Inexile2002 - Slashdot User

SORBS - Is There a Better Spam Blacklist? 226

Posted by Cliff on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:50AM from the blacklists-in-general-are-like-this dept.

rootnl asks: "Recently I decided to upgrade my email server with better spam detection and decided to use the SORBS blacklist. It is a very aggressive blacklist and could be deemed quite effective. However, I discovered two totally legal servers currently being blocked by their Spam 'o Matic service: a Google Gmail server (64.233.182.185), and another server belonging to an ISP called Orange (193.252.22.249). Now, normally one would think these providers would probably get themselves de-listed, but the process provided revolves around donating money. As I just happen to have a friend that is using the said ISP, I have to seriously reconsider using SORBS. What is your experience with SORBS? If you have alternatives, what would you suggest as a better blacklist service?"

Submission + - Adobe Tracking You Through PDFs?

Submitted by

Owlbino

on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:48AM

Owlbino writes: "Adobe's relatively new product, Document Center, offers a number of interesting features related to the distribution and usage rights management associate with PDFs. Among these are a few that I find disturbing in a Big Brother, over-your-shoulder kind of way, and I hope a few readers will turn a critical eye towards these innovations with me. Extending their 'Document Protection' functionality, which gives a degree of control over what is done with PDFs after release and distribution, Adobe now offers "Active Control" and even "Document Tracking." Active control allows one to "change any aspect of the protection you apply to the document at any time, even after distribution." And Document tracking, or Document Audit, "allows you to know exactly what actions have been taken, by which individuals, with specific time and date stamps. Document Center even allows one to set "time limit access" on documents, with these permissions manageable on every level through groups and down the specific end-users. These features seem particularly prone to misuse, especially the ability to monitor the exact nature of one's use of a given document. I hope Adobe provides adequate protections for the end-user, making sure that we're warned about what information we're giving up by reading these advanced PDFs as many of these features would probably come as surprises to users. Of course, this sort of tracking is already a part of web-browsing, but I think most people assume reading PDFs on one's own computer, particularly with their interactive analogue to paper, is a passive, one way, private sort of interaction. As always, keep an eye out. http://www.adobe.com/products/onlineservices/docum entcenter/"

Premiere Back on Mac 161

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:48AM from the back-in-the-saddle dept.

woof69 writes "After dropping OS X support for Premiere some time in 2003, Adobe is bringing it back in the new Adobe Production Studio. The new software includes After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Encore DVD, and Soundbooth, and will be available for Apple's Intel-based computers in mid-2007; an updated version of the Windows suite will ship at the same time. Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?"

Submission + - 1TB hard drives are here

Submitted by

SparkyTWP

on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:44AM

SparkyTWP writes: "After much anticipation, Hitachi has announced a new hard drive with 1 terrabyte capacity. They are SATA/PATA 7200RPM, should retail for about $400 and will be available this quarter."

Submission + - The First Presidential Blogger

Submitted by

JoPapaEd

on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:38AM

JoPapaEd writes: "World leaders are in the business of communication and can be savvy users of technology too. Did Roosevelt's Fireside Chats legitimize radio? Did the Kennedy/Nixon debates legitimize television? Does it take a president to legitimize blogging and make it mainstream?"

Submission + - Linux GPS Device for Divers

Submitted by James Myrie-Williams on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:30AM

James Myrie-Williams writes: LinuxDevices.com today are reporting that a robust handheld manufacturer are making a specialist version of their device for deep underwater use. The product seems to be targeted at scuba divers and the many people who enjoy snorkling etc. with a view to guiding them to, and around, the many amazing underwater sites in the world. Their technical researchers have been demoing it on a wreck off the south west coast of the UK. It uses GPS to help you navigate around the wreck, whilst triggering various media and information that relates to the site — all whilst your 35 meters underwater. It got me wonder whether there were actually any Divers out there who would be interested in using such a specialist device, and whether the explosion of specialist gadgets like this one has once and for all proved that the convergence theory is codswallop?

Submission + - Apple releases Dashcode Beta

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05, 2007 @03:13AM

An anonymous reader writes: A Dashcode beta has been released since 20 december 2006 or so, but just noticed it myself today on Apple's Developer Site. It's a tool for creating Mac OS X (Dashboard) widgets. It should contain a function to create a widget by just selecting a part of a page you want to use, didn't check it out myself yet though ... http://developer.apple.com/tools/dashcode/

Submission + - Dog Eat Dog Media

Submitted by

Coward Media

on Friday January 05, 2007 @01:21AM

Coward Media writes: "Some critics of the mainstream say it is too liberal, while others say it is too conservative. This is a somewhat simplified view. A more accurate description of the debate is between the attack dog camp, lapdog camp, and watchdog camp. The attack dog camp asserts that the media is overly aggressive and apprehensive toward U.S. policy, or "if it leads, it bleeds." The lapdog camp argues, however, that the media is overly supportive of governmental policy and the U.S., and will therefore run stories of U.S. success when there U.S. succeeds, and not run stories of setbacks when the U.S. suffers a setback. Usually, the lapdog will run "fluff" or human interest stories in troubled times. In the middle of all this, is the watchdog camp, which believes that the news media is looking out for the national interest of the U.S. and therefore will run stories that Americans need to know if they need to know it (i.e. Watergate)."

