From ulf at Alameda.net Wed Jul 9 04:07:59 2003 From: ulf at Alameda.net (Ulf Zimmermann) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 04:07:59 -0700 Subject: Redhat kickstart help needed Message-ID: <20030709040758.C80559@seven.alameda.net> I got a system which requires a newer driver for its GigE port. Neither the latest RH8 and RH9 kernel support this one (Intel 82541). I have been fighting for hte last 16 hours, trying to built an updated kernel for kickstart via pxe. I got the kernel and the module loading, updated the vmlinuz, initrd.img, base2.img. But now when it tries to mount via NFS the install directory or downloads via web the netstg1.img and tries to loopback mount it, it complains. NFS shows <4>nfs warning: mount version older than kernel The F3 screen shows: mntloop loop0 on /mnt/runtime as /mnt/source/RedHat/base/stage2.img fd is -1 LOOP_SET_FD failed: Bad file number Looks to me I need to upgrade something else, but I can't figure for the hell out what. -- Regards, Ulf. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ulf Zimmermann, 1525 Pacific Ave., Alameda, CA-94501, #: 510-865-0204 You can find my resume at: http://seven.Alameda.net/~ulf/resume.html From strata at virtual.net Thu Jul 10 18:45:06 2003 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R Chalup) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 18:45:06 -0700 Subject: (tech-event 7/17) BayLISA Monthly: 7/17/03: Patch Management and More, Chris Binns-Smith Message-ID: <3F0E16A2.2010005@virtual.net> BayLISA Monthly Technical Talk & General Meeting -------- Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many will be attending. This event is open to the general public, you do not need to be a member to attend. -------- Where: Apple Computer, De Anza Bldg 3, "The Piano Bar" conference room Addr: 10500 N. De Anza Blvd, Cupertino, CA http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html -------- Date: Thursday, 17 July 2003 Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm PST Patch Management and a Whole Lot More! Chris Binns-Smith, Pro3Security Patches for vulnerabilities are being released at the rate of one every three days. It is impossible to keep up, but with new regulations such as California's SB 1386, we need to resolve this problem NOW. This presentation will provide you with an overview of patch management methodology, tools and evaluation criteria. In addition to solving this big issue, we will discuss the significant bonuses of these tools: Enhanced System Administration, automated Security Policy enforcement and Inventory management. Bio: Chris Binns-Smith is a founder of Pro3 Security (www.pro3security.com), an Enterprise Risk Management security firm that specializes in delivering proactive security solutions based on industry best practices and their security framework. Pro3 Security's mission is to leave their customers protected and educated so they can focus on running the business rather than defending it. Prior to joining Pro3 Security, Chris served in numerous executive IT positions for Mercury Interactive, Selectica Inc. and Blue Pumpkin. Chris holds a B.S. of Computer Science, a CISSP certification and has extensive experience in IT security technologies. -------- BayLISA meets every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A short period of announcements of general interest to the sysadmin community is presented, followed by a technical talk. Anyone may make an announcement; typical are upcoming presentations, user group meetings, employment offers, etc. For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ Directions and details about the current meeting and future events: http://www.baylisa.org/events/ BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. Tape library is often available at the general meeting, or for more information on available videos, please send email to "video at baylisa.org". If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to volunteer to present a talk at one of our meetings, please email the Board and Working Group at "blw at baylisa.org". Thanks! -------- Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many will be attending. This event is open to the general public, you do not need to be a member to attend. -------- =========================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata at virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ SAGE Level IV Unix Admin specializing in commercial-scale Internet services ================================================================= From star at starshine.org Thu Jul 10 23:53:25 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 23:53:25 -0700 Subject: (tech-event 7/17) BayLISA Monthly: 7/17/03: Patch Management and More, Chris Binns-Smith In-Reply-To: <3F0E16A2.2010005@virtual.net> References: <3F0E16A2.2010005@virtual.net> Message-ID: <20030711065325.GD18725@starshine.org> Oh dear. This blurb's location is deeply confusing. Piano Bar was a one-time site adjustment, it's a smaller room in Building 4 on Infinite Loop. We're not meeting there this month. De Anza Building Three is our normal building, and we are back there, but the room we're in is just an auditorium, no special name for it that I know of. the URL http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html contains correct information and the Addr field below is correct. -* Heather Stern * Arch (secretary) BayLISA Board * http://www.baylisa.org/ *- On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 06:45:06PM -0700, Strata R Chalup wrote: > > BayLISA Monthly Technical Talk & General Meeting > > -------- > Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many > will be attending. This event is open to the general public, you do not > need to be a member to attend. > -------- > Where: Apple Computer, De Anza Bldg 3, "The Piano Bar" conference room > Addr: 10500 N. De Anza Blvd, Cupertino, CA > http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html > -------- > Date: Thursday, 17 July 2003 > Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm PST > > Patch Management and a Whole Lot More! > Chris Binns-Smith, Pro3Security > > Patches for vulnerabilities are being released at the rate of one > every three days. It is impossible to keep up, but with new regulations > such as California's SB 1386, we need to resolve this problem NOW. > > This presentation will provide you with an overview of patch management > methodology, tools and evaluation criteria. In addition to solving this > big issue, we will discuss the significant bonuses of these tools: > Enhanced System Administration, automated Security Policy enforcement > and Inventory management. > > Bio: > Chris Binns-Smith is a founder of Pro3 Security (www.pro3security.com), > an Enterprise Risk Management security firm that specializes in > delivering proactive security solutions based on industry best > practices and their security framework. Pro3 Security's mission is > to leave their customers protected and educated so they can focus on > running the business rather than defending it. > > Prior to joining Pro3 Security, Chris served in numerous executive > IT positions for Mercury Interactive, Selectica Inc. and Blue Pumpkin. > Chris holds a B.S. of Computer Science, a CISSP certification and has > extensive experience in IT security technologies. > > -------- > BayLISA meets every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A short > period of announcements of general interest to the sysadmin community is > presented, followed by a technical talk. Anyone may make an > announcement; typical are upcoming presentations, user group meetings, > employment offers, etc. > > For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: > http://www.baylisa.org/ > > Directions and details about the current meeting and future events: > http://www.baylisa.org/events/ > > BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. Tape > library is often available at the general meeting, or for more > information on > available videos, please send email to "video at baylisa.org". > > If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to volunteer to > present > a talk at one of our meetings, please email the Board and Working Group > at "blw at baylisa.org". Thanks! > -------- > Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many > will be attending. This event is open to the general public, you do not > need to be a member to attend. > -------- > =========================================================================== > Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata at virtual.net > VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ > SAGE Level IV Unix Admin specializing in commercial-scale Internet > services > ================================================================= > > From fscked at pacbell.net Fri Jul 11 10:55:48 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:55:48 -0700 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' Message-ID: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> (The following is an unsolicited social observation.) Has anyone else noticed a loss of competency amongst placement agencies and human resources personnel, recently? I have been encountering some remarkably incompetent behavior recently; I have some theories as to where it's coming from ... and where this is going, as well. What do I mean by incompetent? - People who are unable to find my name and address in the resume because it is in the header rather than the body of the Microsoft Word document, and they cannot see it. (Solution: put your contact information in the header, the footer, and the body of each page.) - People who do not know what a systems administrator does and think that if you know how to type that maybe you can do shorthand and work on their web page for them, too. (This is like a person who assumes that because a stenographer, a medical secretary, and a legal secretary all use typewriters, that their jobs are fundamentally identical.) - People who think version numbers and product names are handed down from On High and are not to be questioned or discussed. (For instance, Solaris 2.8 is now referred to, by Sun salespeople, as "Solaris 8" ... but if you type 'uname -a', it will say "SunOS 5.8". All three are valid names ... but the person you are speaking to might not know that, and definitely isn't inclined to believe you.) - People who think that if you are a UNIX systems administrator that you should also be able to install, design and administer their databases ... maintain and change web content, as well as rewrite the backend code that handles financial transactions ... configure their routers and firewalls ... handle their telephone exchange ... support their desktops as well as all their external customers ... provide first, second and third tier technical support (an oxymoron, there, each of those tiers is supposed to relieve the one before it; without relief and handoff, there are no tiers of support, just tiers of management) ... and have been certified in the latest, greatest release of their operating system, but, no, they don't have money to actually pay someone to go, they want to steal this valuable training from someone else ... but they don't want to say it so bluntly, any more than they want to discuss the fact that you are, by working for them, filling four to six separate positions, for one half to one third of the pay your predecessors received. - Placement companies that keep on publishing the same basic, vague, ad, for month, after month, after month, after month, after month, but never reply to your email or return your calls. I'm not disgruntled; I have no problem with doing good work that doesn't need to be redone. No one has ever accused me of walking away from a customer in need; indeed, it has been my commitment to my customers, rather than my managers, that has usually led to disagreements, as I stood up for my customers, and suffered for it. So it goes. But I am getting a little impatient. Any one of us could do a better job than some of the people I have spoken with; they are Klueless with a capital 'K'. Where do I think this is coming from? It's pretty simple. A lot of high technology companies, over the past decade, saw their management slowly being replaced - technically savvy managers gradually being replaced with politically savvy managers, attracted by the lucrative salaries and perks (what I refer to as "perception managers"), infiltrating the company, from the top down, until there was nothing left but tier after tier of MBA-flavored management, and a thin layer of technical competence carrying the entire burden of delivering the company's products and services. When the bubble collapsed, the first to go, at the OEMs and VARs, were the technical people. The more they made, they faster they were let go; the theory was that they would be there when the market needed them back, that's the way it had always worked before. Soon there was nothing left but a trimmed-down sales, shipping, and administration department; entire engineering organizations were pruned, and the company coasted, carried by its inventories. The same thing happened to service industries, except in this case technicians were safer because they delivered the services that the company depended upon for revenue. Here, the best and brightest technicians were let go; it was assumed that perception management would be sufficient to fill the gap between the quality of service promised, and that delivered; again, that's the way it had always worked before. Because they had no inventory, and their only stock in trade was technicians, these technicians have been gradually replaced, one by one, with less expensive (less competent) technicians. Which brings us to recruiting agencies - which provide a service to OEMs and VARs, trying to help these large organizations find and contact the brilliant people who brought their products and services to life, in the first place, ten years ago. These agencies gutted their talent just like every other service organization. Oh, sure, there are exceptions here and there; but the perception is that, like every other organization in Silicon Valley, most recruiting organizations voluntarily lobotomized themselves, in the naive belief that when things got better, everyone would be waiting patiently to return to work, just like all the other industries. They all read the same magazines ('CIO', 'CFO', etc); how were they to know any better? (Hey, I read some of those magazines myself. No better way to make sure you understand your, uh, management.) That's how we got to where we are today. How do we get back to where we were? Again, I have some ideas on where this is going. The fact is that a lot of bad decisions were made by these previously mentioned "perception managers". (When I tell people that a lot of engineering decisions were made according to financial and political criteria, experienced engineers nod their head in agreement; no one has any trouble recalling executives overriding engineering decisions, particularly where vendors were concerned. I have heard suggestions of kickbacks, as well; and it was around this period that Cisco purchased a yacht and started giving prospects rides around the San Francisco Bay, which, it would seem, was an effective way to seal million-dollar deals. I'm not saying Cisco's equipment is inadequate to the job; but for them to need to resort to such tactics certainly raises the question, and for an executive to ignore this question seems, to me, to be somewhat irresponsible.) One of the worst decisions was where to invest educational dollars. I frequently saw a week of classes, offsite, being used as a reward, given to those who were, in retrospect, least inclined to share what they had learned with the rest of their peers, as well as least capable of absorbing enough useful information from the class to apply it effectively enough to even pay back the company for the cost of the class, as well as their absence from work. The fact is, now, that all that knowledge is gone; distributed to the four winds. Those people came here to the Bay Area to get jobs, and when the jobs disappeared, they returned to where they came from - the central United States in some cases, outside the United States entirely in many cases. At first, many people, when laid off, filed for unemployment, figuring it wouldn't last. As their dollars got tight, a lot of people started leaving. Another bunch of them left after their unemployment ran out, here in California. Real estate prices haven't been dropping and the high price of real estate exacerbated the situation, by consuming whatever savings people had, far more quickly than might have otherwise been the case. Wages falling to level of ten or more years ago have not helped. There are signs of this in the job market - previously unapproachable positions that required six different incompatible disciplines in one skull plus a willingness to work Sundays are loosening up, and the version numbers don't matter so much any more. Some of this, of course, is also a consequence of a new generation of recruiters gradually learning the relevant details of their new jobs, while earning far smaller commissions than their predecessors did; which has had its own influence on the world of placement agencies, not necessarily for the better. Relearning, and rebuilding, are the key words here. Silicon Valley is not dead; but it is close to brain-dead, if I may be permitted an insulting but clinically applicable term. The 'brains' are not gone ... but the gap between them and the people making the hiring decisions at the companies seems to be too vast to bridge easily. This is a great time to start a new business, if you don't mind starting small. There are thousands of small customers roaming around, looking for the best deal; and some big ones, too. A lot of people have independently come to that conclusion; they have skills, they see opportunities, and they are making the best of them. (Sure, a lot of the hiring managers will sneer, when offered a contractor; but just keep in mind that these are probably the same hiring managers who, five or ten years ago, were outsourcing every single job in the building to temporary employees. Understand that you are dealing with an individual whose commitment to self-honesty is negligible, and that you probably would not enjoy working with them, anyway, and keep moving.) Perhaps it is significant, this time around, that startups are requiring early employees to work, for nothing, in exchange for their stock. More likely is that this is an overreaction by the venture capitalists, trying to shift responsibility for their losses onto the engineers of new ideas, instead of onto the MBAs that were slipped in to run the engineering organizations. Whatever the case, it suggests that there is not a lack of people with new ideas and the motivation to translate their visions into tangibles. The engineers amongst us are still creating; but now we are back in our garages and workshops and basements, working on -our- visions, working for ourselves, unpaid, while waiting for the phone to ring. When all is said and done, I think the lesson of the past five years is this: that it is simpler for an engineer to learn business, than it is for a businessman to learn engineering. For this reason, businessmen would do well to beware. It's not impossible that this collapse may provide the seed for a great number of new, small, aggressive companies to get their toehold on new markets; hopefully, this time around the engineers will have learned enough of the lessons of Machiavelli to remain in the driver's seat. So stay tuned for further developments; and don't lose hope yet. Keep an eye out for a garage to live in, for the short term, though. /-: -- richard PS: Yes, I know, this will aggravate a lot of headhunters. But it will cause others to nod their head in agreement, and maybe smile in amusement, too, and it is for those people that I write. From jxh at jxh.com Fri Jul 11 11:40:24 2003 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 13:40:24 -0500 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' In-Reply-To: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <2147483647.1057930824@[10.9.18.6]> > - People who think that if you are a UNIX systems administrator that you > should also be able to install, design and administer their databases ... Unfortunately, this says less about the competence of the recruiter than the simple fact of the demand. More work, no more (or less) pay. I did all of those things at my last gig, plus hiring and firing and all that. I was lucky to be continuously employed by one company through all this, so I didn't have the 60% cut in pay, but then again I'm not expecting a raise for many years to come. > customer in need; indeed, it has been my commitment to my customers, > rather than my managers, that has usually led to disagreements, as I > stood up for my customers, and suffered for it. Roger that. Come to think of it, that's one of _my_ biggest "failings", too. Integrity does not sell. Not in the short run, anyway. But it's still good business. See below, under "e14p". > same magazines ('CIO', 'CFO', etc); how were they to know any better? Don't forget _Business Week_, my all-time most productive source of bad ideas in the heads of executives as they disembark from airplanes. > This is a great time to start a new business, if you don't mind starting > small. There are thousands of small customers roaming around, looking for > the best deal; and some big ones, too. A lot of people have independently > come to that conclusion; they have skills, they see opportunities, and > they are making the best of them. Ayup. Shameless plug: see http://www.imap-partners.net/ > When all is said and done, I think the lesson of the past five years is > this: that it is simpler for an engineer to learn business, than it is > for a businessman to learn engineering. For this reason, businessmen > would do well to beware. LOL! And possibly true, though as an Entrepreneur (for which I offer the world the shorter "e10r", and "e14p" for Entrepreneurship -- try typing _that_ a bunch of times; cf "i18n/l10n") I at least have a sense of how far I have to go before I can be said to have "learned business." That, I think, is the more important advantage for the engineer: the other guy thinks he already knows your field, notwithstanding his self-effacing "I'm not technical." > Keep an eye out for a garage to live in, for the short term, though. > /-: Houses are cheap in St. Paul. :-) Well, compared to Sunnyvale. And if you can afford to pay someone else to shovel the snow.... From bill at wards.net Fri Jul 11 12:24:04 2003 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 12:24:04 -0700 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' In-Reply-To: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <16143.3796.95602.660866@komodo.home.wards.net> richard childers / kg6hac writes: [...] >- People who think version numbers and product names are handed down >from On High and are not to be questioned or discussed. (For instance, >Solaris 2.8 is now referred to, by Sun salespeople, as "Solaris 8" ... >but if you type 'uname -a', it will say "SunOS 5.8". All three are valid >names ... but the person you are speaking to might not know that, and >definitely isn't inclined to believe you.) In this case, the fix is easy - use the highest of the numbers. If the recruiter hears 2.8 or 5.8 from the client, and your resume says 8, then they can guess that 8 is greater than 2.8 or 5.8 and assume you qualify. But if you put 2.8, and the client asks for 8.... [huge snip - lots of great stuff] >When all is said and done, I think the lesson of the past five years is >this: that it is simpler for an engineer to learn business, than it is >for a businessman to learn engineering. For this reason, businessmen >would do well to beware. Yes. And that's just what I've been doing. It's why I joined Tupperware - to learn to sell and to run a business without a lot of capital outlay (and stock my kitchen at a discount in the process). And it's why I do Bay View Training (http://www.bayview.com/training) and my Perl 101 class (next one July 26). >It's not impossible that this collapse may provide the seed for a great >number of new, small, aggressive companies to get their toehold on new >markets; hopefully, this time around the engineers will have learned >enough of the lessons of Machiavelli to remain in the driver's seat. Hopefully. >So stay tuned for further developments; and don't lose hope yet. > >Keep an eye out for a garage to live in, for the short term, though. /-: Yes, but once all the people's savings have been exhausted paying for real estate, I believe that housing prices will see a "correction." Hopefully by then, I'll be able to afford to buy a house. I think the key thing is to keep your head down and learn all you can about marketing, business, and sales, until things pick up again. --Bill. -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Emerson From windsor at warthog.com Fri Jul 11 12:29:41 2003 From: windsor at warthog.com (Rob Windsor) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:29:41 -0500 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:55:48 PDT." <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200307111932.h6BJWB308157@warthog.com> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:55:48 PDT, verily did richard childers / kg6hac write: > - People who think version numbers and product names are handed down > from On High and are not to be questioned or discussed. (For instance, > Solaris 2.8 is now referred to, by Sun salespeople, as "Solaris 8" ... > but if you type 'uname -a', it will say "SunOS 5.8". All three are valid > names ... but the person you are speaking to might not know that, and > definitely isn't inclined to believe you.) Not to pick nits (but you started it)... Where do you see any (official) reference to "Solaris 2.8" other than the broken patch script in jumpstart? By the time that "Solaris 8" came out, Sun did a fairly good job of weeding out any reference to "2.n", specifically "2.8". On your subject, my problem is that recruiters believe that "2.8" is a valid version of Solaris, which it isn't. :-) My point wasn't to irritate you, but to illustrate that I share your frustration in similar manner with contrasting details. Recruiters are only buzzword skimmers/matchers. Your best bet in getting a match via one of them is to creatively