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No I Can’t Stop Your Spam Revisited
* Spam (R) (capitalized) is a registered trademark of a meat product made by Hormel. Use of the term spam (uncapitalized) in the Internet community comes from a Monty Python sketch and is almost Internet folklore. The term spam is usually pejorative, however this is not in any way intended to describe the Hormel product. This is a follow up on my previous posts No, I can’t stop your spam.
The more I talk computers, the more I hear spam.. client after client.. and this is the primary reason I don’t run any client emails through our servers. They are better served by an ISP or hosting provider with 24/7 support and I don’t have to deal with the security risk associated with qmail. I began receiving some strange notices from one of my servers last week and after a good look at the server, we discovered some issues with security, qmail, and smtp..
so here’s my quick advice and some further reading material.Most spam originates from a small number of outfits, and ever since the Cam Spam act of 2003 gave some bite to laws against unsolicited email, most of these outfits try to conceal their identities by relaying, using small ISP’s etc.. this is what I say, if you maintain a server or an entire network, you should feel obligated to make sure that it is secure for the benefit of everyone. And my advice to anyone who receives spam. Report it here and don’t publish an email address unless absolutely necessary.
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Net Neutrality
Caught this on an episode of The Daily Show with John Stewart.
“The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s, it’s a series of tubes”
Senator Ted Steves (R-Alaska) -
Congressional Lame Duck Session, Net Neutrality, and Why the Internet is Twice as Fast in Much of Asia.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Undeclared on Net Neutrality
Call Sen. Graham now at 864-250-1417
Say: “I urge Senator Graham to protect Net Neutrality, which prevents the largest phone and cable companies from controlling the Internet. I urge the Senator to vote NO on Senator Stevens’ telecommunications bill (H.R. 5252 / S. 2686) unless real Net Neutrality language is added that prohibits network operators from discriminating against content and creating a tiered Internet.”Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Against Net Neutrality
Call Sen. DeMint now at 864 233-5366
On May 16, the Senator made this statement:
“Opposing the heavy hand of regulation that network neutraliy represents is critical if we are to maintain the Internet as an open, evolving, and market-based tool, and to protect children and families from the negative aspects of Internet content that exist today.”The politicians are out spending their 3 billion dollar stash, most of which comes from business and works out to approximately $60 a vote cast, to get back into office. And with broadcasters, publishers and telecommunications companies trying to stave off the effect of internet media publishing, the ipod, IPtv, VOIP, and HD radio, the effect is very similar to John D. Rockefeller buying up the train lines that carried thier oil to monoplize the market. Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and the like are spending 3 million a week lobbying congress. There is no way that AT&T or Bellsouth is going to stand idle while companies like Google and Vonage use their framework to provide voice over phone service and broadband media content when they could be the beneficiaries of these new technologies. Well… the FCC governs the industry and overhauled the Communications Act of 1934 into the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that resulted in a massive corporate takeover of broadcasting and publishing.
So what the ISP (internet service providers) want is a way to control how their networks are used by levying fees for large users of the internet.. ie.. google, ebay, vonage, etc. The AT&T CEO has declared that Google should no longer get a free ride, and should pay AT&T in order to be delivered to AT&T’s customers. Well…. this is a hustle. The telecommunications companies were supposed to be providing fibre optic connections for most of america during the 90’s after congress passed legislation to benefit them in that effort. They stuck the money in their pockets and that is why our copper lines are still the predominate connection to the internet and the Asia pacific network connections are twice as fast. For many years, Internet access across the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) was governed by common carrier regulations. These guidelines required unbundling of communications services and ISP functions. However, on August 5, 2005, the FCC reclassified DSL services as Information Services rather than Telecommunications Services. This sparked a debate over whether or not Internet Service Providers should also be allowed to discriminate between different service providers by offering higher network priority to higher-paying companies and customers, allowing some services to operate faster or more predictably and ultimately become more acceptable to end users. For more info…. -
Image Gallery
These are some images I captured in and around Charleston from the last couple years or so I’m using to test out a WordPress gallery feature:
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How Do You Do That?
It’s a question I get from from people asking how I get websites listed at the top of search engines. It’s not magic. It’s mostly just logic. For the most part, Google, Yahoo, Live.com, Ask.com, Search.com, MSN etc… use an algorithm like the page rank system which is patented by Google.
the paper that started it all… check out the pics! US Patent 6285999 It’s some heavy stuff…. but I’ll try it in thirty words or less.Sergey Brin (Сергей Михайлович Брин) and Larry Page (both 33, founders of google, the 26th and 27th richest people in the world according to Forbes ) created page rank while at school.. ok.. that doesn’t count for my thirty words. Searches are based on Probability Distribution which are alot like the ole bell curve in class.. you assign every number (grade) a probabilty and you use functions for a distribution graph like this beta distribution
In trying to match terms with pages, it gives each page a ranking which is updated everytime the site is crawled. The ranking is determined by a series of algorithms that try to determine link probablilty in the distribution. That’s PR (page ranking) N (number of pages) L (links) d(dampening factor) M(pages that link to the page) (p) (other pages under consideration for ranking) got it? The dampening factor determines that any random internet surfer will eventually stop clicking! If you really want to know more… here you go.. Modified Adjacendy Matrix , Markov Chain , & Eigenvector CentralityThere are ways to spoof the formulas, but the best long term approach is to give straight-foward content as it closely pertains to your site, use xml sitemaps, maintain standards compliant code, update content often, use rss, but most of all don’t over do anything… the mathematics behind the search engines are very democratic and straight-foward content is the easiest way to achieve results… and if this doesn’t work, you can always go giving the guys at google or some other middleman “SEO guru” more money for paid placement. 🙂
I like googleDuel and google analytics for figuring out search habits.
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No. I Can’t Stop Your Spam!
I keep hearing that question over and over from folks I meet with and I always recommend switching email providers as a first option. The AOL address seem to be the worst. I don’t even think some folks know what spam is. They just assume that having an email address means getting unsolicited emails. Sometimes I have to explain to them that it’s actually spam and it’s illegal.
The second question I’m asked is who around town does good web work? As far as I can tell, these local people seem to know what they are doing.
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Looks Like a Fast Boat
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Pele
This is very well written blurb about the earthquake from my buddy Scott Woolum.
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Toon Boom
It’s all about the Toom Boom! It looks like fun animation software I’ll get and learn.
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Daniel Island SC
I’ve managed to get first page search results for Daniel Island Mortgage and Daniel Island for the search “Daniel Island SC”. It certainly doesn’t hurt that I’m back-linking them to this page. I’ve been doing quite a bit of work over there recently and I’ll go ahead and link two new tours over from Charleston Home Tour.
Daniel Island is a planned residential and commercial area situated between the Cooper and Wando Rivers located in the city of Charleston, South Carolina and is the home to Bishop England High School, which relocated from downtown when the island was developed. The island was purchased from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. The island is also home to several Charleston venues such as the Family Circle Magazine Stadium, home for the Family Circle Cup and Blackbaud Stadium, home of the city’s professional soccer team, the Charleston Battery. Many new housing developments and shopping centers have appeared in recent years, and many more are currently under construction or being planned.