids asks: "Recently, I submitted this bug report to Mozilla's bugzilla requesting the additional feature that Mozilla should support BitTorrent files natively, so that Moz could support inline image tags with BitTorrent, among other things, so that high-bandwidth sites can survive the dreaded 'Slashdot effect'. However, Torrents (and many other P2P suites) have been used largely for warez and porn. Do you think the potential politics behind this outweigh the benefits of BitTorrent, such as getting a full Linux distro with record download speeds?" Update: 04/29 16:16 GMT by C :One of the links in this article was removed at the request of a site administrator.
Science

LEDs - Do the Benefits Outweigh the Cost? 58

Posted by Cliff from the assessing-the-risks-versus-the-rewards dept.
7x7 asks: "We keep hearing about the latest and greatest thing to come out of LED technology, and every article seems to give an over-view of the topic. How LEDs consume little electricity and last a long time, etc. However the manufacturing process involves super hot ovens and expensive componants. Do the requirements necessary in the manufacture LEDs and LED componants out-weight the requirements for standard bulbs over 10 years? One LED light can last ten years, but contains dozens of LEDs. Has anyone seen or performed an evalutation to see if the trade-off is really anything to speak of?"
Encryption

SSH or IPSec? 43

Posted by Cliff from the choosing-the-right-encryption-technology dept.
shawngiese asks: "I'm looking for some feedback on which is the better way to make VPN connections - using SSHv2 or IPSec. My company apliware.com makes embedded linux firewalls here in Switzerland. Our next firmware will be coming out with SSH added to IPSec but during my tests I have noticed that the throughput of SSH is much faster when using the same ciphers. Is there any opinions on which has the better key exchange and also if the performance is better for SSH everywhere or just on our port/CPU? I assume since they both use the same ciphers that the data is as secure in one or the other. Of course IPSec offers full tunneling and encapsulation of more than just TCP but I can SSH through almost any NAT box and with the gain in throughput and many free clients for road warriors (even my Palm Pilot for terminal access) I wonder if SSH might not be the easier VPN than IPSec."
Security

Securing Your Network? 349

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-to-discuss dept.
Barkmullz asks: "I just recently finished yet another security review on the network at my place of employment. I designed the different security features from scratch and I am using a variety of devices and software (firewalls, IDS, DMZs, and so on). I like to look at network security with the same attitude as I look on the stock market: diversify. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. As I was pondering the review results I wondered what a completely unbiased observer would think of my security. I remember thinking that someone should start a radio show similar to James Cramer's RealMoney and ask the listeners: Are you secure? I am aware of what the NSA considers to be a secure network, but, honestly, who has read that stuff? What do you consider to be a secure network? What low-budget security features have you come up with? I don't think I am the only one spending evenings and weekends playing around with yet another IDS."
Displays

Video Magnification System for Seniors? 35

Posted by Cliff from the reading-the-fine-print dept.
c4tp's friend asks: "Recently my Mother informed me that my grandmother's 80th birthday is approaching. She suffers from glaucoma and it is rather hard to read small text for her. The consensus with our family is to buy her a video magnification device, but the ones I found online were at the minimum of $500 (US), a bit steep for me (and my family). So what I am asking basically, is there a way to build/assemble the parts these retail devices use for a cheaper price?"
Software

An Overview of Recent Software History? 7

Posted by Cliff from the drawing-the-big-picture dept.
RobotWisdom asks: "Has anyone run across (or even heard of) an up-to-date overview of the most-important new subdomains for software applications? Inspired by the popularity of my timeline of Unix/Linux, for the last few months I've been working on a new timeline of AI, simulations, and knowledge-representation in general. Digging around online for links about simulation, for example, I discovered vast areas I was completely unaware of, mostly oriented towards the US military. In another context, I started noticing the TLAs 'SCM' and 'CRM' in relation to business software, and had to trackdown what they were all about. This morning I clicked on a banner ad for 'ModelSim' and discovered the TLAs 'HDL' and 'RTL' for simulating logic-chips. Another recent news item led me to the burgeoning field of medical simulations. But what I'm not getting is any sense of an overview of all these specialized domains, that seem to have emerged in software only in the last 30 years. Are there university classes that deal with this, giving a capsule portrait of each one? Textbooks?? Webpages???"
Hardware

An Affordable Air Purifier For Dusty Computer Labs? 610

Posted by timothy from the home-offices-need-it-too dept.
Alcimedes writes "Our lab has a serious issue with dust. I've had a number of power supplies stop working because of dust clogging up the fans, and it's getting annoying. So I'm looking into some kind of small (under $500) air filtration system, and was wondering if anyone else out there has already gone down this road. If so, what did you buy and would you buy it again? I'd prefer something where I don't have to keep buying filters, but that may just be a pipe dream." Anyone with cats knows the feeling. Can you suggest a reasonably priced answer to dust-borne failure?
News

Spamming Trojan "Proxy Guzu" 251

Posted by CmdrTaco from the brekaing-the-law dept.
A user writes "El Reg has the scoop on a trojan that actually turns your machine into a spam sending proxy. Called "Proxy Guzu", the proxy arrives in your mailbox in the usual "Outlook virus" way (ie disguised as something else so you'll run it.) It then sends an email to a Hotmail email account reporting the IP address of the infected machine and port it's running on. The spammer then merely transmits spam to the infected machine which in turn forwards it on. There's a bright side to all this: Spammers are doing this because they're desperate, with fewer and fewer spam friendly havens. And what they're doing is illegal and opens them up for prosecution."
The Internet

Any Interest in a Regexp-Based Web Search Engine? 51

Posted by Cliff from the more-functionality-than-substrings dept.
K-Man asks: "From time to time, I've seen people comment that they would be interested in searching the web with regular expressions, but I've seen very little research in this area. Over many months (as part of a project I call 'grepple'), I've gradually assembled some background on the idea (also some work-in-progress not noted in the link), and the idea seems to be approaching the realm of technical possibility. However, my expertise is not in marketing, so I have no idea whether anybody would use this capability. So I ask, if you could search the web for any regular pattern, including html, partial words or wildcards, long phrases, or anything you might grep out of an html file, would you do it? What types of searches would you do?"
Hardware

Hardware For Bulk IDE Hard Drive Burn-In? 51

Posted by Cliff from the making-sure-it-works-correctly dept.
r0gue_ asks: "I work for a mid-size OEM hardware manufacturer. We ship approximately 300 to 500 IDE HDs every month across all our units. Currently we experience about a 4% failure rate (Maxtor and WDs), though in recent months it has been a couple percent higher. The problem is our systems are dedicated boxes with a non end-user friendly form factor. Virtually every physical HD failure results in an RMA. What we are looking for is a hardware based IDE HD burn-in platform. Something that we could drop a dozen or so drives in at once, stress test them for a day or two, then put them into inventory for builds. I know the HD manufacturers and larger OEMs use them but I have not been able to track down anywhere we could purchase one. Right now moving to SCSI or a form factor that supports externally removable drives is not an option. I was hoping that the Slashdot community could point me in the right direction."

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