insert as many acronyms and buzzwords into your resume without making it look like the good ol' HTML spamming schemes that worked back in '95 or so. Then again, maybe blatent buzzword spamming works. Rob++ ---------------------------------------- Internet: windsor at warthog.com __o Life: Rob at Carrollton.Texas.USA.Earth _`\<,_ (_)/ (_) The weather is here, wish you were beautiful. From mark at bitshift.org Fri Jul 11 12:51:42 2003 From: mark at bitshift.org (Mark C. Langston) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 12:51:42 -0700 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' In-Reply-To: <200307111932.h6BJWB308157@warthog.com> References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> <200307111932.h6BJWB308157@warthog.com> Message-ID: <20030711195141.GI93944@bitshift.org> On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 02:29:41PM -0500, Rob Windsor wrote: > > Where do you see any (official) reference to "Solaris 2.8" other than the > broken patch script in jumpstart? > http://docs.sun.com/source/816-6722-10/a_SolPatches.html http://supportforum.sun.com/freesolaris/techfaqs.html?techfaqs_3122 http://docs-pdf.sun.com/816-5639-10/816-5639-10.pdf http://http:/un.com/source/816-5935-10/install_.htm From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Fri Jul 11 14:17:12 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 17:17:12 -0400 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' In-Reply-To: <20030711195141.GI93944@bitshift.org> References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> <200307111932.h6BJWB308157@warthog.com> <20030711195141.GI93944@bitshift.org> Message-ID: <20030711211712.GA7160@snew.com> And yet for years, I've called it "2.8" if only to piss off my Sun employed friends and ex-sun coworkers. Its technical name is 5.8. Its marketing name is "8" Me? My SPARCs run BSD (free, net, open or bsdi). FreeBSD runs pretty well on an E450. (5.1 which is numerically < 5.8, but administratively so far ahead...) Quoting Mark C. Langston (mark at bitshift.org): > On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 02:29:41PM -0500, Rob Windsor wrote: > > > > Where do you see any (official) reference to "Solaris 2.8" other than the > > broken patch script in jumpstart? > > > > http://docs.sun.com/source/816-6722-10/a_SolPatches.html > http://supportforum.sun.com/freesolaris/techfaqs.html?techfaqs_3122 > http://docs-pdf.sun.com/816-5639-10/816-5639-10.pdf > http://http:/un.com/source/816-5935-10/install_.htm From mark at bitshift.org Fri Jul 11 14:25:30 2003 From: mark at bitshift.org (Mark C. Langston) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:25:30 -0700 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' In-Reply-To: <20030711211712.GA7160@snew.com> References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> <200307111932.h6BJWB308157@warthog.com> <20030711195141.GI93944@bitshift.org> <20030711211712.GA7160@snew.com> Message-ID: <20030711212530.GK93944@bitshift.org> On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 05:17:12PM -0400, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > And yet for years, I've called it "2.8" if only to > piss off my Sun employed friends and ex-sun coworkers. > Its technical name is 5.8. > Its marketing name is "8" > Same here. I had a few other references in there, and a suggestion to google for "Solaris 2.8 site:sun.com" to see a plethora of official pages and documents using the "Solaris 2.8" and "solaris version 2.8" terminology. But, in my haste to include veritcal ellipses at the end of the list of URLs, I forgot to make them non-line-initial, and truncated my own post. D'oh! However, addressing the more general point, if a job posting asks for skill $FOO, $BAR, and $BAZ, send them a resum? stating you have $FOO, $BAR, and $BAZ (if, in fact, you do). Doing otherwise, while perhaps still accurate, isn't going to help your odds any with the human and automated resum? filters. Even hiring managers may often just skim for key words when they're swamped by resum?s. In this market, using a single, "one-size-fits-all" resum? is just asking for trouble. -- Mark C. Langston Sr. Unix SysAdmin mark at bitshift.org mark at seti.org Systems & Network Admin SETI Institute http://bitshift.org http://www.seti.org From fscked at pacbell.net Fri Jul 11 19:25:05 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 19:25:05 -0700 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <3F0F7181.1040903@pacbell.net> Rereading what I wrote earlier today, I left out one important detail. The scariest aspect of this whole situation is that the current crop of recruiting agents are taking all of their instructions from the customers, who are, of course, footing the bill ... but that their customers - the least technical, least expensive, least competent employees left behind, frequently totally devoid of technical expertise and understanding - are relying on these same placement firms to provide the expertise that they, themselves, are missing, internally ... yet, they, the customers, are too technically challenged to realize that the recruiters they are working with are from the exact same mold that they, themselves stepped from. Hence the title, 'Dumb & Dumber'; neither of these two parties has a clue as to the dynamics of the situation in which they are involved, they both keep looking to one another for guidance, and they keep going around, and around, and around, ad infinitum, while the rest of us watch and wonder when they are going to get dizzy and fall down. 'Nuff sed. -- richard richard childers / kg6hac wrote: > (The following is an unsolicited social observation.) > > > Has anyone else noticed a loss of competency amongst placement > agencies and human resources personnel, recently? > > > I have been encountering some remarkably incompetent behavior > recently; I have some theories as to where it's coming from ... and > where this is going, as well. > > > What do I mean by incompetent? > > - People who are unable to find my name and address in the resume > because it is in the header rather than the body of the Microsoft Word > document, and they cannot see it. (Solution: put your contact > information in the header, the footer, and the body of each page.) > > - People who do not know what a systems administrator does and think > that if you know how to type that maybe you can do shorthand and work > on their web page for them, too. (This is like a person who assumes > that because a stenographer, a medical secretary, and a legal > secretary all use typewriters, that their jobs are fundamentally > identical.) > > - People who think version numbers and product names are handed down > from On High and are not to be questioned or discussed. (For instance, > Solaris 2.8 is now referred to, by Sun salespeople, as "Solaris 8" ... > but if you type 'uname -a', it will say "SunOS 5.8". All three are > valid names ... but the person you are speaking to might not know > that, and definitely isn't inclined to believe you.) > > - People who think that if you are a UNIX systems administrator that > you should also be able to install, design and administer their > databases ... maintain and change web content, as well as rewrite the > backend code that handles financial transactions ... configure their > routers and firewalls ... handle their telephone exchange ... support > their desktops as well as all their external customers ... provide > first, second and third tier technical support (an oxymoron, there, > each of those tiers is supposed to relieve the one before it; without > relief and handoff, there are no tiers of support, just tiers of > management) ... and have been certified in the latest, greatest > release of their operating system, but, no, they don't have money to > actually pay someone to go, they want to steal this valuable training > from someone else ... but they don't want to say it so bluntly, any > more than they want to discuss the fact that you are, by working for > them, filling four to six separate positions, for one half to one > third of the pay your predecessors received. > > - Placement companies that keep on publishing the same basic, vague, > ad, for month, after month, after month, after month, after month, but > never reply to your email or return your calls. > > I'm not disgruntled; I have no problem with doing good work that > doesn't need to be redone. No one has ever accused me of walking away > from a customer in need; indeed, it has been my commitment to my > customers, rather than my managers, that has usually led to > disagreements, as I stood up for my customers, and suffered for it. So > it goes. > > But I am getting a little impatient. Any one of us could do a better > job than some of the people I have spoken with; they are Klueless with > a capital 'K'. > > > Where do I think this is coming from? > > It's pretty simple. A lot of high technology companies, over the past > decade, saw their management slowly being replaced - technically savvy > managers gradually being replaced with politically savvy managers, > attracted by the lucrative salaries and perks (what I refer to as > "perception managers"), infiltrating the company, from the top down, > until there was nothing left but tier after tier of MBA-flavored > management, and a thin layer of technical competence carrying the > entire burden of delivering the company's products and services. > > When the bubble collapsed, the first to go, at the OEMs and VARs, were > the technical people. The more they made, they faster they were let > go; the theory was that they would be there when the market needed > them back, that's the way it had always worked before. Soon there was > nothing left but a trimmed-down sales, shipping, and administration > department; entire engineering organizations were pruned, and the > company coasted, carried by its inventories. > > The same thing happened to service industries, except in this case > technicians were safer because they delivered the services that the > company depended upon for revenue. Here, the best and brightest > technicians were let go; it was assumed that perception management > would be sufficient to fill the gap between the quality of service > promised, and that delivered; again, that's the way it had always > worked before. Because they had no inventory, and their only stock in > trade was technicians, these technicians have been gradually replaced, > one by one, with less expensive (less competent) technicians. > > Which brings us to recruiting agencies - which provide a service to > OEMs and VARs, trying to help these large organizations find and > contact the brilliant people who brought their products and services > to life, in the first place, ten years ago. > > These agencies gutted their talent just like every other service > organization. Oh, sure, there are exceptions here and there; but the > perception is that, like every other organization in Silicon Valley, > most recruiting organizations voluntarily lobotomized themselves, in > the naive belief that when things got better, everyone would be > waiting patiently to return to work, just like all the other > industries. They all read the same magazines ('CIO', 'CFO', etc); how > were they to know any better? > > (Hey, I read some of those magazines myself. No better way to make > sure you understand your, uh, management.) > > That's how we got to where we are today. How do we get back to where > we were? > > > Again, I have some ideas on where this is going. > > The fact is that a lot of bad decisions were made by these previously > mentioned "perception managers". > > (When I tell people that a lot of engineering decisions were made > according to financial and political criteria, experienced engineers > nod their head in agreement; no one has any trouble recalling > executives overriding engineering decisions, particularly where > vendors were concerned. I have heard suggestions of kickbacks, as > well; and it was around this period that Cisco purchased a yacht and > started giving prospects rides around the San Francisco Bay, which, it > would seem, was an effective way to seal million-dollar deals. I'm not > saying Cisco's equipment is inadequate to the job; but for them to > need to resort to such tactics certainly raises the question, and for > an executive to ignore this question seems, to me, to be somewhat > irresponsible.) > > One of the worst decisions was where to invest educational dollars. I > frequently saw a week of classes, offsite, being used as a reward, > given to those who were, in retrospect, least inclined to share what > they had learned with the rest of their peers, as well as least > capable of absorbing enough useful information from the class to apply > it effectively enough to even pay back the company for the cost of the > class, as well as their absence from work. > > The fact is, now, that all that knowledge is gone; distributed to the > four winds. Those people came here to the Bay Area to get jobs, and > when the jobs disappeared, they returned to where they came from - the > central United States in some cases, outside the United States > entirely in many cases. > > At first, many people, when laid off, filed for unemployment, figuring > it wouldn't last. As their dollars got tight, a lot of people started > leaving. Another bunch of them left after their unemployment ran out, > here in California. Real estate prices haven't been dropping and the > high price of real estate exacerbated the situation, by consuming > whatever savings people had, far more quickly than might have > otherwise been the case. Wages falling to level of ten or more years > ago have not helped. > > There are signs of this in the job market - previously unapproachable > positions that required six different incompatible disciplines in one > skull plus a willingness to work Sundays are loosening up, and the > version numbers don't matter so much any more. Some of this, of > course, is also a consequence of a new generation of recruiters > gradually learning the relevant details of their new jobs, while > earning far smaller commissions than their predecessors did; which has > had its own influence on the world of placement agencies, not > necessarily for the better. > > Relearning, and rebuilding, are the key words here. > > Silicon Valley is not dead; but it is close to brain-dead, if I may be > permitted an insulting but clinically applicable term. The 'brains' > are not gone ... but the gap between them and the people making the > hiring decisions at the companies seems to be too vast to bridge easily. > > This is a great time to start a new business, if you don't mind > starting small. There are thousands of small customers roaming around, > looking for the best deal; and some big ones, too. A lot of people > have independently come to that conclusion; they have skills, they see > opportunities, and they are making the best of them. > > (Sure, a lot of the hiring managers will sneer, when offered a > contractor; but just keep in mind that these are probably the same > hiring managers who, five or ten years ago, were outsourcing every > single job in the building to temporary employees. Understand that you > are dealing with an individual whose commitment to self-honesty is > negligible, and that you probably would not enjoy working with them, > anyway, and keep moving.) > > Perhaps it is significant, this time around, that startups are > requiring early employees to work, for nothing, in exchange for their > stock. More likely is that this is an overreaction by the venture > capitalists, trying to shift responsibility for their losses onto the > engineers of new ideas, instead of onto the MBAs that were slipped in > to run the engineering organizations. Whatever the case, it suggests > that there is not a lack of people with new ideas and the motivation > to translate their visions into tangibles. The engineers amongst us > are still creating; but now we are back in our garages and workshops > and basements, working on -our- visions, working for ourselves, > unpaid, while waiting for the phone to ring. > > When all is said and done, I think the lesson of the past five years > is this: that it is simpler for an engineer to learn business, than it > is for a businessman to learn engineering. For this reason, > businessmen would do well to beware. > > It's not impossible that this collapse may provide the seed for a > great number of new, small, aggressive companies to get their toehold > on new markets; hopefully, this time around the engineers will have > learned enough of the lessons of Machiavelli to remain in the driver's > seat. > > So stay tuned for further developments; and don't lose hope yet. > > Keep an eye out for a garage to live in, for the short term, > though. /-: > > > -- richard > > PS: Yes, I know, this will aggravate a lot of headhunters. But it will > cause others to nod their head in agreement, and maybe smile in > amusement, too, and it is for those people that I write. > > > > > From rsr at inorganic.org Sat Jul 12 01:17:51 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 01:17:51 -0700 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' In-Reply-To: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20030712081751.GC27104@nag.inorganic.org> Dear God, Richard. Having a slow Friday night? :) Firstly, a little about my background because I think it might prove to be relevant to the discussion at hand. Two jobs ago, I entered a Fortune-1000 company as a Senior UNIX/Network engineer and left it a Director of IT/Engineering; at a 2000 person company, this was 'senior management' -- I had managers working for me doing technical things. Political things happen and I got laid off, which suited me fine and allowed me to pursue an opportunity working for a tiny IT consulting/outsourcing company as a Partner; that business didn't do too well and I started searching in earnest for a job about six months ago. I sent out many, many resumes with nary a peep; toward the end of June, I suddenly heard from three different companies. I ended up with two offer letters in my hands (the third company, told they had to give me an offer letter in two days or give me up, chose to give up), and I'm starting a real, honest-to-goodness 8-5 (no, really. In IT) job next Wednesday as the generalist who'll tie together a whole bunch of specialists in an IT organization. I'll be making (not including bonuses which weren't specified in the offer letter and aren't guaranteed, of course) exactly 50% of what I made as the Director of IT/Engineering. On to what you wrote: On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 10:55:48AM -0700, richard childers / kg6hac wrote: > Has anyone else noticed a loss of competency amongst placement agencies > and human resources personnel, recently? No. I've found placement agencies and HR personnel to, in general, not be very good at dealing with IT. That perception has not radically changed. What has changed have been the numerous (IMHO) stupid hurdles one has to jump through these days to apply for a position. It makes sense from the "it doesn't hurt the company none" perspective, but it sure is painful. The issue I'm discussing has to do with how much individualized labor you have to invest in order to apply for a position at a company; at one extreme is the "send a resume and a cover letter you've tailored to the position;" at another is the "create an account on our HR system, enter all your experience and education by hand." It's not directly related to how hot the company is -- Google and Yahoo, for example, both practice the "send us your resume and a cover letter" approach, and I know I'm not the only person out there who would have killed (or at least maimed someone) in order to work for Google. > - People who are unable to find my name and address in the resume > because it is in the header rather than the body of the Microsoft Word > document, and they cannot see it. (Solution: put your contact > information in the header, the footer, and the body of each page.) Exactly. Here's the problem from the flip side: I helped a small firm find an IT person. I looked at the resumes. For this not-particularly-glorious oppportunity, they received something on the order of 500 resumes the first day after they posted it on Craigslist. How do you weed out the chaff from the wheat at those numbers (assuming you don't have one of those nifty OCR & keyword recognition HR resume systems)? You start spending less and less time on each resume and rejecting resumes for reasons that end up being fairly trivial. Hey, I rejected someone for an inappropriate use of "it's" when they should have used "its." I can still argue in support of that decision, but you can see how trivial it can be. > - People who do not know what a systems administrator does and think > that if you know how to type that maybe you can do shorthand and work on > their web page for them, too. (This is like a person who assumes that Lame. > but if you type 'uname -a', it will say "SunOS 5.8". All three are valid > names ... but the person you are speaking to might not know that, and > definitely isn't inclined to believe you.) Hint: Arguing with people who may give you a job is a Bad Idea. Now, for the record, I don't necessarily practice what I preach (though I do try). One of the six people interviewing me for the position I finally took made a comment about layer-3 switches that I took issue with and we argued for about 10 minutes. Apparently, this was not enough to rule me out, but I could see a different outcome... > - People who think that if you are a UNIX systems administrator that you > should also be able to install, design and administer their databases > ... maintain and change web content, as well as rewrite the backend code > that handles financial transactions ... configure their routers and > firewalls ... handle their telephone exchange ... support their Welcome to the "we only have money for one" economy. It's one of the reasons the IT firm I joined had such high hopes -- we billed ourselves as "you can't afford to have one person who does all these things well, but we cost less than one full-time person" (for the size companies we typically dealt with). FWIW, putting aside the telephone switches, I can do that -- I think the vast majority of us here are old-style sysadmins. We've done it all. I know that, in general, I have. Amusingly (in that "it makes me want to cry" way), this ended up harming me. Sure, I can manage UNIX systems (have for 13 years), and manage MySQL (have for about three years) and manage networks (9 years) and do automation and monitoring (Jumpstart? MRTG? Nagios? SNMP? Hell, I've got my own enterprise number). Oh, and Bourne? Csh? Perl? Python? PHP? Apache? DNS? SMTP? Sendmail or Postfix? Bring'em on. And then I go to compete in a position that wants someone who does Linux, or a position for a DBA, and people look at my resume and go "Oh, he doesn't have in-depth Linux knowledge." No shit, I'm a generalist. Specialists in any one of these fields will clean my clock -- but wait until they need to figure out how their stuff works with the other group's systems. [As an aside, this ended up being a serious win in the company where I will work -- the CIO emailed me with a "hey, I don't have any open positions, but I'd love to talk to you." A two hour conversation later, and he went away with a mission to craft a position for me, precisely because he had kickass specialists, but nobody to translate from the application development people to the server people to the helpdesk people ... ] > desktops as well as all their external customers ... provide first, > second and third tier technical support (an oxymoron, there, each of > those tiers is supposed to relieve the one before it; without relief and > handoff, there are no tiers of support, just tiers of management) ... Though technically, I can come up with a scenario where this is possible -- you do first level support of Foo, second-level support of Bar, and third-level support of Baz. > and have been certified in the latest, greatest release of their > operating system, but, no, they don't have money to actually pay someone > to go, they want to steal this valuable training from someone else ... Well, sure -- they're cheap. Or desperate for money. You know, this position that I'm technically leaving (though I haven't done any work for my company for close to a year) cost me dearly -- the vast majority of a pretty nice .com nest egg that I got when I left the Fortune-1000 company -- but one thing it really showed me is how IT can fit into the day-to-day business environment of a company, especially an unhealthy and desperately poor company. Coming from the environment where the general feeling was "if you aren't giving us the $100,000 for equipment we're telling you we need, it's not because you can't afford it but because you're stupid" and into the environment where we made conscious business decisions along the lines of "Sure, it's a $50 that would be well-spent, but we just don't have that right now," I tend to be a little more ... compassionate, or perhaps naive, when it comes to dealing with people who want excellent labor, cheap. Hey, at least they haven't hired someone in India. Yet. :) > separate positions, for one half to one third of the pay your > predecessors received. Different time. The three technical managers who worked for me at the -1 company are all making something on the order of $50,000 more than I'll be making. You can argue that this company is raping me (though in my case, given that it's a new position, you can't strictly say that they're paying me less than my predecessors), but bottom line is, nobody's who's switched jobs is getting paid what they were getting paid five years ago. That's not necessarily because we were getting paid a fair amount then and are not now; it's probably more correct to say either that we were somewhat overpaid back then (though God damn, the hours I worked) or that as a ratio of the overall amount of money the company either brought in or spent in IT, maybe our salaries haven't changed all that much. I mean, it seems appropriate, now that people are buying their Sun and Cisco equipment from eBay for $.20 on the dollar, that the IT staff is also somewhat discounted. Happy about it? Sure ain't. (Side note: If you're one of the people who haven't been laid off in the last five years and are still making bubble pay, please don't bitch about your aweful working conditions) > - Placement