Submission + - Company sues Apple, Google, and Napster

Submitted by catwood on Friday January 05, 2007 @01:10AM

catwood writes: Intertainer, a company already out of business, is back sueing companies such as Apple, Google, and Napster for infringing on a patent which they hold. The company's history includes failed lawsuits in the past blaming the movie industry, so it will be interesting to see how far they actually get with this one. See http://techdirt.com/articles/20070102/233703.shtml

Submission + - Credit Card Fraud at Retailers

Submitted by Anonymously Mad on Friday January 05, 2007 @01:07AM

Anonymously Mad writes: My fiance's debit card was stolen from her car and used at a EBgames where an employee bypassed whatever is needed to avoid putting in a PIN (which is not written on anything *DUH*). They attempted to use a credit card first for the purchase, but the fraud protection kicked in at the $700 charge (She has never purchased a Video Game in her life, I do the buying). When I spoke to the Manager, he said "The guy had ID", stating he remembered the transaction; my fiance is most indeed female and looks like one (long hair, lipstick and all). The manager is either in on it, doing generic lying to cover up an employee who did it, or lying to cover a stupid mistake. EBgames/Gamestop corporate's response is that they will cooperate with any investigation police bring to them, whenever that will be seeing as how it was $700 across county lines in a large city with other crime problems. The issue is: The employee was a willing participant in credit card fraud. People make, I would guess thousands of dollars of purchases with EBgames/Gamestop daily using credit cards and now at least on person at a location to whom you would hand your card is committing fraud with cards like that. The question is: Should the brick and mortar locations be held to the same expectation of fraud protection as their cyberspace counterparts? Clearly, there is a physical hole in the security policy as corporate has no oversight for employee malfeasance.

Dark Corners of the OpenXML Standard 250

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday January 05, 2007 @12:54AM from the dared-to-comply dept.

Standard Disclaimer writes "Most here on Slashdot know that Microsoft released its OpenXML specification to counter ODF and to help preserve its market position, but most people probably aren't aware of all the interesting legacy code the OpenXML specification has brought to light. This article by Rob Weir details many of the crazy legacy features in the dark corners of OpenXML. As it concludes after analyzing specification requirements like suppressTopSpacingWP, 'so not only must an interoperable OOXML implementation first acquire and reverse-engineer a 14-year old version of Microsoft Word, it must also do the same thing with a 16-year old version of WordPerfect.'"

Submission + - Sniffing traffic on Ethernet Undetected

Submitted by

produke

on Thursday January 04, 2007 @11:54PM

produke writes: "Sniffing On Ethernet Undetected

Very cool article with an innovative technique to capture packets (sniffing) off of a communication wire (in this case ethernet) using a packet capturing program like ethereal. The technique described is supposedly undetectable but nevertheless makes for a very entertaining read."

Submission + - How ExxonMobil Funded Global Warming Skeptics

Submitted by

Erik Moeller

on Thursday January 04, 2007 @11:00PM

Erik Moeller writes: "According to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, oil company ExxonMobil 'has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.' The report compares the tactics employed by the oil giant to those used by the tobacco industry in previous decades, and identifies key individuals who have worked on both campaigns. Would a "global warming controversy" exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?"

Submission + - Should I continue my education?

Submitted by Jerim on Thursday January 04, 2007 @10:18PM

Jerim writes: I just finished my AS in Computer Science and am rolling it over into a BS in Computer Science. The problem is that I am 28 years old. I didn't really decide until I was 26 years old that I wanted to make IT my career. I have been moderately learning new technologies here and there over the years. However, at pretty much every level of the industry, I run into people who seem to know everything. Now, I like to think that they are just bluffing, or it is all in my head. No one can know everything. Lately, though, I have begun to think "What if they do?" What if that weird guy down the hall really does know everything there is to know about MySQL, PHP, Oracle, Java, and a dozen technologies I am only familiar with.

I feel that I can continue on in my studies and get a BS degree, but I am concerned that no matter how much I love the topic and no matter how hard I work at it, I will always be too far behind people to ever catch up. That I will have a BS degree and still be doing all the entry level stuff, with some "know it all" always looking over my shoulder to make sure I don't screw up. Is there any room in the industry for someone who doesn't know everything or has tons of experience, other than entry level positions? Since I won't get my BS degree until after my 31st birthday, is it worth it? Or is that just too late to be of any use in the industry?

Submission + - wunderground on this year's winter weather

Submitted by kpw10 on Thursday January 04, 2007 @10:11PM

kpw10 writes: The always interesting Jeff Masters from Wunderground posted a great summary on this year's rather peculiar winter weather. From the post, "The lack of snow across the entire Northern Hemisphere has been remarkable both in its areal coverage and depth, thanks to December temperatures 5-20 degrees F above normal. In the U.S., most of the eastern 2/3 of the country was snow free on Christmas. Granted, Colorado had a white Christmas and the mountains of Washington got slammed with snow this year, but places like northern Maine and Michigan's Upper Peninsula — which normally have over two feet of snow on the ground this time of year — were snow-free. Munising, Michigan had it's first brown Christmas since 1911, and Minneapolis, Minnesota — which normally receives over 18 inches of snow by this time of year — has had a paltry one inch of snow so far this winter." He goes on to report similar conditions for the rest of the northern hemisphere and discusses the implications of the recent/drastic changes in arctic ice coverage. For a counter-perspective Fox News provides us with an enlightened man-on-the-street explanation, "The Earth is recalibrating itself: Last year, we had a cold winter, and it's balancing itself out now".

Slashdot Top Deals