companies that keep on publishing the same basic, vague, ad, > for month, after month, after month, after month, after month, but never > reply to your email or return your calls. Lame. Understandable -- throw a hook in the water, catch the fish you want up to your fishing limit (number of open positions), ignore the rest. Doesn't harm them at all. > customer in need; indeed, it has been my commitment to my customers, > rather than my managers, that has usually led to disagreements, as I > stood up for my customers, and suffered for it. So it goes. The ethics game is a, umm, fun one. I know -- Primary reason I got laid off was because management knew I wasn't going to be up to screwing the staff like they wanted me to. Didn't work too well -- my group went from being the sort of people who I'd have to kick out at 8pm (yes, I know it's an interesting problem. Go home. I don't want your wife bitching at me again. She's mean) to being the sort of people who'd leave work at 4:30pm. Of course, the fact the guy who replaced me was non-local helped :) > But I am getting a little impatient. Any one of us could do a better job > than some of the people I have spoken with; they are Klueless with a > capital 'K'. How do you know this? How do you define 'a better job'? I'm guessing their definition is "make the people who pay us continue to pay us." some of these things don't necessarily help them provide quality talent, but do they hurt them? If there are 1000 resumes for an open position that requires Solaris ((2|5).)9 and they rule out 300 people who put "2.9" instead of "9," and still manage to find someone good, who's harmed, other than the applicants? And who cares about the applicants? > decade, saw their management slowly being replaced - technically savvy > managers gradually being replaced with politically savvy managers, > attracted by the lucrative salaries and perks (what I refer to as > "perception managers"), infiltrating the company, from the top down, > until there was nothing left but tier after tier of MBA-flavored > management, and a thin layer of technical competence carrying the entire > burden of delivering the company's products and services. Alternatively, I think what a lot of companies found out was that good geeks very often make horrendous managers and that when it comes to management and leadership, a good leader who's less technically competent is better than a technically competent person who's a horrible leader. (Possibly-relevant context: The other offer letter I had was from a company who's owner/CEO was a programmer/ex-programmer who was EXTREMELY technically competent; he also happened to have a leadership style which ... I would have interacted poorly with) > The same thing happened to service industries, except in this case > technicians were safer because they delivered the services that the > company depended upon for revenue. Here, the best and brightest > technicians were let go; it was assumed that perception management would > be sufficient to fill the gap between the quality of service promised, > and that delivered; again, that's the way it had always worked before. > Because they had no inventory, and their only stock in trade was > technicians, these technicians have been gradually replaced, one by one, > with less expensive (less competent) technicians. That's really interesting. One of the things that have been baffling me is that I'm talking to my ex cohorts at my previous company about the service they've been getting from their VARs. Now, having been the person who managed and negotiated probably a total of around $50M in capital acquisitions in the two years I managed there, I was intimately tied into the vendor relations, and overall, the vendors we had kicked ass. These same vendors these days apparently really, really suck. This shocked me because it seemed totally counter-intuitive -- in this sort of economy, if you find customers that are still buying $100,000 servers, I'm thinking you would come over to their house every night to wash their car -- not drop the levels of service (especially given, again, eBay). > (When I tell people that a lot of engineering decisions were made > according to financial and political criteria, experienced engineers nod You say that as though it's a bad thing. I'm not sure there is such a thing as a pure engineering decision -- there's always a financial and political context. I fear that the biggest problem insanely great engineers often have is understanding this reality and working within it (great swaths of the BayLISA audience now mentally cross me off the 'competent' list and put me in the 'management wanker' category). > concerned. I have heard suggestions of kickbacks, as well; and it was > around this period that Cisco purchased a yacht and started giving > prospects rides around the San Francisco Bay, which, it would seem, was > an effective way to seal million-dollar deals. I'm not saying Cisco's > equipment is inadequate to the job; but for them to need to resort to > such tactics certainly raises the question, and for an executive to > ignore this question seems, to me, to be somewhat irresponsible.) I'm sure that when my company chose Exodus as a hosting provider, it was not because my management got tickets to the US Open. No, hold on a second, I'm sorry -- I'm not at all sure. I do know, however, that when I (personally) spearheaded the decision to move away from Cisco as our sole network provider and start sourcing some of our routing/switching gear from Foundry, I found that Cisco played INCREDIBLY hard ball, all from having their partners call me and tell me "Oh, the person who works for me who said that Cisco sucks was ... confused, or on crack or on something" to badmouthing me to my boss. With some exceptions, the Cisco sales organization was the most evil and wretched organization I had to work with -- miles worse than Sun's, or HP's (and a far, far cry from the superhuman feats of service we were getting from Foundry once we switched to them. The stories I could tell ... ). But hell, man -- I got to stay at a seaside resort for two days for some sort of Pacific Bell 'conference.' I would have gotten to fly to Memphis and eat steak on a vendor's tab (if it wasn't for a damn exploding tooth issue). These sorts of kickcustomer relationship management tools were just a part of the business. I'd like to believe I didn't make my decisions based on how many perks I got (and hell, if I did give a company a million dollar deal for a boat tour, I'd feel like an awefully cheap whore), but I do know that I made decisions at least partially on how I saw the sales organization servicing us (get your mind out of the gutter) and I don't know that I could swear that the number of dinners I ate at Gary Danko's could be clearly differentiated in my mind from the technically relevant parts of the servicing. > One of the worst decisions was where to invest educational dollars. I > frequently saw a week of classes, offsite, being used as a reward, given > to those who were, in retrospect, least inclined to share what they had > learned with the rest of their peers, as well as least capable of > absorbing enough useful information from the class to apply it > effectively enough to even pay back the company for the cost of the > class, as well as their absence from work. This still happens, though differently -- what the hell are all these offers for a free XBox if you sign up for training, if not kickbacks, albeit to the engineers who take this training? > There are signs of this in the job market - previously unapproachable > positions that required six different incompatible disciplines in one Well, given that as I mentioned above, I spent six months without a single reply and then had three companies go after me in two weeks, I have to agree (and seriously, for those of you still searching -- good luck. My best wishes. I know how much it absolutely sucks). > Silicon Valley is not dead; but it is close to brain-dead, if I may be > permitted an insulting but clinically applicable term. The 'brains' are > not gone ... but the gap between them and the people making the hiring > decisions at the companies seems to be too vast to bridge easily. Explains something about the successful route to finding a job -- ignore the HR people. Go around them. Everyone knows, and everyone will tell you, that connections are what matters. References are what counts. Be a lot more chummy with the people who still have jobs. Think you know networking? Use it. Of the four opportunities I had in the last six months, two were extremely low-level positions from Craigslist; the two actually interesting positions were positions where the only reason I got anywhere in the organization was because I knew someone in there who could make sure my resume made it to the technical person who'd do the hiring, not the HR person (and again, in the company where I'll be working, HR would have been worse than useless because they had no positions). > This is a great time to start a new business, if you don't mind starting > small. There are thousands of small customers roaming around, looking > for the best deal; and some big ones, too. A lot of people have > independently come to that conclusion; they have skills, they see > opportunities, and they are making the best of them. It sure seemed that way to us. There are some guesses I could make as to why this IT consulting company is on the verge of death (mostly focused on our non-great Sales and Marketing organization -- because technically, we kicked ass), but, uhh, I'm not sure I agree with you that this is a great time to start this sort of business. More than previously, I'd argue the only real place where you're sure to make money is on-line matchmaking, maybe porn, and definitely business liquidations. > their visions into tangibles. The engineers amongst us are still > creating; but now we are back in our garages and workshops and > basements, working on -our- visions, working for ourselves, unpaid, > while waiting for the phone to ring. Bingo. Contribute to an open-source project. Build that app you've always wanted that either doesn't exist or costs too much. Learn Python. You'd be surprised how this can help. A year ago, I decided to learn PHP. In order to do so, I wrote an on-line inventory management system of my DVDs and books (www.inorganic.org/~rsr/dvd) that tied into barcode scanning with a CueCat. The clincher that made that CIO call me in for an interview? He browsed my book collection and went "hey, cool, he has seven Terry Pratchett books." Go figure ... > When all is said and done, I think the lesson of the past five years is > this: that it is simpler for an engineer to learn business, than it is > for a businessman to learn engineering. For this reason, businessmen > would do well to beware. Playing "businessmen vs. engineers" gets you in the same zero-sum hostility game that sinks many IT organizations. One of the primary reasons I chose the company I'll work for is because that guy I'll be working for does one thing that I've never seen any other IT organization do so well -- integrate IT into the business and make it an absolutely indispensible day-to-day partner for every decision. It's not us against the businessmen. It's "excellence against mediocrity." When excellent engineers get together with excellent business people, magic happens. You put mediocre people in place and you'll suffer, be they engineers or business people. > It's not impossible that this collapse may provide the seed for a great > number of new, small, aggressive companies to get their toehold on new > markets; Are you kidding? have you seen what's been happening in the OSS space lately? Maybe it's because OSCon is this week, but I've been thinking a lot about OSS lately. It's really exploded in the last year or two and while I think part of that is just the development cycle -- good engineering finally coming home to roost -- I think you'd be pressed to argue that the fact that there are a whole bunch of unemployed brilliant people, coupled with companies that are pressed for money, has nothing to do with it. > Keep an eye out for a garage to live in, for the short term, though. /-: Speaking as someone who six months ago dropped his rent by 40%, I concur. While purchasing a home in the bay area has not become significantly cheaper, *RENTING* has. > PS: Yes, I know, this will aggravate a lot of headhunters. But it will > cause others to nod their head in agreement, and maybe smile in > amusement, too, and it is for those people that I write. FWIW, I know some kick-ass headhunters. They're few and far between. -roy From fscked at pacbell.net Sat Jul 12 07:26:15 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 07:26:15 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League Message-ID: <3F101A87.5020108@pacbell.net> There's an interesting article making the rounds, on Craigslist, suggesting that the Oracle Corporation (if I interpret it correctly) has its roots in the Central Intelligence Agency (this is a matter of record) and Jewish Defense League (an outlawed terrorist group). I understand this article has been brought to the attention of the entire California Senate and Assembly, as well as the United States Congress, and, if I interpret the comments at the end properly, to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the California State Attorney General, as well. Given my comments a few months back regarding the dubious ethics of Oracle's management, I cannot say that I am entirely displeased to see this story finally becoming public. Just about the time this hit the 'Net, about a week ago, so did the story about Leroy frothing at the mouth over his urgent desire to purchase JD Edwards and PeopleSoft. Suddently I haven't heard a word about the PeopleSoft fracas; it just disappeared from the news as if it had never even occurred. This suggests - lacking evidence to the contrary - that the details provided in the article are correct, and that the unfavorable attention Oracle was getting killed the deal. I have it from a reliable source that a copy of the article was sent to Craig Conway, CEO of PeopleSoft. If you're interested in reading the article, it's at the following URL: http://www.craigslist.org/sfc/for/13243191.html Yours for a workplace free of coercion, fraud, and racism ... -- richard From npc at gangofone.com Sat Jul 12 12:19:03 2003 From: npc at gangofone.com (Nick Christenson) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 12:19:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League In-Reply-To: <3F101A87.5020108@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200307121919.h6CJJ3q2094917@discovery.gangofone.com> I find this posting disturbing, especially on the heels of your posting the other day. While I didn't agree with everything you said in the previous message, there were some interesting elements in it. I find this one much more problematic. > There's an interesting article making the rounds, on Craigslist, > suggesting that the Oracle Corporation (if I interpret it correctly) has > its roots in the Central Intelligence Agency (this is a matter of > record) and Jewish Defense League (an outlawed terrorist group). As we all know, these sorts of things *usually* turn out to be hoaxes. This has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. It's an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary proof. I have no information one way or another regarding this letter, so I'll let others evaluate it. But I'll need some serious convincing before I believe it. > Given my comments a few months back regarding the dubious ethics of > Oracle's management, I cannot say that I am entirely displeased to see > this story finally becoming public. Well, if it's true, I'm glad it is public. If it's untrue, then it's too bad that it's making the rounds. I think folks can have fair differences on whether Oracle has been "aggressive" or "unethical" or somewhere in between in its business practices, but I'd like to see the truth win out. This includes the PeopleSoft bid. It's certainly aggressive, arguably it's unethical. I can believe that the point of it is as much to disrupt PeopleSoft as it is to acquire the assets of the company. Oracle is certainly not above such things. > Just about the time this hit the 'Net, about a week ago, so did the > story about Leroy frothing at the mouth over his urgent desire to > purchase JD Edwards and PeopleSoft. Suddently I haven't heard a word > about the PeopleSoft fracas; it just disappeared from the news as if it > had never even occurred. No, it hasn't disappeared. Heck, NewsFactor, ON24, and TheStreet.com had articles on this topic just on Friday. That's just the most recent business day. Many other articles have appeared over the last week. Yes, the intensity of this news item has died down. Is this because of CIA influence? Hardly. It's simply because there's no change in the status of the story. Remember the early Saturday Night Live episode where on Weekend Update Chevy Chase announces, "This just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead?" This is at least allegedly humorous because "nothing has changed" rarely makes it very high up on the news cycle. There's no reason to suspect a conspiracy. > This suggests - lacking evidence to the > contrary - that the details provided in the article are correct, and > that the unfavorable attention Oracle was getting killed the deal. This is simply not a rational conclusion. Making this leap is illogical at best. > I have it from a reliable source that a copy of the article was sent to > Craig Conway, CEO of PeopleSoft. I would expect that he has seen it. > If you're interested in reading the article, it's at the following URL: > > http://www.craigslist.org/sfc/for/13243191.html > > > Yours for a workplace free of coercion, fraud, and racism ... These are laudable goals. Any interest in adding "hyperbole" to this list? -- Nick Christenson npc at gangofone.com From fscked at pacbell.net Sat Jul 12 17:51:30 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 17:51:30 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, etc References: <200307121919.h6CJJ3q2094917@discovery.gangofone.com> Message-ID: <3F10AD12.9010702@pacbell.net> Nick Christenson wrote: >I find this one much more problematic. > I surmise it may have been more problematic for the author. (By the way, I would hardly expect everyone to agree with everything that I said; by stating a perspective, I would hope to elicit, from others, their perspectives, and thus proceed to a rational conclusion by means of a discourse between equals, with, hopefully, everyone leaving the meeting of minds with as much as they can absorb, of an educational nature, from the experience.) >This has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. > The post seems to contain a lot of detail, and many supporting URLs. Here's what I found, just Googling: "Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, is one of the leading proponents of a national ID card system. Oracle, the world's largest database vendor, owes its very existence to a Central Intelligence Agency contract awarded it in the 1970s. In September 2001, Ellison told San Francisco television station KPIX, "We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint digitized and embedded in the ID card." Ellison even agreed to provide the U.S. government the software to run such a system free of charge. However, Ellison's offer is less altruistic than it appears. If the U.S. government bases a national ID system on his database product, every hardware and software vendor who would interface with the system would be required to license his software, which would become a de facto industry standard. Ellison stands to make billions of dollars if such a system is adopted." (http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02march/march02corp3.html) >Well, if it's true, I'm glad it is public. > I think there's a lot of rot in Silicon Valley; don't kid yourself. Rot and perception management go hand in hand. One can't paint over a rotten step and expect it to go unnoticed, for example. Under instructions from my immediate management, I was emptying a room at a dot-com whom shall remain nameless, and placing the contents in a dumpster, preparatory to our moving into a smaller space. I had already harvested a t-shirt or two; a hat or two; a few buttons. I was surprised to find the following book: Duties and Responsibilities of Directors and Officers Professor Robert Baxt It has chapters addressing one's duties to act honestly and to avoid conflicts of interest, as well as duties to act with care and due diligence. It was a year or so out of date. And it was published by the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Apparently the closest source of these sorts of educational materials was, say, 8,000 miles away. >I think folks can have fair differences >on whether Oracle has been "aggressive" or "unethical" or somewhere >in between in its business practices, but I'd like to see the truth >win out. > In order for this to occur one must give both groups equal time. If the events, as described in the posting, are accurate, then it would be fair to say that Oracle has no interest in seeing the truth win out. (For instance, did you notice the bit about the Oracle Legal Department legal professional who sued Oracle because, she alleged, they had required her to do something unethical ... whose lawsuit was sealed against public scrutiny? I happen to personally know that is true, and can personally support the authenticity of that story.) >This includes the PeopleSoft bid. It's certainly aggressive, arguably it's unethical. I can believe that the point of it is as much to disrupt PeopleSoft as it is to acquire the assets of the company. Oracle is certainly not above such things. > 'Nuff sed. But business is war, according to Leroy, and there are no neutral parties. By the way, the description, by another person, of how Cisco's sales force aggressively started calling not just him but everyone around him, calling into question his judgement for wanting to evaluate other vendors' products, is eerily similar to the tactics described in the posting (which I assume you have not yet read). I see no reason to assume that this phenomenon, if true, has confined itself to a single company. >No, it hasn't disappeared. > The parties concerned have been silent. There has been a lot of commentary from newscasters whom have to fill their time with something; they repeat whatever has happened recently until something bigger happens, and make 'analyses' in the meantime, marking time until the next new development occurs. That's not news. >>Yours for a workplace free of coercion, fraud, and racism ... >> >> > >These are laudable goals. Any interest in adding "hyperbole" to this >list? > Maybe. I'm not sure I've exaggerated anything; I've reported on the existence of a story whose truth (or lack thereof) is of interest to everyone in Silicon Valley, especially those holding Oracle stock. -- richard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From k6dlc at arrl.net Sat Jul 12 19:26:05 2003 From: k6dlc at arrl.net (Daniel Curry) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 19:26:05 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, etc In-Reply-To: <3F10AD12.9010702@pacbell.net> References: <200307121919.h6CJJ3q2094917@discovery.gangofone.com> <3F10AD12.9010702@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <3F10C33D.8080005@arrl.net> Speaking of Oracle here is an article that I had found. http://netscape.com.com/2100-1104_2-1024944.html?type=pt -- Daniel Curry AD5A 96DC 7556 A020 B8E7 0E4D 5D5E 9BA5 C83E 8C92 From rsr at inorganic.org Mon Jul 14 01:49:52 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 01:49:52 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League In-Reply-To: <3F101A87.5020108@pacbell.net> References: <3F101A87.5020108@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20030714084952.GD29852@nag.inorganic.org> On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 07:26:15AM -0700, richard childers / kg6hac wrote: > There's an interesting article making the rounds, on Craigslist, > suggesting that the Oracle Corporation (if I interpret it correctly) has > its roots in the Central Intelligence Agency (this is a matter of > record) and Jewish Defense League (an outlawed terrorist group). It *is* interesting. It's sensational, biased, and ... well, how's this part: --- While I was enduring this compelled medical leave - wondering if this would end up in a lawsuit (about which topic, at the time, I knew nothing) my elderly stepfather 'fell' in front of a truck, one morning, walking across Geary Street, here in San Francisco --- There's no mention of why this person uses quotes when they use the term 'fell.' Clearly, there's an implication they're trying to create of foul play, but they provide no proof of that or, in fact, even come out and say it. In further silliness, the person writes about their lawsuit against Oracle: --- It's not clear why my lawyer, or the court, did not order a two-week delay until he got back - but it's a fact that TRBSCO's former Human Resources Manager has never been queried, under oath, regarding his actions, motives, and under whose direction he had been acting when he stonewalled the investigation, and oversaw my subsequent termination. In fact, none of the ten individual defendants named in the lawsuit, each of whom had been directly involved, were ever subpoenaed, and offered an opportunity to explain their actions and motives - not even a statement. It was all handled by lawyers and corporate executives. --- A government conspiracy or an incompetent lawyer? You be the judge. Lets see what this person has to say about accusing anyone of being anti-semitic: --- When this accusation is used, it is not made as a sincere attempt, as the result of careful and objective thought, to correctly label a specific behavior so that it can be discussed, rationally ... it was - and is - a reflexive behavior on the part of the accuser, to interrupt rational thought. It's very important to understand this. These are not rational people. They are incapable of rational behavior. They are not interested in rational discussion or debate. They are determined to interrupt any attempt at rational discourse; and will stop at nothing. --- Do not try to counter the accusation, for there is no accusation. Or something like it. Onto this person's campaign for The Truth: --- Some years later I was helping my mother clean her room, and I was not entirely surprised to see the same fold of printout. My mother threw it out and once it reached the sidewalk, I took possession of it. I still have it; I had two of perhaps 160 or so pages fingerprinted by a forensic analyst, at a cost of a few hundred dollars. The results were inconclusive; but it's not impossible that a different analyst might find different, or additional, results. --- "I'm mentioning this because you might then figure out that the bad guys had their fingerprints on this document, even though I can't actually come out and claim it, because there's no proof." One of the more amusing sentences of this article: "it would look suspicious if someone associated with this case died, twice in a row." I'd probably argue it would look positively miraculous if someone associated with this case died, then died again. His discussion of his relationship with his mother and the possibility that she screwed him either because he wasn't her favorite son or because she owned Oracle stock is deleted because honestly, do you really want me to include it here? --- In fact, I recall, in 1992, a group of VPs staged some sort of event for their charismatic leader, in the parking lot in front of 300 TRBSCO Way, involving a sailing ship flying a black flag with a skull and crossbones motif. It's not clear whether this was an allusion to piracy or a proclamation to the world that TRBSCO had a letter of marque from some government somewhere, but the message was pretty clear - they were pirates and he was their pirate chief and they didn't care who knew it. --- PIRATE FLAG? Well, clearly boys, we need to drive them out of town. I mean, if there's a clearer admission that someone's engaged in illegal activity (or is commissioned by a governmental agency to engage in illegal activity), I don't know of it. Hell, get Apple while you're at it (http://www.osxlist.com/) --- And it's not clear to me where the allegiances of the majority of TRBSCO's employees lay, then or now. Historically, given the statistical makeup of the company, it's almost certain that there is a significant amount of nepotism; this renders organizational structures designed to limit the spread of confidential information ineffective. A significant minority of these employees are not American citizens; given the size of the company and the prominence of the products and their relevance to the intelligence community, it's not clear to me how many of these people are in the employ of foreign intelligence agencies, but in a population of 5000+ there must be at least a dozen who are 'moles', in management alone. It's not clear to me where all the data that's being accumulated is ending up. There's no doubt that such a company, with such a product, is in a powerful position, accumulating much information, and in a position to use it in many different ways - as bargaining chips with United States government agencies, but also with other governments' agencies, as well. --- I don't know anything, but I'm going to bring up the fact I don't know anything in a way that will make it clear what you should think. BTW, there's no actual claim that Oracle's associated with the JDL that I could see there, though the person's delusional rantings do go on and I might have gone glassy-eyed for a bit there. Tomorrow's news: Crazy person ignored. CIA blamed. -roy From rsr at inorganic.org Mon Jul 14 02:37:41 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 02:37:41 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, etc In-Reply-To: <3F10AD12.9010702@pacbell.net> References: <200307121919.h6CJJ3q2094917@discovery.gangofone.com> <3F10AD12.9010702@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20030714093741.GG29852@nag.inorganic.org> On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 05:51:30PM -0700, richard childers / kg6hac wrote: > "Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, is one of the leading proponents of a > national ID card system. Oracle, the world's largest database vendor, > owes its very existence to a Central Intelligence Agency contract > awarded it in the 1970s. In September 2001, Ellison told San Francisco > television station KPIX, "We need a national ID card with our photograph The fact that Ellison is a big proponent of a hyper-invasive government (whether because he's a fascist or because his corporation would greatly benefit from it) is not at question. But really, that's not enough to claim any sort of collusion between Oracle and the CIA. I find it much more interesting that, for example, David Carey, former Exec Director of the CIA (#3 person in the agency) is apparently a VP at Oracle now; looks like there's at least one other (Sidney Fuchs), but realistically, given how tightly Oracle works with the government and how many of their products the government (and the CIA uses), it's not a huge surprise that some CIA officers would end up working at Oracle. Next up: Web publishing software organization employes web publishers. > I think there's a lot of rot in Silicon Valley; don't kid yourself. Rot > and perception management go hand in hand. One can't paint over a rotten > step and expect it to go unnoticed, for example. You're very interested in 'perception management,' aren't you? > Duties and Responsibilities of Directors and Officers > Professor Robert Baxt > > It has chapters addressing one's duties to act honestly and to avoid > conflicts of interest, as well as duties to act with care and due > diligence. It was a year or so out of date. And it was published by the > Australian Institute of Company Directors. Apparently the closest source > of these sorts of educational materials was, say, 8,000 miles away. Don't be silly. I got my education on the duties and responsibilities of senior management from my boss, who was one of the most ethical people I know. Hell, I'd argue if you need to turn to a book to know how to behave as a manager, you're working in a pretty screwed up organization. Further, I'll point out that you're making an asinine claim -- one entity chose to source a product from another country and therefore the only source for such product was another country? Hint: Search for 'Ethical Management' on amazon. There are 269 matches, including the Power of Ethical Management Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right Managing by Values The Ethical Process: An Approach to Disagreements and Controversial Issues Case Studies in Business Ethics (4th Edition) And, well, approximately 264 others, not all of which are relevant but a good chunk of which are. > (For instance, did you notice the bit about the Oracle Legal Department > legal professional who sued Oracle because, she alleged, they had > required her to do something unethical ... whose lawsuit was sealed > against public scrutiny? I happen to personally know that is true, and > can personally support the authenticity of that story.) Yeah, but -- and I mean no offense here, of course -- your word isn't exactly worth anything here. It's not that I think you're a liar, or that I trust you less than any other random posters to this mailing list that have posted only on two topics, within a short time period and have never been heard from before -- it's just that I (and I suspect others, though they may be more polite than I and so won't say it) trust you only as much as I trust other random posters to this mailing list that have only posted on two topics ... well, you see where this is going. Who are you? What is your lineage? Do I know anyone who knows you and thinks you're trustworthy? If not, you're just a noise on the net -- and there's a whole bunch of that. > By the way, the description, by another person, of how Cisco's sales > force aggressively started calling not just him but everyone around him, > calling into question his judgement for wanting to evaluate other > vendors' products, is eerily similar to the tactics described in the > posting (which I assume you have not yet read). I see no reason to > assume that this phenomenon, if true, has confined itself to a single > company. Big companies, especially ones that are big enough to behave like 800lb gorillas, behave like 800lb gorillas. This is not news to anyone, I think. Cisco does it. I'll betcha Oracle does it. We know Microsoft does it. Intel's done it. We know. > >>Yours for a workplace free of coercion, fraud, and racism ... > > > >These are laudable goals. Any interest in adding "hyperbole" to this > >list? > > Maybe. I'm not sure I've exaggerated anything; I've reported on the > existence of a story whose truth (or lack thereof) is of interest to > everyone in Silicon Valley, especially those holding Oracle stock. You're pushing/promoting a story rife with hyperbole. As such, you cannot avoid tying our perceptions of you with our perceptions of the story (and its author) to a certain degree. -roy From rsr at inorganic.org Mon Jul 14 03:02:38 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 03:02:38 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League Message-ID: <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> Oh, this is *GOOD*. I really like this. I think most of you will too. Lets see if we can follow this together. A) Richard Childers, fscked at pacbell.net, sent a letter to baylisa yesterday. The first sentence of this letter is "There's an interesting article making the rounds, on Craigslist, suggesting that the Oracle Corporation (if I interpret it correctly)..." Basically a "hey, I came across this and thought people might find it interesting." B) The article pointed to by Mr. Childers is at http://www.craigslist.org/sfc/for/13243191.html. The (anonymous, email address at anon-13243191 at craigslist.org) author says, among other claims, "A few years before, one rainy evening, after listening to one program too many of conspiracy theory from nearby radio station KFJC, I had created the USENET newsgroup alt.conspiracy." The author also makes mention of working for Oracle. C) http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22richard+childers%22+alt.conspiracy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&selm=2094%40avsd.UUCP&rnum=2 (or http://tinyurl.com/guvr , if that's easier for you) is an article dated September 26, 1989. The author is one Richard Childers, childers at avsd.UUCP. In it, he writes "I newgroup'd alt.conspiracy a year or so ago, thank you." D) http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22richard+childers%22+alt.conspiracy+newgroup&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&selm=1992Oct27.001021.23821%40oracle.us.oracle.com&rnum=1 (or http://tinyurl.com/guvv) is an article dated October 26, 1992. The author is one Richard Childers, RCHILDER at US.ORACLE.COM, where he writes "alt.conspiracy was newgroup'd about six miles away from Foothill College... I newgroup'd it." So, to summarize: Richard Childers tells us that there's an interesting article we should check out; article was written by the creator of alt.conspiracy. alt.conspiracy was created by Richard Childers, who, as we see in (D) (and if you search for 'rchilder at us.oracle.com' on google), worked for Oracle. Hey Richard? Remember what I said about trusting you about as much as I trust anyone else on the list who's not posted much? That's not the case anymore. -roy From fscked at pacbell.net Mon Jul 14 07:12:13 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 07:12:13 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League References: <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <3F12BA3D.2090405@pacbell.net> Unlike Oracle's officers, I am not under oath ... I don't have a duty to my stockholders ... and I have not lied. Everything I have said is factually true, to the best of my knowledge. If you can identify a false statement (you've obviously put a lot of effort into looking for one, for reasons which are as yet unclear), please point it out. If I don't seem to be as frank as you'd like, notice that everything I learned about not being straightforward and to the point was learned from Oracle ... and its friends. Are you a friend of Oracle, Ray? Do you, or did you, own any stock in Oracle? Do you have any family, friends, or relations working there, now or in the past? As long as we're engaging in full disclosure, don't you think that should be applied to everyone? -- richard Roy S. Rapoport wrote: >Oh, this is *GOOD*. I really like this. I think most of you will too. >Lets see if we can follow this together. > >A) Richard Childers, fscked at pacbell.net, sent a letter to baylisa >yesterday. The first sentence of this letter is "There's an interesting >article making the rounds, on Craigslist, suggesting that the Oracle >Corporation (if I interpret it correctly)..." Basically a "hey, I came >across this and thought people might find it interesting." > >B) The article pointed to by Mr. Childers is at >http://www.craigslist.org/sfc/for/13243191.html. The (anonymous, email >address at anon-13243191 at craigslist.org) author says, among other claims, >"A few years before, one rainy evening, after listening to one program too >many of conspiracy theory from nearby radio station KFJC, I had created the >USENET newsgroup alt.conspiracy." The author also makes mention of working >for Oracle. > >C) http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22richard+childers%22+alt.conspiracy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&selm=2094%40avsd.UUCP&rnum=2 >(or http://tinyurl.com/guvr , if that's easier for you) is an article dated >September 26, 1989. The author is one Richard Childers, >childers at avsd.UUCP. In it, he writes "I newgroup'd alt.conspiracy a year >or so ago, thank you." > >D) http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22richard+childers%22+alt.conspiracy+newgroup&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&selm=1992Oct27.001021.23821%40oracle.us.oracle.com&rnum=1 >(or http://tinyurl.com/guvv) is an article dated October 26, 1992. The >author is one Richard Childers, RCHILDER at US.ORACLE.COM, where he writes >"alt.conspiracy was newgroup'd about six miles away from Foothill College... >I newgroup'd it." > >So, to summarize: >Richard Childers tells us that there's an interesting article we should >check out; article was written by the creator of alt.conspiracy. >alt.conspiracy was created by Richard Childers, who, as we see in (D) (and >if you search for 'rchilder at us.oracle.com' on google), worked for Oracle. > >Hey Richard? Remember what I said about trusting you about as much as I >trust anyone else on the list who's not posted much? > >That's not the case anymore. > >-roy > > > > > > > > > From ahorn at deorth.org Mon Jul 14 11:05:17 2003 From: ahorn at deorth.org (ahorn at deorth.org) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 11:05:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League In-Reply-To: <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Roy S. Rapoport wrote: >So, to summarize: >Richard Childers tells us that there's an interesting article we should >check out; article was written by the creator of alt.conspiracy. >alt.conspiracy was created by Richard Childers, who, as we see in (D) (and >if you search for 'rchilder at us.oracle.com' on google), worked for Oracle. > >Hey Richard? Remember what I said about trusting you about as much as I >trust anyone else on the list who's not posted much? > >That's not the case anymore. > >-roy > It's just possible that he was trying ot obscure stuff because he didn't want repercussions to hit him ? I dunno, but I guess thats blown out of the water now.. Oh well From extasia at extasia.org Mon Jul 14 13:35:49 2003 From: extasia at extasia.org (David Alban) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 13:35:49 -0700 Subject: [baylisa] SIG-BEER-WEST this Saturday 7/19 in San Francisco Message-ID: <20030714133549.A27179@gerasimov.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 SIG-beer-west Saturday, July 19, 2003 at 6:00pm San Francisco, CA Beer. Mental stimulation. This event: Saturday, 07/19/2003, 6:00pm, at the Toronado, San Francisco Coming events (third Saturdays): Saturday, 08/16/2003, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 09/20/2003, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 10/18/2003, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 11/15/2003, 6:00pm, location to be determined San Francisco's next social event for computer sysadmins and their friends, sig-beer-west, will take place on Saturday, July 19, 2003 at the [1]Toronado in San Francisco, CA. The Toronado has an impressive selection of [2]draught and [3]bottled beer. Festivities will start at 6:00pm and continue until we've all left. The Toronado has an excellent selection of beer, but no food. It is perfectly okay to score food from neighboring establishments and bring it back to the Toronado to eat. Also, after we are all full with beer we may roam off to a nearby restaurant. [1] http://www.toronado.com/ [2] http://www.toronado.com/draft.htm [3] http://www.toronado.com/bottles.htm Everyone is welcome at this event. We mean it! Please feel free to forward this information and to invite friends, co-workers, and others who might enjoy lifting a glass with interesting folks from all over the place. (O.K., you do have to be of legal drinking age to attend.) For directions to the Toronado, please use the [4]excellent directions at their website. When you show up at the Toronado, you should look for some kind of home made sig-beer-west sign. We will try to make it obvious who we are. :-) [4] http://www.toronado.com/map.htm Note: Check the tables in the back room for us if you don't see us at the tables by the bar. The back room is back and to the left. Can't come this month? Mark your calendar for next month. sig-beer-west is always on the third Saturday of the month. Any Comments, Questions, or Suggestions of Things to Do Later on That Evening ... email [5]Fiid or [6]David. [5] fiid .AT. fiid .DOT. net [6] extasia .AT. extasia .DOT. org There is a sig-beer-west mailing list. To subscribe, send an email with "subscribe" in the body to . sig-beer-west FAQ 1. Q: Your announcement says "computer sysadmins and their friends". How do I know if I'm a friend of a computer sysadmin? I don't even know what one is. A: You're a friend of a computer sysadmin if you can find the sig-beer-west sign at this month's sig-beer-west event. 2. Q: I'm not really a beer person. In fact I'm interested in hanging out, but not in drinking. Would I be welcome? A: Absolutely! The point is to hang out with fun, interesting folks. Please do join us. 3. Q: Is parking difficult around the Toronado, like maybe I should factor this into my travel time? A: Yes. ______________________________________________________________________ sig-beer-west was started in February 2002 when a couple Washington, D.C. based systems administrators who moved to the San Francisco Bay area wanted to continue a [7]dc-sage tradition, sig-beer, which is described in dc-sage web space as: SIG-beer, as in "Special Interest Group - Beer" ala ACM, or as in "send the BEER signal to that process". The original SIG-beer gathering takes place in Washington DC, usually on the first Saturday night of the month. [7] http://www.dc-sage.org/ ______________________________________________________________________ - -- Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors. *** Cave fruticem. http://www.extasia.org/cave-fruticem/ Come to sig-beer-west! http://www.extasia.org/sig-beer-west/ Unix sysadmin available: http://www.extasia.org/resume/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE/ExIVPh0M9c/OpdARAsbbAJ0W0P5HRFPiqcxQ52kQp4CU9/8hTgCgny11 TRimLsCxWC3UMG1xyEA0J2I= =w8+A -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From aub at coldstone.com Mon Jul 14 16:14:11 2003 From: aub at coldstone.com (Alberto Begliomini) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 16:14:11 -0700 Subject: Antispam Message-ID: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> Let's talk about something more fun than the most recent postings... Netscape 7.1 has a nice anti-spam feature. I have been using it for about a week or so, and it works fairly well. The version I have been testing is for Windows 2000; the Linux version is available as well. If you haven't tried it yet give it a shot; it's worth it. Alberto From jeff at drinktomi.com Mon Jul 14 16:08:40 2003 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 16:08:40 -0700 Subject: 'Dumb & Dumber' Seeks 'Best & Brightest' References: <3F0EFA24.5030503@pacbell.net> <20030712081751.GC27104@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <024b01c34a5c$dff1d380$b034a8c0@ad.ofoto.com> > Well, given that as I mentioned above, I spent six months without a single > reply and then had three companies go after me in two weeks, I have to > agree (and seriously, for those of you still searching -- good luck. My > best wishes. I know how much it absolutely sucks). April/June seems to be an upswing point. After four months with a trickle of positions I had two offers in a week with another two or three hot ones in the pipe. Several other friends had the same thing happen. Suddenly we have much less time for drinking, but much more beer money. > Explains something about the successful route to finding a job -- ignore > the HR people. Go around them. Yup. That's how I got my current position and most of my interviews. Don't go through the front door. Drink with the Janitors. -jeff From rsr at inorganic.org Mon Jul 14 16:40:49 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 16:40:49 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> References: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <20030714234049.GD13347@nag.inorganic.org> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 04:14:11PM -0700, Alberto Begliomini wrote: > Netscape 7.1 has a nice anti-spam feature. I have been using it for > about a week or so, and it works fairly well. The version I have been > testing is for Windows 2000; the Linux version is available as well. If > you haven't tried it yet give it a shot; it's worth it. I've had fabulous luck with SpamAssassin on my UNIX mail server. What does the NS7.1 client do with spam? How does it identify it? How configurable is it? -roy From aub at coldstone.com Mon Jul 14 17:18:49 2003 From: aub at coldstone.com (Alberto Begliomini) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:18:49 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3F134869.9010101@coldstone.com> Right. Except that if you are travelling, or at Starbucks, or anywhere where you do not have control over the MTA an email client with anti-spam features would help. Furthermore, this is a nice feature for people who are not system administrators and whose ISP's do not offer anti-spam features. Alberto Alvin Oga wrote: > hi ya alberto > > just for fun .... > > antispam and antivirus should be done at the MTA > instead of each individual users .... we(i) don't want > tens/hundreds/thousands of users playing with > their own flavor of spam filters ?? > > just adding seasoning to the new pot :-) > > c ya > alvin > > On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Alberto Begliomini wrote: > > >>Let's talk about something more fun than the most recent postings... >> >>Netscape 7.1 has a nice anti-spam feature. I have been using it for >>about a week or so, and it works fairly well. The version I have been >>testing is for Windows 2000; the Linux version is available as well. If >>you haven't tried it yet give it a shot; it's worth it. From dannyman at toldme.com Mon Jul 14 17:19:04 2003 From: dannyman at toldme.com (Danny Howard) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:19:04 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <20030714234049.GD13347@nag.inorganic.org> References: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> <20030714234049.GD13347@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <20030715001904.GR134@pianosa.catch22.org> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 04:40:49PM -0700, Roy S. Rapoport wrote: > On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 04:14:11PM -0700, Alberto Begliomini wrote: > > Netscape 7.1 has a nice anti-spam feature. I have been using it for > > about a week or so, and it works fairly well. The version I have > > been testing is for Windows 2000; the Linux version is available as > > well. If you haven't tried it yet give it a shot; it's worth it. > > I've had fabulous luck with SpamAssassin on my UNIX mail server. What > does the NS7.1 client do with spam? How does it identify it? How > configurable is it? *looks around* Are we off-topic, yet? 'coz, if we aren't, my mail client handles less spam than YOUR mail client! ;) -danny -- http://dannyman.toldme.com/ From rsr at inorganic.org Mon Jul 14 17:51:47 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:51:47 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <3F134869.9010101@coldstone.com> References: <3F134869.9010101@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <20030715005147.GB21129@nag.inorganic.org> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 05:18:49PM -0700, Alberto Begliomini wrote: > Right. Except that if you are travelling, or at Starbucks, or anywhere > where you do not have control over the MTA an email client with > anti-spam features would help. Furthermore, this is a nice feature for > people who are not system administrators and whose ISP's do not offer > anti-spam features. Oh, no disagreement. Client-based antispam measures are a good thing, and aren't less good than server-based, depending on your point of view (if you're an admin, you're likely to want to take over this responsibility for your users, especially in a corporate environment). As for travelling ... heck, that's what web interfaces to your email are for :) -roy From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Mon Jul 14 16:46:17 2003 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 16:46:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> Message-ID: hi ya alberto just for fun .... antispam and antivirus should be done at the MTA instead of each individual users .... we(i) don't want tens/hundreds/thousands of users playing with their own flavor of spam filters ?? just adding seasoning to the new pot :-) c ya alvin On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Alberto Begliomini wrote: > Let's talk about something more fun than the most recent postings... > > Netscape 7.1 has a nice anti-spam feature. I have been using it for > about a week or so, and it works fairly well. The version I have been > testing is for Windows 2000; the Linux version is available as well. If > you haven't tried it yet give it a shot; it's worth it. > From david at catwhisker.org Mon Jul 14 18:07:53 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 18:07:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <3F134869.9010101@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <200307150107.h6F17rcv052430@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:18:49 -0700 >From: Alberto Begliomini >To: Alvin Oga >CC: BayLISA >Subject: Re: Antispam >Right. Except that if you are travelling, or at Starbucks, or anywhere >where you do not have control over the MTA an email client with >anti-spam features would help. Furthermore, this is a nice feature for >people who are not system administrators and whose ISP's do not offer >anti-spam features. Huh??!? Since when does where *I* am have anything to do with where my MTA is? I access mail via an SSH tunnel to one of my machines at home (under "screen": thanks for the tip, Rick!) -- even if I am at home. (The laptop's keyboard is the only one I use. And the laptop runs FreeBSD.) Also, I run my own MTA at home. :-} (Generally, when I update the "access.db" at home, I also do so for www.baylisa.org, and vice versa.) Peace, david (who has a hard time imagining using a Web broswer as an MUA) -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From rick at linuxmafia.com Mon Jul 14 18:20:39 2003 From: rick at linuxmafia.com (Rick Moen) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 18:20:39 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <20030714234049.GD13347@nag.inorganic.org> References: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> <20030714234049.GD13347@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <20030715012039.GN26899@linuxmafia.com> Quoting Roy S. Rapoport (rsr at inorganic.org): > I've had fabulous luck with SpamAssassin on my UNIX mail server. What does > the NS7.1 client do with spam? How does it identify it? How configurable is > it? I was just looking over my SpamAssassin setup. Although one can integrate SA into one's MTA (e.g., http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html), I instead have it as a system facility that users can apply via their MDA (procmail) if they so wish. Since I _do_ so wish, I have the following two rules in ~/.procmailrc : :0fw | /usr/bin/spamassassin -P :0: * ^X-Spam-Flag: YES $HOME/junkmail The first runs all my arriving mail through SA for testing and marking. The second plonks anything with a sufficiently high tested spamicity into mbox "junkmail". As time passes, I slightly tweak the rulesets via my ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs file, including whitelisting some senders and some (group) recipients, so that the tests remain reliable. Last, I have this in my personal configuration file for my MUA, mutt: folder-hook junkmail push 'D.\n' message-hook "~h RAZOR" "unignore X-Spam-Status" macro index S "| spamassassin -r" "report message to Vipul's Razor" You'll note that, whenever I use mutt to look at the junkmail folder, all contents get automatically pre-marked as scheduled for deletion. Thus, all I have to do is un-mark anything that's _not_ spam. I've found the above setup to be highly effective. I could improve on it, but it's both simple and good enough. -- Cheers, First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing, for Rick Moen verbing weirds language. Then, they arrival for the nouns rick at linuxmafia.com and I speech nothing, for I no verbs. - Peter Ellis From david at catwhisker.org Mon Jul 14 18:41:09 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 18:41:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <3F135A8F.5010909@infoqualis.com> Message-ID: <200307150141.h6F1f9w3052577@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 18:36:15 -0700 >From: Alberto Begliomini >To: David Wolfskill >CC: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: Re: Antispam >You are missing my point. What percentage of the population have an MTA >at home?? The general population, or subscribers to this list? Or members of BayLISA? And there's no requirement that the MTA in question be at home -- merely under the recipient's control. I would think that there would be a fair percentage of BayLISA folks who control MTAs, and can use them to receive their mail. Peace, david (who like to recall the context) -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From aub at infoqualis.com Mon Jul 14 18:36:15 2003 From: aub at infoqualis.com (Alberto Begliomini) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 18:36:15 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <200307150107.h6F17rcv052430@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200307150107.h6F17rcv052430@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <3F135A8F.5010909@infoqualis.com> David, You are missing my point. What percentage of the population have an MTA at home?? Alberto David Wolfskill wrote: >>Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:18:49 -0700 >>From: Alberto Begliomini >>To: Alvin Oga >>CC: BayLISA >>Subject: Re: Antispam > > >>Right. Except that if you are travelling, or at Starbucks, or anywhere >>where you do not have control over the MTA an email client with >>anti-spam features would help. Furthermore, this is a nice feature for >>people who are not system administrators and whose ISP's do not offer >>anti-spam features. > > > Huh??!? Since when does where *I* am have anything to do with where my > MTA is? > > I access mail via an SSH tunnel to one of my machines at home (under > "screen": thanks for the tip, Rick!) -- even if I am at home. (The > laptop's keyboard is the only one I use. And the laptop runs FreeBSD.) > > Also, I run my own MTA at home. :-} (Generally, when I update the > "access.db" at home, I also do so for www.baylisa.org, and vice versa.) > > Peace, > david (who has a hard time imagining using a Web broswer as an MUA) From rick at linuxmafia.com Mon Jul 14 19:01:26 2003 From: rick at linuxmafia.com (Rick Moen) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 19:01:26 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: References: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <20030715020126.GP26899@linuxmafia.com> Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > we(i) don't want tens/hundreds/thousands of users playing with their > own flavor of spam filters ?? And why not? It's their mail. If users are locally permitted to run processes of their choosing, then per-user limits on resource consumption still apply. I'm not sure what your concern is. -- Cheers, The cynics among us might say: "We laugh, Rick Moen monkeyboys -- Linux IS the mainstream UNIX now! rick at linuxmafia.com MuaHaHaHa!" but that would be rude. -- Jim Dennis From rsr at inorganic.org Mon Jul 14 22:10:56 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 22:10:56 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League In-Reply-To: <3F1338AD.9010804@pacbell.net> <3F12BA3D.2090405@pacbell.net> References: <3F1338AD.9010804@pacbell.net> <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> <3F12BA3D.2090405@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20030715051056.GB27188@nag.inorganic.org> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 07:12:13AM -0700, richard childers / kg6hac wrote: > Unlike Oracle's officers, I am not under oath What oath are Oracle's officers under? > Everything I have said is factually true, to the best of my knowledge. > > If you can identify a false statement (you've obviously put a lot of > effort into looking for one, for reasons which are as yet unclear), > please point it out. No. Actually, if you think I tried to find a factually incorrect statement, then you've misunderstood the general gist of my comments. My problem with your statements is not that you're engaging in falsehoods. Rather, you're twisting situations and offering commentary on unrelated issues as a way of making people's minds up for them. You're implying things (e.g. your stepfather 'falling' in front of a bus) because, I believe, you know that you have no actual proof that what you'd like us to believe is in fact true. I'd love to find fault with some fact you've stated. The problem is that what you wrote in that post to craigslist is so woefully short of facts. This is especially ironic given your oft-stated position on 'perception management,' since frankly so far all I see you do is trying to manage perception, rather than addressing reality. Further, while you did not actively lie about being the author of the post, your "hey, this seems interesting" letter to BayLISA was most definitely lying by ommission. Now that you've done so, I think you'll find your reputation and your credibility rather damaged. Your statements, until proven otherwise are of rather dubious veracity. > Are you a friend of Oracle, Ray? Do you, or did you, own any stock in Oh, for heaven's sake, Richard. It's ASCII, and my name is at the top of every letter I send out to the net and every article I post, anywhere. It's *Roy*. With an 'O.' > Oracle? Do you have any family, friends, or relations working there, now > or in the past? > > As long as we're engaging in full disclosure, don't you think that > should be applied to everyone? [...] No. Not really. I haven't asked people to trust me, or believe me, in anything I wrote. I A) Engaged in commentary that was fairly clearly defined as such and communicated my perception and my *opinions* of your writing -- providing people with at least one interpretation of the post; B) Presented a claim (that you are the author of that post) backed up by clear and documented facts that are verifiable by anyone who chooses to click on the links I provided -- in other words, I asked people not to trust me, but rather Google's archives; C) Presented facts that were relatively non-controversial (the presence of ex senior CIA officers at Oracle), but also with enough information that anyone who wanted to go and Google could confirm these. In other words, the only potentially-extraordinary claim I made -- that you are the anonymous author of the craigslist post -- was backed up by much more than my reputation, my veracity, my credibility. You are the one bringing forward accusations and outlandish claims. Your veracity is at question. Those who choose to question you, as long as they do not simply say "trust me that he's wrong," do not have their credibility or motives at question here. > And, conversely, would it be fair to ask if Roy invested all of this > effort, in order to do his best to see that I was -exposed- to > repercussions? Well, yes, absolutely. I *wanted* these repercussions to occur. Specifically, I wanted people to: A) Not simply take your commentary on the post (ignoring for the moment your conflict of interest) as the only possible viewpoint on it; B) Know that you are the author of the post. In other words, I wanted to expose you because I wanted truth to come out. I admit this. Hell, I'm proud of it. > I'm not saying Roy Rapoport is affiliated with either the JDL or the ADL > (and neither is he); Then heavens, why bring it up? Saying "I'm not saying my opponent is a wife-beater and a child molester, but ... " is the oldest, cheapest trick in the book. I'm not saying you are ... well, a whole bunch of things. But I'm not going to say them. > but I do note that when I Google "rapoport +oracle" > I get a lot of hits ... and when I Google "rapoport +synogogue" I > quickly learn that there are a lot of rabbis named, well, Rapoport. I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you! I have to admit that this makes me seriously consider the possibility I may be Jewish. And clearly, my religion has something to do with this. Richard, seriously, what do you hope to gain here? Do you honestly think the vast majority of the BayLISA audience considers the fact you brought up my religion as a (veiled, again) attack against me to be in your favour? Of course I'm Jewish. I noted this elsewhere. I was also born and raised in Israel. I also left Israel late enough in my life that ... well, I'm not saying I work for the Mossad, mind you (and neither are you). > (Truely, the Internet is a wonderful source of unbiased answers to > simple questions. No evasions or twisting of words - just straight > information from as many sources as care to share what they know, > freely. You are free to pick and choose your sources from a wealth of > alternatives, and to decide for yourself.) Yes, it's pretty cool. That's why I like it so much -- it tends to help me find facts to corroborate people's claims sometimes, when I wonder if they're just a little bit insane. > Shalom, Roy. If you're as serious about the truth as you allege, you > should be zeroing in on the fact that Oracle elicited a company called > Asset Security And Protection (ASAP) to contact me, under false > pretences, alleged to be a company called ASAP Employment Services, and > then to lie, under oath, in San Mateo Superior Court ... instead of > trying to expose -me- for reporting it to my peers, or my government. > (Unless you don't want them to know, that is.) I'm not trying to expose you for reporting it. I'm trying to expose you for A) Making wild accusations without any factual backup; and B) Lying by ommission about your pushing of these facts on this mailing list. I don't care about Oracle. I think Oracle is scum, I think Larry Ellison is scum, and I'm not disputing that he engages in behavior that is, well, scummy. > And if you're not serious about the truth of the matter, well, then, you > just threw a stone at me; perhaps trying to see if you could elicit the > same pack behavior, from a group of your peers. There's a difference -- though I'll accept you aren't necessarily equipped to perceive it -- between throwing stones and pulling the curtain aside to expose the rather short and dumpy little man. > Have you considered defenestration, as a hobby? You show great promise. I'm not trying to throw you through a window. I'm trying to show you the door. Be well, -roy, growing amused From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Mon Jul 14 22:35:47 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 01:35:47 -0400 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <20030715012039.GN26899@linuxmafia.com> References: <3F133943.9050409@coldstone.com> <20030714234049.GD13347@nag.inorganic.org> <20030715012039.GN26899@linuxmafia.com> Message-ID: <20030715053547.GA12931@snew.com> p Quoting Rick Moen (rick at linuxmafia.com): > Quoting Roy S. Rapoport (rsr at inorganic.org): > > > I've had fabulous luck with SpamAssassin on my UNIX mail server. What does > > the NS7.1 client do with spam? How does it identify it? How configurable is > > it? > > I was just looking over my SpamAssassin setup. Although one can > integrate SA into one's MTA (e.g., http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html), > I instead have it as a system facility that users can apply via their > MDA (procmail) if they so wish. I'm using it with a milter and sendmail. There are a couple out there. Anything > 10 gets blocked. Anything > 5, gets tagged. My users can use what they want to filter based on the X-Spam-Level: header. I recommend them filtering all tagged mail into a "quarantine" folder. In the "we are using real mail" realm, sieve can filter. In most MUAs, you can filter as you get them. Just cause it's tagged doesn't mean it's spam. In my work place, we're evaluating a number of MTA level or hosted spam solutions. There is a festival of options from a festival of companies. Me? I'm just waiting for a spammer to be up for many years in jail and get the option to be caned on TV (FOX, inevitably). From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Tue Jul 15 04:38:26 2003 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 04:38:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Antispam - employee's In-Reply-To: <20030715020126.GP26899@linuxmafia.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Rick Moen wrote: > Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > > > we(i) don't want tens/hundreds/thousands of users playing with their > > own flavor of spam filters ?? > > And why not? It's their mail. the other people in the corp has other things to do than to fiddle with their spam filters ... - most all spam should be removed within a few seconds of work on the mta ... instead of few seconds or days of spam filter fiddling at each client's box ( desktop, laptop, home, traveling laptop, etc ) whether corp email is "their mail" or corp mail and corp IP is a separate issue ... - i say anything done at company time, company property and company topics/subjects is company's responsibilities and if they say, they didnt get an important email from tom at some customer site.. than what broke ??? - the mta or the clients additional spam filters ? - if other people at the corp got emails from the same customer site at roughly the same time, than the client's additional spam filters is suspect ... just trying to prevent "it works for me and fails for tom, dick and harry" and there's lots of individuals - i prefer the it works for all or fails for all approach instead of tweeking for each user lots of various email policy ... for corporations to implement c ya alvin From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Tue Jul 15 09:46:47 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 12:46:47 -0400 Subject: Antispam - empowering employees Message-ID: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> I'll try to respond in complete sentences and make presumptions on meaning where you don't bother with pronouns, verbs and what not. Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Rick Moen wrote: > > Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > > > > > we(i) don't want tens/hundreds/thousands of users playing with their > > > own flavor of spam filters ?? > > > > And why not? It's their mail. > > the other people in the corp has other things to do than > to fiddle with their spam filters ... > - most all spam should be removed within a few seconds of > work on the mta ... instead of few seconds or days > of spam filter fiddling at each client's box > ( desktop, laptop, home, traveling laptop, etc ) You act like there's a clear delineation of spam/not-spam. Yup, and supporting 10,000 people where we tag mail > 5 (spam assassin) but some people don't want their Costco newletter tagged and quarantined. We can mutter "not work related mail" on those news letters, but from Staples or from airlines, it often IS work related mail. So block at a high, certain threshold. Tag at a lower threshold. And quarantine at a certain level. Some of my users get offended at ANY swear words in their mail and expect that to be filtered. Other users regularly swear at each other in mail (sales guys, lawyers ... "What is this *#&$ that you put in this last contract?...."). When my users are all the same, I can set the controls to be there same. That's not my world. User controls are ESSENTIAL to 1) let users make decisions on their thresholds of tolerance. 2) alleviate having to hire lots of people to review several hundred thousand quarantined messages each month 3) give users a sense that they have some control of their mail Your attitude harkens me back to that of old mainframers. When I was doing summer database programming on a PC. I needed to take wads and wads of accounting data from 200 sites and do some math on it. I asked for access to the big computer for this. The mainframe guys offered me 2 languages I didn't know, (SNOBOL and something bizarre - I was well versed in VMS, CDC and other large OSs at the time). They listened to what I needed and came back with "it will cost $40,000 to do this." My boss said, "thanks, but that's too much and we're done." "What!?" I'd been looking to spend a day tossing up a FORTRAN program or something (I'd use perl and it would take 50 minutes on my laptop now). I wasn't looking for a room of programmers So, in their three week requirement-gathering phase, I broke the data up into floppy sized chunks and carried them to various machines and ran my program on 8 machines at night. It meant loading them up at 5:30PM and getting in early-ish to get the data off their harddrives and back to me. It did it on PC-XTs with a compiling dBase package. It got the job done. It took me very little actual time on my part. Gather results in the morning and dump it on my machine, create the next floppies for that night. If you treat your users like fools, you can find yourself without users. PCs replaced desktop mainframe use in a large way because the USER was able to get work done without dealing with the computational priesthood. Windows, in a large part, has replaced Unix because people feel that it's approachable and, in a large way, someone with not so much knowledge of computers can put up a Windows Server and install a couple packages and have Exchange for cheap. They think it scales; they think it's cheap; they think it's secure. They are wrong on all counts. But I have yet to see a friendly, say, IMAP server, even if they get Unix up, targetted at sites with < 5000 users. That's fewer that 2% of the businesses out there. So if you want to distance yourself from your users, if you WANT your users to feel helpless and business to feel that "with this solution, it depends on our consultant" then keep it up. However, the products in the rapidly growing anti-spam arena belie this trend. Me? I look for tool that make my users more powerful. When I can empower my users, but at the same time manage the mail and manage THEIR configurations (don't ever let them turn off anti-virus scanning, but let them run their own whitelists and turn up thresholds for things that THEY deem spam for them. > whether corp email is "their mail" or corp mail and corp IP is > a separate issue ... > - i say anything done at company time, company property > and company topics/subjects is company's responsibilities Yup, and I say that I don't hire people because they can type email, I hire them becuase they have skills that my company needs. Email is an important tool for many of these people to work effectively and keep my company competitive. My talents in adapting email systems to do what my users needed have meant that my company has won 8 figure deals by being faster and better than our competition was. > and if they say, they didnt get an important email from tom at some > customer site.. then what broke ??? Hey! It's logged. "let me use the web interface to our spam tool's user interface. Oh here! You added him to your blacklist." I got these calls ALL THE TIME even before filtering. "I sent something to foo, they didn't get it. Why not?" We'd spend several hours per week (around 0.3FTE) chasing these down. Inevitably, we traced it all the way though our system and out or all the way into proprietary mail system. Best tool? Something that throws logs into a database and web i'face that lets users seek mail to/from them and lets non-unix mail admins seek data without calling me. Empower the users. > - the mta or the clients additional spam filters ? > > - if other people at the corp got emails from the same customer > site at roughly the same time, than the client's additional > spam filters is suspect ... > > just trying to prevent "it works for me and fails for tom, dick and harry" > and there's lots of individuals > - i prefer the it works for all or fails for all approach instead > of tweaking for each user Gee, and isn't this system admin 101? > lots of various email policy ... for corporations to implement I'd rather not give people green screens and VMail. I want my users to have a rich email experience. I'll embrace HTML mail as the choice has been proprietary mail and word attachments. I'll embrace filtering mail for our own protections - external image references should be stripped, HTML code should be stripped. Use of Outlook should be a fireable offence (saw that once to my delight at a VERY large NYC bank that did the math on recovering from Outlook attacks and viruses). I'll embrace giving my users tools to make their work more productive and keeping mail they don't want out of their face. From afactor at afactor.com Tue Jul 15 10:05:19 2003 From: afactor at afactor.com (Alan Factor) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 10:05:19 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, CIA & the Jewish Defense League In-Reply-To: <20030715051056.GB27188@nag.inorganic.org> References: <3F1338AD.9010804@pacbell.net> <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> <3F12BA3D.2090405@pacbell.net> <20030715051056.GB27188@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 22:10:56 -0700, Roy S. Rapoport wrote: > I'm not saying you are ... well, a whole bunch of things. But I'm not > going to say them. I admire your restraint. Alan From scott at sonic.net Tue Jul 15 10:51:06 2003 From: scott at sonic.net (Scott Doty) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 10:51:06 -0700 Subject: Antispam - empowering employees In-Reply-To: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> Message-ID: <20030715175105.GA1933@sonic.net> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 12:46:47PM -0400, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > If you treat your users like fools, you can find yourself without users. Indeed. > Windows, in a large part, has replaced Unix because people feel > that it's approachable and, in a large way, someone with not so > much knowledge of computers can put up a Windows Server and install > a couple packages and have Exchange for cheap. They think it > scales; they think it's cheap; they think it's secure. They are > wrong on all counts. But I have yet to see a friendly, say, IMAP > server, even if they get Unix up, targetted at sites with < 5000 users. > That's fewer that 2% of the businesses out there. I thought you were crashing and burning for a minute -- but you recovered nicely. ;) I'll cut to the chase and just say that here, we use Spamassassin with a web interface where people can adjust their scores. I can't see how it could be any other way. -Scott (the CTO at Sonic.net) From star at starshine.org Tue Jul 15 11:10:46 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 11:10:46 -0700 Subject: Antispam - employee's In-Reply-To: References: <20030715020126.GP26899@linuxmafia.com> Message-ID: <20030715181046.GE3502@starshine.org> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 04:38:26AM -0700, Alvin Oga wrote: > > On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Rick Moen wrote: > > > Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > > > > > we(i) don't want tens/hundreds/thousands of users playing with their > > > own flavor of spam filters ?? > > > > And why not? It's their mail. > > the other people in the corp has other things to do than > to fiddle with their spam filters ... > - most all spam should be removed within a few seconds of > work on the mta ... instead of few seconds or days > of spam filter fiddling at each client's box > ( desktop, laptop, home, traveling laptop, etc ) macro logic can be applied. It may well be that anything offering to sell something to the engineering department should be routed to a purchasing manager of some sort. That this will include numerous obvious spam as well as vendors trying to sneak in via a backdoor^Wfriendly introduction, is immaterial. But unless your corp is big enough to have split down to sub-MTAs per dept, this is something you are not going to inflict on the top brass who have purchasing powers. That any given person's "personal filters" may be administered by a geek^IT staffer assigned to their department instead of the person themselves, is a feature for us, and a friendlier interface to the computer for that soul who has other work to do. > whether corp email is "their mail" or corp mail and corp IP is > a separate issue ... > - i say anything done at company time, company property > and company topics/subjects is company's responsibilities But the company is not an amorphous blob; different plans need to be applied at different places. Even for companies who feel this way. The alternative is that anyone who's allowed to mail inward (they beat the MTA) may bother anyone in the company equally. > and if they say, they didnt get an important email from tom at some > customer site.. than what broke ??? > - the mta or the clients additional spam filters ? If you suspect your MTA, time to read the mail logs :) That's why perosnal spam filters should refile, not be trusted to junk things on their own. I understand it can be even trickier to debug mta-side filtering, unless it's as plain as a boolean, they are allowed or not. But that's not enough; context means something, and having either a mail agent or an mua-level filter (builtin or not) understand that context takes time. Go to far and you've made an AI that needs retraining the minute you hire someone new into your department or company. Me, I find it easier to debug procmail at an individual account, where the log isn't insanely huge. > - if other people at the corp got emails from the same customer > site at roughly the same time, than the client's additional > spam filters is suspect ... True. > just trying to prevent "it works for me and fails for tom, dick and harry" > and there's lots of individuals > - i prefer the it works for all or fails for all approach instead > of tweeking for each user When your site contains 3 valid destinations and maybe a dozen addresses you can do this. It doesn't scale up very well. And then we have this "L" in BayLISA... . | . Heather Stern | star at starshine.org --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org ' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078 From star at starshine.org Tue Jul 15 10:50:56 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 10:50:56 -0700 Subject: Antispam In-Reply-To: <200307150107.h6F17rcv052430@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <3F134869.9010101@coldstone.com> <200307150107.h6F17rcv052430@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20030715175056.GD3502@starshine.org> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 06:07:53PM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote: > >Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:18:49 -0700 > >From: Alberto Begliomini > >To: Alvin Oga > >CC: BayLISA > >Subject: Re: Antispam > > >Right. Except that if you are travelling, or at Starbucks, or anywhere > >where you do not have control over the MTA an email client with > >anti-spam features would help. Furthermore, this is a nice feature for > >people who are not system administrators and whose ISP's do not offer > >anti-spam features. > > Huh??!? Since when does where *I* am have anything to do with where my > MTA is? Here, here. That is, my mail client is always "here" whether I am or not - this workstation is online, and I ssh into it. I use fetchmail to get my mail from the mailhub, in a way which pushes it past my individual procmail filter. If my own workstation is down for some reason (or I'm blocking the outside world to it, maybe a packetfilter test) I can ssh into the hub. If this is gonna be a long term problem, there's a host elsewhere I have an acocunt on, which it would be safe for me to use to keep some pop mail. pop-over-ssh of course :) Because coding up an AI is something I haven't made time for but I don't trust anyone else's opinion but my own about what is or isn't spam, I don't use things like spamassassion, junkfilter, or their kindred on my own box. I do test with them, and aid others with them, so that I understand enough to know how they may want to customize. > Also, I run my own MTA at home. :-} (Generally, when I update the > "access.db" at home, I also do so for www.baylisa.org, and vice versa.) I have occasionally lifted the block list from there, as a reliable source of info on the truly recalcitrant. Not too sure about nailing whole netblocks, but it's a great start otherwise! My scheme treats my mailfilters like a secretary; I give it really basic instructions about prioritizing and classification, as represented by the folders things are put in. This is about the same as I do with paper mail before opening it. I have verrrry few things ever truly devnull'd; this would be analogous to advising a business receptionist that if a particular vendor type shows up, instead of giving him the "nobody's expecting you, please wait" spiel you should silent-alarm the cops and have him hauled off. But yes, there are a few. For such misbheaviors, blocking at the MTA is the right answer; it's the equivalent of the door to the building, instead of the door to my office. Only one person disliking the fellow isn't enough to have him hauled off in chains; folks have a right to determine what their likes and dislikes are on their own. But if everyone there can't stand the fellow, sorry, the door won't show him the way in. . | . Heather Stern | star at starshine.org --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org ' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078 From beacker at misc.com Tue Jul 15 11:48:06 2003 From: beacker at misc.com (beacker at misc.com) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 11:48:06 -0700 Subject: Antispam - employee's In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 15 Jul 2003 11:10:46 PDT." <20030715181046.GE3502@starshine.org> Message-ID: <200307151848.h6FIm65R020942@ns.misc.com> I've noticed one element missing from the decision for whether to do spam filtering at the MTA or the user's mail interface, bandwidth availability. If you are connected to a high speed network then transferring every message to the users mail application poses no real issue. If on the otherhand the pipe relatively narrow (56kb/sec) then not having to transfer the mail across this interface would indicate the filtering be done at the MTA to limit the amount of downloaded data. Personally I'm using SpamBouncer for this task. Though I need to add in the additional Bayesian filtering to help it make some better choices about which messages to allow. Brad Eacker (beacker at misc.com) From fscked at pacbell.net Tue Jul 15 12:34:55 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 12:34:55 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, and Institutional Prejudice Against Outsiders References: <3F1338AD.9010804@pacbell.net> <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> <3F12BA3D.2090405@pacbell.net> <20030715051056.GB27188@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <3F14575F.1040208@pacbell.net> Alan Factor wrote: > On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 22:10:56 -0700, Roy S. Rapoport > wrote: > >> I'm not saying you are ... well, a whole bunch of things. But I'm not >> going to say them. > > > I admire your restraint. > > Alan > Alan, Roy ... I pity your ignorance ... and your prejudice. The two are often found together. Consider the following: (1) I have been a court-appointed foster parent for the City & County of San Francisco, for several years. (2) My foster child is half Negro, and half Indian. (3) My wife is Oriental. (4) My children are a delicious blend of Hungarian, Cherokee, Cantonese, Irish, Scottish, German and Semitic. In other words, they are Americans. If anyone thinks that I am stupid enough to pre-judge people by their genetic or cultural background, they are simply projecting their own worst personal characteristics upon a convenient scapegoat. I encourage you to look in the mirror and contemplate the basis of your judgement. Is it based upon fear of the unknown, and ignorance? Or is based upon objective facts? If there are objective facts, let's hear them. If there are no objective facts, then perhaps you should consider discussing your prejudices with a trained professional whom can help you understand your cognitive dissonance and its sources. Thanks !! -- richard From benjy at feen.com Tue Jul 15 12:56:54 2003 From: benjy at feen.com (Benjamin Feen) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 12:56:54 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, and Institutional Prejudice Against Outsiders In-Reply-To: <3F14575F.1040208@pacbell.net> References: <3F1338AD.9010804@pacbell.net> <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> <3F12BA3D.2090405@pacbell.net> <20030715051056.GB27188@nag.inorganic.org> <3F14575F.1040208@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20030715195654.GD91@pianosa.catch22.org> VI! Benjamin Feen benjamin(AT)feen.com http://www.monkeybagel.com From rflii at speakeasy.net Tue Jul 15 13:23:41 2003 From: rflii at speakeasy.net (Ron Leedy) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:23:41 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, and Institutional Prejudice Against Outsiders In-Reply-To: <3F14575F.1040208@pacbell.net> Message-ID: Is it only me or has this thread gone way beyond civility and relevance to this group? -Ron Leedy From pmm at igtc.com Tue Jul 15 13:28:41 2003 From: pmm at igtc.com (Paul M. Moriarty) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:28:41 -0700 Subject: Please don't feed the trolls... Message-ID: <20030715202841.GB4966@igtc.igtc.com> ...even though it can be incredibly funny to watch them eat From ahorn at deorth.org Tue Jul 15 13:30:51 2003 From: ahorn at deorth.org (ahorn at deorth.org) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:30:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Leroy, Oracle, and Institutional Prejudice Against Outsiders In-Reply-To: Message-ID: No.. it's you.. I like getting my Jerry Springer feed in email... it's much more efficient to my lifestyle. ;) On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Ron Leedy wrote: >Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:23:41 -0700 >From: Ron Leedy >Cc: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: RE: Leroy, Oracle, and Institutional Prejudice Against Outsiders > >Is it only me or has this thread gone way beyond civility and relevance to >this group? > >-Ron Leedy > > From sigje at sigje.org Tue Jul 15 13:39:13 2003 From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:39:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: VI and casual meetups In-Reply-To: <20030715195654.GD91@pianosa.catch22.org> Message-ID: Yay for vi! (or did I miss something?) On a different note, is there anyone interested in a group meetup on the weekends at all to talk about system administration, or anything else interesting and fun? Not anything in stone with power speakers, but just getting together and talking? I'm relatively new to the Bay Area, and I'm generally really tired during the week with working full time, as well as being a student full time, so I never seem to meet any of the fun people who frequent these lists. I'm more likely to drive a little further on the weekend than during the week. I'm really happy the PENlug group has been started, but it's only one option and I missed the meeting for this month having caught a summer cold. I'm sort of thinking of a BOF type thing, where we could pick different topics, or problems and discuss. What are the options for this kind of thing? Restaurant? Meeting at a house? University somewhere? (Caltech had two different options in that a spare room could be arranged, or the library had a conference room available that you could just sign up for) Jennifer From pmm at igtc.com Tue Jul 15 14:11:36 2003 From: pmm at igtc.com (Paul M. Moriarty) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:11:36 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? Message-ID: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> and now for something completely different... I've been away from this end of the biz for a while, but working in a small corporate HQ office means I get to wear many hats. Anyway, in the south bay, offsite data storage business, who's good and who isn't these days? I'm talking teeny quantities (2 DLT tapes/month), so I'd prefer dealing with a smaller, more local supplier as opposed to a monster like Iron Mountain. Years ago, I dealt with a small, women-owned biz in SF that I really liked, but I'll be darned if I can remember their name (and who knows if they're even still in business). Thanks in advance. - Paul - From star at starshine.org Tue Jul 15 14:25:26 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:25:26 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, and Institutional Prejudice Against Outsiders In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030715212526.GB4964@starshine.org> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:30:51PM -0700, ahorn at deorth.org wrote: > > No.. it's you.. > > I like getting my Jerry Springer feed in email... it's much more efficient > to my lifestyle. > > ;) Don't feed the trolls, don't watch them on TV either. Ob sysadmin: refiling mail as junk on too simple a regex might accidentally block things. E.g. if I tell procmail to send mail containing "Oracle" straight to the bottom, I might miss out on some important humor from a usegroup notable, or my regular news feeds. . | . Heather Stern | star at starshine.org --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org ' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078 From michael at halligan.org Tue Jul 15 14:30:03 2003 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:30:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: If there were justice in our industry ... Message-ID: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/print.asp?id=855 -- ------------------- Michael T. Halligan Chief Geek Halligan Infrastructure Designs. http://www.halligan.org/ 2250 Jerrold Ave #11 San Francisco, CA 94124-1012 (415) 724.7998 From fscked at pacbell.net Tue Jul 15 14:32:23 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:32:23 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <3F1472E7.1090700@pacbell.net> "... offsite data storage business ... I'm talking teeny quantities (2 DLT tapes/month) ..." Buy a fireproof safe and install it at one of the company executive's homes? -- richard Paul M. Moriarty wrote: >and now for something completely different... > >I've been away from this end of the biz for a while, but working in a small >corporate HQ office means I get to wear many hats. Anyway, in the south >bay, offsite data storage business, who's good and who isn't these days? >I'm talking teeny quantities (2 DLT tapes/month), so I'd prefer dealing >with a smaller, more local supplier as opposed to a monster like Iron >Mountain. > >Years ago, I dealt with a small, women-owned biz in SF that I really liked, >but I'll be darned if I can remember their name (and who knows if they're >even still in business). > >Thanks in advance. > >- Paul - > > > From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Tue Jul 15 14:07:32 2003 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:07:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: VI and casual meetups In-Reply-To: Message-ID: hi ya am all game ... any of the above and than other things like shooting pool or scrapping old pcs and make new ones out of it and give away to foo-bar non-profits c ya alvin 650-xxx-yyyy ( need a good unused ph# too ) - yea... i know... don't top post .. ( for the top-post-police :-) ) On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Jennifer Davis wrote: > > Yay for vi! (or did I miss something?) > > On a different note, is there anyone interested in a group meetup on the > weekends at all to talk about system administration, or anything else > interesting and fun? Not anything in stone with power speakers, but just > getting together and talking? I'm relatively new to the Bay Area, and I'm > generally really tired during the week with working full time, as well as > being a student full time, so I never seem to meet any of the fun people > who frequent these lists. I'm more likely to drive a little further on > the weekend than during the week. I'm really happy the PENlug group has > been started, but it's only one option and I missed the meeting for this > month having caught a summer cold. I'm sort of thinking of a BOF type > thing, where we could pick different topics, or problems and discuss. > > What are the options for this kind of thing? Restaurant? Meeting at a > house? University somewhere? (Caltech had two different options in that a > spare room could be arranged, or the library had a conference room > available that you could just sign up for) > From star at starshine.org Tue Jul 15 14:53:03 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:53:03 -0700 Subject: Antispam - employee's In-Reply-To: <200307151848.h6FIm65R020942@ns.misc.com> References: <20030715181046.GE3502@starshine.org> <200307151848.h6FIm65R020942@ns.misc.com> Message-ID: <20030715215303.GC4964@starshine.org> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 11:48:06AM -0700, beacker at misc.com wrote: > I've noticed one element missing from the decision for whether to > do spam filtering at the MTA or the user's mail interface, bandwidth > availability. If you are connected to a high speed network then > transferring every message to the users mail application poses no real > issue. If on the otherhand the pipe relatively narrow (56kb/sec) then > not having to transfer the mail across this interface would indicate > the filtering be done at the MTA to limit the amount of downloaded data. There is also a middle road; some POP clients support fetching only the subjects, and letting users mark them alternately for deletion without-opening or for proper fetching. If one has procmail or somethign else with filtering smarts for an LDA, then the filtering could all be done "at the server" - but still at the user's behest, and merely to add markup headers about whatever the decision was. Then your favorite mode of POP fetching could apply - and your local mailer merely has to handle a simple state machine. Which means that people whose MUA's are underpowered in the filtration department don't have to totally miss out. > Personally I'm using SpamBouncer for this task. Though I need to > add in the additional Bayesian filtering to help it make some better > choices about which messages to allow. > Brad Eacker (beacker at misc.com) Is the gal who runs SpamBouncer keeping up? I knew someone who was using it for a while, but switched to other styles as she took longer and longer between updates. . | . Heather Stern | star at starshine.org --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org ' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078 From hans at wwc.com Tue Jul 15 15:22:11 2003 From: hans at wwc.com (Hans Jacobsen) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 15:22:11 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <3F1472E7.1090700@pacbell.net> References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030715151833.00a84150@mail.wwc.com> When I've looked at fireproofing requirements for tape media in the past, the temperature requirements were much more stringent. Paper may be ok up to say 350 degrees F while your tape is ruined at over maybe... 125 degrees. Make sure you meet your requirements. -hej Hans Jacobsen At 02:32 PM 7/15/2003 -0700, richard childers / kg6hac wrote: >"... offsite data storage business ... I'm talking teeny quantities (2 DLT >tapes/month) ..." > >Buy a fireproof safe and install it at one of the company executive's homes? > >-- richard > > >Paul M. Moriarty wrote: > >>and now for something completely different... >>I've been away from this end of the biz for a while, but working in a small >>corporate HQ office means I get to wear many hats. Anyway, in the south >>bay, offsite data storage business, who's good and who isn't these days? >>I'm talking teeny quantities (2 DLT tapes/month), so I'd prefer dealing >>with a smaller, more local supplier as opposed to a monster like Iron >>Mountain. >> >>Years ago, I dealt with a small, women-owned biz in SF that I really >>liked, but I'll be darned if I can remember their name (and who knows if >>they're even still in business). >> >>Thanks in advance. >> >>- Paul - >> >> > > -hej Hans Jacobsen cell 408 828 3228 YM ID hejish From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Tue Jul 15 15:07:37 2003 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 15:07:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Antispam - empowering employees In-Reply-To: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> Message-ID: hi chuck On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > I'll try to respond in complete sentences and make presumptions > on meaning where you don't bother with pronouns, verbs and what not. Thanx for the reminder, and i think "the" is missing the above sentence ? and the sentence ends with "not" ... humm ... ( it's entertaining ) > You act like there's a clear delineation of spam/not-spam. yes, that is my assumption, it either is spam or is not and yes, some people think a specific email is spam while another user does not. but, if one of the users did not ask or want that email, it is spam, even if its required/daily email for the other user Everybody's "what is a spam" is different I'm mere;y stating that for the most part, - most all spams come from foreign addresses - most all spams come from non-existent senders accounts - most all spams come from mail servers withour reverse dns - most all spams come from automated spam-ware - some spams try to address non-existent recipients - shall i go on ... and on ... ?? - the company should already have a email/spam policy - all of the above can be filtered in a few minutes and never hits the users and is not even stored in the mta nor forwarded for local delivery - spams should be bounced back to the sender, not filtered after you have received it in /var/spool/mail - most all spams generate/create additional loss of productivity than otherwise if that email didn't arrive at all ( obviously mailing list content/replies are different ( and even funnier if one subscribes and than blocks it ( w/ their spamfilters > but some people don't want their Costco newletter tagged > and quarantined. people get it because they are members and it shouldnt be going to anybody else > We can mutter "not work related mail" on those > news letters, but from Staples or from airlines, it often IS work > related mail. yup... if said activity is part of work > So block at a high, certain threshold. Tag at a lower threshold. > And quarantine at a certain level. that threshold is what the problem is ... a random number that is why you dont know if something is spam or not based on a random number ... > Some of my users get offended at ANY swear words in their mail and > expect that to be filtered. Other users regularly swear at each > other in mail (sales guys, lawyers ... "What is this *#&$ that you > put in this last contract?...."). When my users are all the same, > I can set the controls to be there same. That's not my world. professionalism or lack of ?? or just fed up with it and revert back to "normal self" > User controls are ESSENTIAL to > 1) let users make decisions on their thresholds of tolerance. after it gets pass the global corp spam filter > 2) alleviate having to hire lots of people to review several hundred > thousand quarantined messages each month there should be ZERO quaranteed messages > 3) give users a sense that they have some control of their mail their job is to do work .. not figure out how to configure their spam filters differently than the other 100 or 1000 users > If you treat your users like fools, you can find yourself without users. i'd be purrfectly happy baby sitting machines ... and you all probably agree to keep users away from me .. :-) and i rather NOT deal with 100 or 1000 requests of the same issues already fixed by a previous request/bug report > server, even if they get Unix up, targetted at sites with < 5000 users. > That's fewer that 2% of the businesses out there. does that mean the 98% of business have more than 5,000 users ?? or that 2% of the business have more than 5,000 users ... i hate double/triple negatives :-) > So if you want to distance yourself from your users, yes definitely... yes .. yes ... no users for me to be nice and polite to and worry about grammer and hurting someone's feelings > if you WANT > your users to feel helpless and business that is precisely why i dont want to deal with users ... jump to tooo many extreme conclusions > to feel that "with this > solution, it depends on our consultant" then keep it up. and more importantly... it depends on corporate policy > However, the products in the rapidly growing anti-spam arena > belie this trend. it's a mine field.. > Me? I look for tool that make my users more powerful. me ... sendmail w/ basic spam rules gets rid of 99.9% of the spam and have false positives .. and nothing (spam-on-hold)for me to go look at more than one > When I can empower my users, but at the same time manage the mail > and manage THEIR configurations (don't ever let them turn off > anti-virus scanning, but let them run their own whitelists and > turn up thresholds for things that THEY deem spam for them. there are those that want to have that control ... good ... and for those that want it handled by corporate "tech supp" ... you need both ... > Yup, and I say that I don't hire people because they can type email, > I hire them becuase they have skills that my company needs. Email > is an important tool for many of these people to work effectively > and keep my company competitive. My talents in adapting email systems > to do what my users needed have meant that my company has won 8 figure > deals by being faster and better than our competition was. good .. that's "productivity" > > and if they say, they didnt get an important email from tom at some > > customer site.. then what broke ??? > > Hey! It's logged. that fact that the email was lost or put on hold for review is unacceptable to me ... > I got these calls ALL THE TIME even before filtering. "I sent something > to foo, they didn't get it. Why not?" We'd spend several hours too much lost productivity in my book > per week (around 0.3FTE) chasing these down. Inevitably, we traced it > all the way though our system and out or all the way into proprietary > mail system. > > Best tool? no such thing ?? > Something that throws logs into a database and web i'face > that lets users seek mail to/from them and lets non-unix mail admins > seek data without calling me. > Empower the users. yup ... if they have the skillset to do that task ... or willing to learn .. ( even if its spam filters and virus filters ) but don't slip schedules > > - i prefer the it works for all or fails for all approach instead > > of tweaking for each user > > Gee, and isn't this system admin 101? you will always 99.99% of the time have things tweeked for each user ... no matter what the corp rules says - keeping the time available to handle 50,100,200 users on a daily basis takes you from sys admin 101 to sys admin "easy as pie", how would you like it today ? > > lots of various email policy ... for corporations to implement > > I'd rather not give people green screens and VMail. I want my hummm ... corp email policy better not give any green screens or missing/lost emails > I'll embrace giving my users tools to make their work more productive > and keeping mail they don't want out of their face. yup.. thus the trick question .. "what email should be kept away" and which emails can be lost or put on hold till somebody gets a round tuit - lost or delayed emails is not acceptable to me c ya alvin From ahorn at deorth.org Tue Jul 15 15:32:28 2003 From: ahorn at deorth.org (ahorn at deorth.org) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 15:32:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030715151833.00a84150@mail.wwc.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Hans Jacobsen wrote: >Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 15:22:11 -0700 >From: Hans Jacobsen >To: Paul M. Moriarty >Cc: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: Re: Offsite tape storage? > >When I've looked at fireproofing requirements for tape media in the past, >the temperature requirements were much more stringent. >Paper may be ok up to say 350 degrees F while your tape is ruined at over >maybe... 125 degrees. Make sure you meet your requirements. >-hej I think for DLT it's about 105 (according to the DLT case IIRC from the last time I had an A/C disaster ;) Just buy a normal safe for security purposes. You've satisfied the fire 'disaster prevention' requirement to some extent by having two copies of your data. If that doesn't feel safe enough, have two offsites in different locations. From windsor at warthog.com Tue Jul 15 19:27:44 2003 From: windsor at warthog.com (Rob Windsor) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:27:44 -0500 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:11:36 PDT." <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <200307160230.h6G2UIZ21769@warthog.com> On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:11:36 PDT, verily did "Paul M. Moriarty" write: > I've been away from this end of the biz for a while, but working in a small > corporate HQ office means I get to wear many hats. Anyway, in the south > bay, offsite data storage business, who's good and who isn't these days? > I'm talking teeny quantities (2 DLT tapes/month), so I'd prefer dealing > with a smaller, more local supplier as opposed to a monster like Iron > Mountain. > Years ago, I dealt with a small, women-owned biz in SF that I really liked, > but I'll be darned if I can remember their name (and who knows if they're > even still in business). There is no such thing as "offsite storage business" in Israel, so our IT dept there rents a bank safety deposit box and makes a visit once-a-month to swap tapes. Rob++ ---------------------------------------- Internet: windsor at warthog.com __o Life: Rob at Carrollton.Texas.USA.Earth _`\<,_ (_)/ (_) The weather is here, wish you were beautiful. From david at catwhisker.org Tue Jul 15 19:37:10 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 19:37:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <200307160230.h6G2UIZ21769@warthog.com> Message-ID: <200307160237.h6G2bAfv058485@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >To: baylisa at baylisa.org >From: Rob Windsor >Subject: Re: Offsite tape storage? >Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:27:44 -0500 >Reply-To: Rob Windsor [I'll try to remember to Cc: baylisa at baylisa.org in spite of that.] >There is no such thing as "offsite storage business" in Israel, so our >IT dept there rents a bank safety deposit box and makes a visit once-a-month >to swap tapes. One potential concern with the use of such an approach is just when you would have access to the material. It may be a good fit for your needs; it may not -- but it's something to decide ahead of time. :-} Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From bill at wards.net Tue Jul 15 21:18:06 2003 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:18:06 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> Paul M. Moriarty writes: >and now for something completely different... > >I've been away from this end of the biz for a while, but working in a small >corporate HQ office means I get to wear many hats. Anyway, in the south >bay, offsite data storage business, who's good and who isn't these days? >I'm talking teeny quantities (2 DLT tapes/month), so I'd prefer dealing >with a smaller, more local supplier as opposed to a monster like Iron >Mountain. My bank charges $35 per year for a safe deposit box. Sounds about the right size for your needs. --Bill. -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMER, CLOSED COURSE. DO NOT ATTEMPT. From pmm at igtc.com Tue Jul 15 21:46:28 2003 From: pmm at igtc.com (Paul M. Moriarty) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:46:28 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> Message-ID: <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> William R Ward writes: [...] > > My bank charges $35 per year for a safe deposit box. Sounds about the > right size for your needs. > Allow me to rephrase. I run IT for a medium-sized, multinational company. I am on the road over 50% of the time. The only presence we have in the US is a small, corporate HQ (20 ppl). In the US, I have a part-time desktop support guy; that's it. Everything else is either outsourced or offshore. I need a tape/data storage company that will come once a month and pick up / drop off 1-2 DLTs and come on an emergency basis as needed. If you know of somebody other than Iron Mountain that you would recommend, I would be grateful if you would pass their name along. Thanks in advance! - Paul - From rsr at inorganic.org Tue Jul 15 23:20:06 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 23:20:06 -0700 Subject: Leroy, Oracle, and Institutional Prejudice Against Outsiders In-Reply-To: <20030715195654.GD91@pianosa.catch22.org> References: <3F1338AD.9010804@pacbell.net> <20030714100238.GA18278@nag.inorganic.org> <3F12BA3D.2090405@pacbell.net> <20030715051056.GB27188@nag.inorganic.org> <3F14575F.1040208@pacbell.net> <20030715195654.GD91@pianosa.catch22.org> Message-ID: <20030716062006.GA25804@nag.inorganic.org> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 12:56:54PM -0700, Benjamin Feen wrote: > VI! I used to be a real jove (light-weight emacs clone) junkie at UC Berkeley. Then, on my first day working for Alberto (hi Alberto!), I had to set up a Solaris box and was shocked, shocked I tell you! to find that jove wasn't included, but vi was. So I became a vi junkie. And then I found vim. vim kicks ass. It's almost as though someone said "I know, lets make a vi that's as powerful and programmable as emacs!" and other people said "well, that doesn't *seem* like a good idea, but lets do it anyway!" Any editor with a programming language can't be half bad. -roy From rsr at inorganic.org Wed Jul 16 00:34:54 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:34:54 -0700 Subject: If there were justice in our industry ... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030716073454.GA25164@nag.inorganic.org> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 02:30:03PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/print.asp?id=855 There were several articles on salon.com recently about the offshoring of IT; someone, in the flurry of letters that responded to them, pointed out that the most expensive Corporate resources -- Management -- are the least likely to get outsourced for cheaper resources, 'for some reason.' This is eerily similar to the argument that CEOs should be paid a lot of money because they take a big risk managing a company, since their fortunes are tied to it, even though it seems that the last person to typically get laid off by a company is the CEO. -roy From jxh at jxh.com Wed Jul 16 06:46:31 2003 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 08:46:31 -0500 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <2147483647.1058345191@[10.9.18.6]> > If you know of somebody other than Iron Mountain that you would > recommend, I would be grateful if you would pass their name along. We've been using DataSafe happily for a few years, but I'm not sure of the prices. They come weekly for us, and exchange a canister that can hold about 10 tapes. From dsmith at FinancialEngines.com Wed Jul 16 07:08:26 2003 From: dsmith at FinancialEngines.com (David Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 07:08:26 -0700 Subject: If there were justice in our industry ... In-Reply-To: <20030716073454.GA25164@nag.inorganic.org> References: <20030716073454.GA25164@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <20030716140826.GC9374@mayhem.pa.fngn.com> Decision makers are rarely going to put themselves at risk. The same holds true for just about anyone in that position. That is human nature. Its been my experience that when the layoffs happen, middle management is at high risk for the axe. I would also put a grain of salt in what Salon writes. Its like saying something on newsmax.com is reliable. (IE political agenda) Market forces are whats best for the long term health of the economy. Societies have proven that protectionism doesn't work. The longer you wait the harder the pain is. Change is painful, but inevitable. And besides outsourcing, what about the current generation of kids that have grown up on computers and are soon to be entering the work force. Some of these 18 yr olds already have a few open-source projects under their belt and I bet they are willing to work longer hours for much less coin than most 30+ programmers. Long and short, being in tech and over a certain age (haven't figured the exact figure yet) you are at risk and should significantly invest in your skill set in order to show value to an organization. Otherwise I think its time to find a new career. Cheers, Dave On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Roy S. Rapoport wrote: > On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 02:30:03PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > > http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/print.asp?id=855 > > There were several articles on salon.com recently about the offshoring of > IT; someone, in the flurry of letters that responded to them, pointed out > that the most expensive Corporate resources -- Management -- are the least > likely to get outsourced for cheaper resources, 'for some reason.' > > This is eerily similar to the argument that CEOs should be paid a lot of > money because they take a big risk managing a company, since their fortunes > are tied to it, even though it seems that the last person to typically get > laid off by a company is the CEO. > > -roy -- David Smith Voice: 650-565-7750 Fax: 650-565-4905 From Brent at greatcircle.com Wed Jul 16 09:14:02 2003 From: Brent at greatcircle.com (Brent Chapman) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 09:14:02 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: At 9:46 PM -0700 7/15/03, Paul M. Moriarty wrote: >William R Ward writes: >[...] >> >> My bank charges $35 per year for a safe deposit box. Sounds about the >> right size for your needs. >> > >Allow me to rephrase. I run IT for a medium-sized, multinational company. >I am on the road over 50% of the time. The only presence we have in the US >is a small, corporate HQ (20 ppl). In the US, I have a part-time desktop >support guy; that's it. Everything else is either outsourced or offshore. Kinda off on a tangent here, but in my experience, office managers or receptionists are usually more reliable about getting the backup tapes taken care of than anybody on the IT staff. To anybody on the IT staff, getting the tapes off-site is a low-priority task, which they let slide whenever they're busy with something else (which is to say, most of the time). To the admin staff, it's just another routine task done on a regular basis, and if they're any good at all it gets taken care of quite reliably. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates, Inc. -- Silicon Valley's IT Infrastructure Experts http://www.greatcircle.com/ +1 650 962 0841 From fscked at pacbell.net Wed Jul 16 08:05:47 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 08:05:47 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <3F1569CB.8010605@pacbell.net> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22offsite+storage+vendor%22 Paul M. Moriarty wrote: >William R Ward writes: >[...] > > >>My bank charges $35 per year for a safe deposit box. Sounds about the >>right size for your needs. >> >> >> > >Allow me to rephrase. I run IT for a medium-sized, multinational company. >I am on the road over 50% of the time. The only presence we have in the US >is a small, corporate HQ (20 ppl). In the US, I have a part-time desktop >support guy; that's it. Everything else is either outsourced or offshore. > >I need a tape/data storage company that will come once a month and pick up / >drop off 1-2 DLTs and come on an emergency basis as needed. > >If you know of somebody other than Iron Mountain that you would recommend, I >would be grateful if you would pass their name along. > >Thanks in advance! > >- Paul - > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pmm at igtc.com Wed Jul 16 09:58:29 2003 From: pmm at igtc.com (Paul M. Moriarty) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 09:58:29 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <3F1569CB.8010605@pacbell.net> References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> <3F1569CB.8010605@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20030716165829.GF3612@igtc.igtc.com> richard childers / kg6hac writes: > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22offsite+storage+vendor%22 > > Been there... no personal recommendations by sysadmin-types, IIRC From david at catwhisker.org Wed Jul 16 10:22:06 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 10:22:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <20030716165829.GF3612@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <200307161722.h6GHM66n061892@bunrab.catwhisker.org> I just recalled (no pun intended) that when I was last employed, we used Recall, out of San Jose. They got bought by Brambles, I think -- a bigger company from Oz. I had a certain amount of challenge getting things set up the way I wanted, and there were occasional glitches, but overall, they were OK to work with (from my limited experience directly dealing with such folk). What I had set up -- in case it helps any -- was that we would have 3 canisters; they were to be rotated rather as a juggler might: * At any given moment, unless we actually requested the canister to do data recovery, at least one (usually two) canisters were in their storage. * At any given moment, at least one (occasionally two) canisters would be at our place of business. * Our "normal" backup schedule was "interrupted" on Sunday. Normally, we used AMANDA, and set things up to let AMANDA schedule backups as appropriate -- but only Monday - Saturday. On Sunday, I had AMANDA use a different configuration, one that did a full backup of everything, but did not record (in /etc/amandadates) that a backup had been done (so no incremental backup would be made based on this full backup). * On Monday (or early Tuesday, if Monday was a holiday), I would put the newly-written tapes in the canister we had in-house at the time, and fill out the "transmittal form". [This is a clerical task, and as long as someone you can trust who does it, it need not be done by someone with any special technical skills.] The transmittal form specified that the canister was to return in 2 weeks. (They always required that the date of return be specified. Given how easily I get confused by dates & times anyway, this contributed to about half of the confusion and mistakes we saw.) * Once per week, on Tuesday, their courier would select one of the canisters they had in storage (it would always be the one that had been there the longest, but they just went by canister number and the date that it was supposed to be returned), bring it to us, and pick up the new canister (for a 2-week "vacation" in the San Jose storage facility). I never did have occasion to test their timliness for providing the canister in the event of an emergency recall, so I cannot comment on that. I hope this helps. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From jeff at drinktomi.com Wed Jul 16 10:12:28 2003 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 10:12:28 -0700 Subject: VI and casual meetups References: Message-ID: <012701c34bbd$72100320$b034a8c0@ad.ofoto.com> > On a different note, is there anyone interested in a group meetup on the > weekends at all to talk about system administration, or anything else > interesting and fun? There's always the mid-month meeting of Beer SIG West at the Toronado on the upper haight. Sadly I have yet to make it. -jeff From jeff at drinktomi.com Wed Jul 16 10:27:15 2003 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 10:27:15 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? References: Message-ID: <01a301c34bbf$827358a0$b034a8c0@ad.ofoto.com> > Just buy a normal safe for security purposes. You've satisfied the fire > 'disaster prevention' requirement to some extent by having two copies of > your data. If that doesn't feel safe enough, have two offsites in > different locations. And they should leave by different transports. If that van doesn't have AC then you're screwed on a hot summer day. -jeff From jeff at drinktomi.com Wed Jul 16 10:29:07 2003 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 10:29:07 -0700 Subject: Offsite tape storage? References: <20030715211136.GF4966@igtc.igtc.com> <16148.53758.307035.492844@komodo.home.wards.net> <20030716044628.GL31207@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <01b301c34bbf$c2ac89f0$b034a8c0@ad.ofoto.com> I'll do it for $500 a month if it's only a few tapes. -jeff (who is only a little joking) younker From jeff at drinktomi.com Wed Jul 16 11:17:14 2003 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 11:17:14 -0700 Subject: If there were justice in our industry ... References: <20030716073454.GA25164@nag.inorganic.org> <20030716140826.GC9374@mayhem.pa.fngn.com> Message-ID: <01d301c34bc6$7e0217a0$b034a8c0@ad.ofoto.com> > Market forces are whats best for the long term health of the economy. > Societies have proven that protectionism doesn't work. The longer you wait > the harder the pain is. Change is painful, but inevitable. Ummm. I can't let that one go. That's a logical fallicy. "Market forces" are good because competition results in lower prices for consumers, more efficient use of resources, more innovation, etc. However it is arguable that many market unregulated segments natually tend towards monopolies. (This is often driven by economies of scale.) We know that monopolies are not in the long term interest of the economy. They essentially result in a centrally controlled economy for a given market segment. Therefore in the long term "market forces" do not necessarily lead to healthy results for the economy. -jeff From wsprague100 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 16 12:16:56 2003 From: wsprague100 at yahoo.com (Webb Sprague) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 12:16:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: If there were justice in our industry ... In-Reply-To: <01d301c34bc6$7e0217a0$b034a8c0@ad.ofoto.com> Message-ID: <20030716191656.63118.qmail@web14208.mail.yahoo.com> --- Jeff Younker wrote: > > Market forces are whats best for the long term health of the > economy. > > Societies have proven that protectionism doesn't work. The longer > you > wait > > the harder the pain is. Change is painful, but inevitable. > > Ummm. I can't let that one go. That's a logical fallicy. --- Jeff Younker wrote: > > Market forces are whats best for the long term health of the > economy. > > Societies have proven that protectionism doesn't work. The longer > you > wait > > the harder the pain is. Change is painful, but inevitable. > > Ummm. I can't let that one go. That's a logical fallicy. Me either, so, at the risk of fanning the flames... We need to be careful not to debate at too high a level of abstraction, and we need to back our statements up with empirical examples. I think we can safely say that "Market forces *sometimes* create evolution". Distinguishing when they actually help, though, is difficult. Market forces don't, empirically, seem to make better schools, hospitals, or prisons. They might or might not help for evolution of computer science or the U.S. economy in this particular case. As for the world (Indian, Chinese, Russian) economy, who cares? Not me, quite honestly, as long as we are doing well here. Another example of bad private industry: toll roads, which actually constrict trade and growth, even though they are a plausible market driven decision by someone who controls the land. Not many private highways in the U.S., huh? Ever wonder why? Market forces are also dependent on strong political protection and enforcement and never exist in a vacuum. Widespread bribery, for example, is just a "market reaction", but it inevitably makes for a more backward nation. Without strong regulation and checks and balances, bribery and corruption thrive in both the public and private sectors. Without a police force, people just rob other people. Left to their own, "market driven", motivations, companies will also *always* seek to create a monopoly, thus eliminating market forces. It takes political intervention to set things straight (hence anti-trust laws). Protectionism, also, sometimes *does* work. The huge industrial expansion of the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century was partly driven by high protectionist tariffs. Then, the Republicans supported tariffs (they owned local companies) but the Democrats wanted lower tariffs (their constituency wanted cheaper consumer goods). Kind of ironic. But don't give me that "Protectionism never works" hoo-ha. Once might also argue that the Northeast U.S. has traditionally been stronger in industry because of the Utopian inclinations of its founders, which created things like public schools and relatively un-corrupt government. The South has always had cheaper labor, but it has also lacked the infrastructure, education, and quality government that were created by public institutions in the North. Capitalism and free enterprise is a key ingredient in any healthy nation--but *please* don't be dogmatic about it. Ducking, .... W __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com From holland at guidancetech.com Wed Jul 16 12:53:55 2003 From: holland at guidancetech.com (Rich Holland) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 15:53:55 -0400 Subject: Offsite tape storage? In-Reply-To: <200307161722.h6GHM66n061892@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <019a01c34bd3$ff7583a0$807ba8c0@hackintosh> David Wolfskill wrote: > The transmittal form specified that the canister was > to return in 2 weeks. (They always required that the > date of return be specified. Given how easily I get > confused by dates & times anyway, this contributed > to about half of the confusion and mistakes we saw.) It seems only logical that your cron job (or whatever you scheduled AMANDA with) could spit out the "today + 2 weeks" dated transmittal form for you automagically, to prevent clerical errors. :-) Rich -- Rich Holland (913) 645-1950 SAP Technical Consultant print unpack("u","92G5S\=\"!A;F]T:&5R(\'!E Message-ID: <20030716164828.J63582-100000@iguana.reptiles.org> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, David Wolfskill wrote: > I never did have occasion to test their timliness for providing the > canister in the event of an emergency recall, so I cannot comment on > that. My worst experience with returned backup tapes was purely due to in house... uh... "assistance" ;> The tapes apparently arrived promptly, within 24 hours as requestest. Unfortunately they never appeared at my desk. When they still hadn't arrived by the next morning, I started chasing everybody around the datacenter, looking for them. No joy. Complained to the vendor - who had a signed bit of paper (where we couldn't read the signature) that said we'd received them. Still more chasing around eventually determined that there had been two sets of tapes requested at the same time. Both had arrived - and had been delivered to the other requestor. They'd looked at the labels, noticed that one set didn't have the right name on them... shrugged, and stuffed them into their tape jukebox. *Gah*! Total data loss, since they'd formatted the entire lot of tapes, after retreiving what they needed! cheers! ========================================================================== "A cat spends her life conflicted between a deep, passionate and profound desire for fish and an equally deep, passionate and profound desire to avoid getting wet. This is the defining metaphor of my life right now." From star at starshine.org Wed Jul 16 16:10:53 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:10:53 -0700 Subject: BayLISA tomorrow 17 Jul, 7:30pm Message-ID: <20030716231053.GA1618@starshine.org> This is a gentle reminder that BayLISA is meeting tomorrow night, the Third Thursday of the month ... the 17th. I suppose it's possible that by the time you read this it will mean tonight. WHERE: in case there's any confusion. De Anza Bldg Three. 10500 N. De Anza, where that means "north" of Stevens Creek. If that's really the direction you're coming from, pay attention for the blue apples on the parking lot as you pass the Donut Wheel coffee shop. Most people would exit 280 Fwy at De Anza, turn south a very short block, turn Left at Mariani, right into the blue apples lot, and go around the building to the correct side. WHEN: people always ask this, even though it's in the subject 7:30 is when announcements and the like are supposed to start. People are welcome to show up as early as 7 pm. Things run officially until 9:30 pm. In practice this nearly always means 10 pm. A portion of the group typically goes to afterdinner nearby. WHAT: Patch management! Chris Binns-Smith will be showing us all sorts of useful innards about the world of patch management. This seems very germane to the world of BayLISA and I expect to learn quite a bit. RFC == Request For Cookies ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Having determined that having snacks catered is costing us quite a bit every month, we're going to experiment with going back to just plain drinks and cookies. Any members who are so inclined are encouraged to bring snacks to share too. They must not require bowls nor utensils. If you bring something gooey like brownies, bring plates or napkins... Membership Specials ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We still have a summer membership special of One New Member Joining gets his BayLISA Buddy a Free Renewal. You have to be the same type of individual membership, though... either Student (cheap!) or regular. Did I miss anything? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If I have forgotten something you feel is worthy of announcement, let the Wheels (blw at baylisa.org) know. August's speaker will be a member of the Samba Team. Probably Jeremy Allison, but he reports that several of the core gurus will be in town, so we may have one specializing in a particular niche of Samba deployment -- and it's likely that a handful of them will attend, so there will be a lot of energy. See you at BayLISA! -* Heather Stern * Arch (secretary) BayLISA Board * http://www.baylisa.org/ *- From jeff at drinktomi.com Wed Jul 16 16:33:14 2003 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:33:14 -0700 Subject: If there were justice in our industry ... References: <20030716191656.63118.qmail@web14208.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <045301c34bf2$a3420e90$b034a8c0@ad.ofoto.com> > Me either, so, at the risk of fanning the flames... > > We need to be careful not to debate at too high a level of abstraction, > and we need to back our statements up with empirical examples. Agreed. The classic ones that don't behave as free markets are electricity and gas. Once they have established footholds and business has built around them they cease to obey the rules of a free market. The organization that controls them can demand outrageous prices since they are necessities of doing business. The regulations governing those services (and which are being dismantled) were a fairly direct result experiences with unregulated utilities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I'm of the opinion that niether purely market driven unregulated economies nor at centrally controlled economies work well in the long term. I'm fairly certain the workable reality which benefits the most people lays somewhere between. -jeff > I think we can safely say that "Market forces *sometimes* create > evolution". Distinguishing when they actually help, though, is > difficult. Market forces don't, empirically, seem to make better > schools, hospitals, or prisons. They might or might not help for > evolution of computer science or the U.S. economy in this particular > case. As for the world (Indian, Chinese, Russian) economy, who cares? > Not me, quite honestly, as long as we are doing well here. > > Another example of bad private industry: toll roads, which actually > constrict trade and growth, even though they are a plausible market > driven decision by someone who controls the land. Not many private > highways in the U.S., huh? Ever wonder why? > > Market forces are also dependent on strong political protection and > enforcement and never exist in a vacuum. Widespread bribery, for > example, is just a "market reaction", but it inevitably makes for a > more backward nation. Without strong regulation and checks and > balances, bribery and corruption thrive in both the public and private > sectors. Without a police force, people just rob other people. > > Left to their own, "market driven", motivations, companies will also > *always* seek to create a monopoly, thus eliminating market forces. It > takes political intervention to set things straight (hence anti-trust > laws). > > Protectionism, also, sometimes *does* work. The huge industrial > expansion of the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century was > partly driven by high protectionist tariffs. Then, the Republicans > supported tariffs (they owned local companies) but the Democrats wanted > lower tariffs (their constituency wanted cheaper consumer goods). Kind > of ironic. But don't give me that "Protectionism never works" hoo-ha. > > Once might also argue that the Northeast U.S. has traditionally been > stronger in industry because of the Utopian inclinations of its > founders, which created things like public schools and relatively > un-corrupt government. The South has always had cheaper labor, but it > has also lacked the infrastructure, education, and quality government > that were created by public institutions in the North. > > Capitalism and free enterprise is a key ingredient in any healthy > nation--but *please* don't be dogmatic about it. > > Ducking, .... > W > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! > http://sbc.yahoo.com > > > From star at starshine.org Thu Jul 17 10:25:50 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 10:25:50 -0700 Subject: Tonight: 7:30 pm, BayLISA, Cupertino. Message-ID: <20030717172550.GA2795@starshine.org> If you're an interrupt driven soul like me, this is your reminder that BayLISA's general meeting is tonight. The topic is patch management. The place is Apple's De Anza Building Three - 10500 N. De Anza, Cupertino. I forgot to memntion yesterday that here-on until we run out of them, renewing your BayLISA membership or confirming it gets you an LNX-BBC rescue disc with BayLISA specific art on it. (Yeah, we know, PC centric toys. If you want to join the team working on a Sparc flavor of it let me know - I'll get you involved directly.) Visit the Arch during the meeting :) See you there! -* Heather Stern * Arch (secretary) BayLISA Board * http://www.baylisa.org/ *- From fscked at pacbell.net Thu Jul 17 13:47:09 2003 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 13:47:09 -0700 Subject: Cisco Operating System Has Security Flaw (News) Message-ID: <3F170B4D.7050807@pacbell.net> NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A security flaw has been found in Cisco Systems Inc.'s (CSCO) internetwork operating system that could allow hackers to penetrate all of Cisco's routers. Cisco released a security advisory detailing "a significant denial of service vulnerability that affects its entire line of IPv4 devices," Internet Security Systems Inc. (ISSX) said Thursday. Cisco, which makes networking equipment for the Internet, didn't return calls seeking comment. ISS heard about the problem Wednesday after speaking with Internet Protocol service providers. "We came across it because we had heard all the major IP service backbone providers were doing emergency upgrades over the last 36 hours very quietly," said Chris Rouland, vice president of ISS's X-Force research and development team. "This is a very severe problem. All of Cisco's routers are affected." Full article at: http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/for5/200307171043DOWJONESDJONLINE000929_FORTUNE5.htm -- richard (Cc: to chat at baylisa.org in case I get censored ... again.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From k6dlc at arrl.net Thu Jul 17 17:31:09 2003 From: k6dlc at arrl.net (Daniel Curry) Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:31:09 -0700 Subject: wireless card for amatuer radio.. Message-ID: <3F173FCD.9010304@arrl.net> Thought I bring up something new? I had found this from one of the news group (tin). SNOS: Simple Network Operating System http://w0rli.home.att.net/ SNOS is software to link tcp/ip into the existing AX.25 BBS store and forward network. SNOS gateways Bulletins to and from News Articles and Email to and from Personal Messages. It is not intended to be used as a BBS itself, but rather to run as a service to Windows, linking the usual Windows messaging applications to the existing AX.25 BBS store and forward network. It can also run in DOS on a separate machine. Quoate from teh news group.. "If you run SNOS it is pretty simple :-) Put the access point / router / ethernet bridge into your IP subnet, use FD as the SSID, choose channel 6, turn off encryption. SNOS will do the rest and will automagically create IP, AX.25 and NET/ROM links between you and any other system you can hear. Then use the usual packet radio exchange. SNOS takes care of the ID issue. Yes I've tested this and yes it works. A 2 or 8 watt amplifier and gain antenna will help ..." SNOS Features Networking * AX.25 networking, digipeating not supported. * AX.25 over Ethernet using BPQENET protocol. * NET/ROM networking. * KISS TNCs, including multi-drop polled KISS. * IP over Ethernet, AX.25 and NET/ROM. * PACTOR and CLOVER using HAL P38 and PCI4000 controllers. * Raw COM port terminal, for TNC setup. * Monitoring on all interfaces except raw COM ports. Services * MailBox withCompressed batch forwarding. * ftp server and client. * http server including cookies and server-side includes. * nntp server and client. * pop3 server and client. * smtp server. * telnet server and client. * ping. * DNS query. Applications * Gateway between telnet - AX.25 - NET/ROM - PACTOR - CLOVER. * BBS message <-> email gateway. * BBS bulletin <-> net news gateway. * FCC callsign server. * NetWalker. * RoundTable. * Web based remote administration. Not normally included * RIP routing. * IPGATE RIP. * LZW-compressed sockets. * HOP checking. -- Daniel Curry AD5A 96DC 7556 A020 B8E7 0E4D 5D5E 9BA5 C83E 8C92 From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Thu Jul 17 22:07:32 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 01:07:32 -0400 Subject: Cisco Operating System Has Security Flaw (News) In-Reply-To: <3F170B4D.7050807@pacbell.net> References: <3F170B4D.7050807@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20030718050732.GC22599@snew.com> This only affects IPv4 users. You folks aren't still using IPv4 are you? Quoting richard childers / kg6hac (fscked at pacbell.net): > NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A security flaw has been found in Cisco Systems > Inc.'s (CSCO) internetwork operating system that could allow hackers to > penetrate all of Cisco's routers. > > Cisco released a security advisory detailing "a significant denial of > service vulnerability that affects its entire line of IPv4 devices," > Internet Security Systems Inc. (ISSX) said Thursday. (see CERT for more ACTUAL information and bugtraq for speculation. From jimd at starshine.org Fri Jul 18 22:22:02 2003 From: jimd at starshine.org (jimd at starshine.org) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 05:22:02 +0000 Subject: Antispam - empowering employees In-Reply-To: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> Message-ID: <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 12:46:47PM -0400, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > I'll try to respond in complete sentences and make presumptions > on meaning where you don't bother with pronouns, verbs and what not. This is one of Alvin's more widely known traits. > PCs replaced desktop mainframe use in a large way because the USER > was able to get work done without dealing with the computational > priesthood. > Windows, in a large part, has replaced Unix because people feel > that it's approachable and, in a large way, someone with not so > much knowledge of computers can put up a Windows Server and install > a couple packages and have Exchange for cheap. They think it > scales; they think it's cheap; they think it's secure. They are > wrong on all counts. But I have yet to see a friendly, say, IMAP > server, even if they get Unix up, targetted at sites with < 5000 users. > That's fewer that 2% of the businesses out there. I'm not sure that MS Windows ever "replaced" UNIX. MS operating systems (from PC-DOS through a latest MS Windows 2003) became the marketshare leader primarily by opening up new markets (or conversely by riding on the coat tails of the new markets created by microcomputers in general and PC compatibles in particular). Micros were the revolution. They had to run *something* and MS-DOS was the thing they came with and was the cheapest. (The prices on CPM/86 and the UCSD p-system were pretty high comparatively). Later, they still had to run *something* and *everyone else* was running MS-DOS. Later still, the *still* had to run (and ship) with *something* and MS lawyers and sales people ran roughshod over every hardware informing them that they *would* include MS-Windows 3.x with every machine (the thinly veiled threat was: or else your copies of MS-DOS will be lost in the warehouse behind all those unshipped bundles that include MS Windows). Now it's interesting that Linux (and other free and open source systems) are becoming the empowering force. Sure UNIX and Linux are a little quirky and hard to learn. No, the latest GUI gadgets aren't all that good had hiding the underlying complexities. Yes, Mac OS X is STILL far more approachable --- and now it's UNIX, too :) But ultimately people are going to be driven to Linux because it's free. They don't have to have any (outside) permission or license to use it; they don't have to file a purchasing order, they don't have to wade through vendor BS. For the jobs that it's good at you can just borrow or burn a CD --- pop it in a drive and go. What's really starting to drive it internationally and at the low consumer end (the Walmart channel) are the recent increases in pricing from Microsoft. They are either digging their own graves or planning on milking the cashcow dry for the next 5 years or so. (For the other jobs --- oh well; maybe eventually :) OpenOffice.org is a bloated pig who's only saving grace is that it sorta handles most of the MS Office proprietary data formats some of the time. However the Abiword, Gnumeric, Evolution, Dia combination isn't too horrible; now if we can just get a decent groupware/scheduling client/server package that is NOT just a website with a browser interface ...). -- Jim Dennis From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Sat Jul 19 11:18:11 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 14:18:11 -0400 Subject: Antispam - empowering employees In-Reply-To: <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> Message-ID: <20030719181811.GB11457@snew.com> Quoting jimd at starshine.org (jimd at starshine.org): > On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 12:46:47PM -0400, Chuck Yerkes wrote: ... > > Windows, in a large part, has replaced Unix because people feel > > that it's approachable and, in a large way, someone with not so > > much knowledge of computers can put up a Windows Server and install > > a couple packages and have Exchange for cheap. They think it > > scales and is cost effective and they are wrong, but ... > I'm not sure that MS Windows ever "replaced" UNIX. MS operating > systems (from PC-DOS through a latest MS Windows 2003) became the > marketshare leader primarily by opening up new markets (or conversely > by riding on the coat tails of the new markets created by microcomputers > in general and PC compatibles in particular). Oh I strongly disagree. From floors of desktop unix to floors of desktop Windows and herds of windows admins, I disagree. >From racks and racks of Windows boxes providing email, DNS, DHCP(-like) and LDAP-like services, I disagree. > Micros were the revolution. They had to run *something* and MS-DOS > was the thing they came with and was the cheapest. (The prices on > CPM/86 and the UCSD p-system were pretty high comparatively). Ummm, no by my recollection. An XT was $5k or so while an Apple /// was $2500. > hardware informing them that they *would* include MS-Windows 3.x with > every machine (the thinly veiled threat was: or else your copies of As an owner of Windows 2.0 (runtime), I'll recall that this was hardly in a vacuum or out of the blue. That 3.x was written for 80286 and, as usual, shipped YEARS late when a 386 binary would have been far faster/better... 3.1 was the first usable version. And it broke the hold of Lotus and Wordperfect on the platforms' users (As a VMS programmer and Mac user, I was appalled when I saw Word for DOS - VisiCalc was cleaner and smoother as a program). I'll also recall Lotus, WP, and Ashton Tate announcing support for GEM on DOS to get SOME windowing. MS announced that their new "Windows" software would be out "really soon." 24 months, soon, but the pre-nouncement killed GEM/x86. > > But ultimately people are going to be driven to Linux because it's > free. They don't have to have any (outside) permission or license to I find that's absolutely NOT the case in business. And larger business created the DOS/PC market. If anything, Linux is replacing Sun's and other Unixes. I've yet to see it stand in for a Windows server. > use it; they don't have to file a purchasing order, they don't have to > wade through vendor BS. For the jobs that it's good at you can just > borrow or burn a CD --- pop it in a drive and go. And you can't get 4-hour support coverage, and a bug allows management NO place to call to place blame and pass the ball to someone else. No, I just got 3 E450s passed to me over a DL360 running FreeBSD because "we need production support on these, not source code." Friends who work at Yahoo, EBay and elsewhere are there as FreeBSD committers. The $150k is costs in total for a person buys LOTS of support contracts. Look, I ran NetBSD on my Mac for a long long time. I'm likely going BACK to it because this 300MHz Mac is a lot faster and more useful with a BSD kernel and X Windows than with Darwin + Aqua + mystery layers. But I'm not seeing that "Open Source" is inevitable. OS acquisition costs are negligible over a machines lifetime. If it costs me a total of $10k/year to feed/house/power/cool/backup/run a machine in a data center each year, $40 or $800 for the OS is a blip in a 3-5 year lifespan. Unix folks have to stop pissing on each other. I see linux zealots dumping on each other for distro choices, for christs sake. RH vs Suse vs. Debian vs 200 others. You think this doesn't raise concerns in managers? Microsoft has one polished line (it's a lie, but it's convincing and soothing). It's like the pretty girl going out with the dumb jock. Yes, there will be satisfaction in 10 years when he's still the assistant managers at the car lot, but until then, you're out in the cold. In the end, we'll be right. But Neil Stephenson is right: to management, it's a bunch of lunatics in a vacant lot slapping together cars that they say get 200MPG, will never rust or fall apart and replacement parts are free. From rick at linuxmafia.com Sat Jul 19 11:19:50 2003 From: rick at linuxmafia.com (Rick Moen) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:19:50 -0700 Subject: Groupware (was: Antispam - empowering employees) In-Reply-To: <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> Message-ID: <20030719181950.GI11823@linuxmafia.com> Quoting Jim Dennis (jimd at starshine.org): > now if we can just get a decent groupware/scheduling client/server > package that is NOT just a website with a browser interface ...). Just what I was thinking. For example, SuSE Linux OpenExchange Server is of that sort, using .comFire, http://www.comfire.de/ , for integrated scheduling and group discussions (shared folders). But at least _some_ of its functions work in detached mode, unlike PHPGroupWare, Sherpath, Horde/IMP/Kronolith, and many others that are 100% Web-based. As I see it, there are two obstacles: (1) The Outlook/Exchange problem: Some of the major players (Bynari Insight Server, Oracle Collaboration Suite that was formerly Steltor CorporateTime) so wear themselves out achieving full Microsoft compatibility by reverse-engineering Microsoft's proprietary RPC-based protocols that they end up offering little to non-Microsoft clients. (2) The relatively poor state of open scheduling standards: RFC-2445 iCAL has caught on in a big way, but that's just a file format. In contrast, RFC-2446 iTIP (procedures for marshalling objects in and out of a schedule), RFC-2447 iMIP (using e-mail transport for schedule objects), and RFC-xxxx CAP (socket access to schedules) have gone completely unused -- mostly for lack of a reference implementation. What we mostly have in absence of those needed pieces is shoving iCAL files back and forth using either HTTP PUT or WebDAV. You get no... o Free/busy negotiation among multiple users. o "Secretary mode" access to someone else's schedule. ACLs for what various people can see/change/create on each others' schedules. o Confirming, rejecting, rescheduling appointments with others. o Dealing with "queued" new multi-user events arising (from either end) while the user is operating in detached mode, notifying affected users and letting them accept or reject them. Basically, you get no ability to _coordinate_ schedules, but rather process, display, store, and transport individual users' iCAL files. Possibly of use to people: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/groupware http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/applications-scheduling http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/webmail -- Cheers, The genius of you Americans is that you never make Rick Moen clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves rick at linuxmafia.com that make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them that we are missing. --Gamel Abdel Nasser From rsr at inorganic.org Sat Jul 19 13:54:12 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 13:54:12 -0700 Subject: Antispam - empowering employees In-Reply-To: <20030719181811.GB11457@snew.com> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> <20030719181811.GB11457@snew.com> Message-ID: <20030719205412.GC26688@nag.inorganic.org> On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 02:18:11PM -0400, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > > But ultimately people are going to be driven to Linux because it's > > free. They don't have to have any (outside) permission or license to > > I find that's absolutely NOT the case in business. And larger > business created the DOS/PC market. If anything, Linux is replacing > Sun's and other Unixes. I've yet to see it stand in for a Windows > server. I agree with you in general -- certainly, at least one of the places I'm familiar with is currently a Solaris shop and they're looking to switch to Linux to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware. My current place of employment is an interesting counter-example of that, and it's somewhat non-intuitive, so you may find it interesting. Granted, the CIO's a huge Open Source fan, and we're hugely invested in Zope, Python, etc. The place is currently pure Windows, but he'd like to change that on both the front and the back end. The reason why he could actually get cooperation to do that on the desktop (where Linux has a more uphill battle) is because they're incredibly paranoid at this place AND are on a never-ending crusade to control the workflow of everyone. All our new apps are web-based, and the first week I was there I was working on two conversion projects that both automate a manual process but also -- and this is the important bit -- make all the interaction web-based. The nice thing about migrating your applications to the web is that then all the people who aren't doing the high-end incredibly creative things, which is the vast majority of your workforce, only needs a web browser. Now, granted at some point we'll start hitting against the limitations of that given that the actual CRM package (Onyx) is rather Windows-based, but more and more of what people need to do is done outside of Onyx, through webforms. Summary: Ironically, a more restrictive environment may actually be more accepting of Linux than a more loose one. -roy From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Sat Jul 19 15:06:16 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 18:06:16 -0400 Subject: Groupware (was: Antispam - empowering employees) In-Reply-To: <20030719181950.GI11823@linuxmafia.com> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> <20030719181950.GI11823@linuxmafia.com> Message-ID: <20030719220616.GA12190@snew.com> Quoting Rick Moen (rick at linuxmafia.com): > Quoting Jim Dennis (jimd at starshine.org): > > > now if we can just get a decent groupware/scheduling client/server > > package that is NOT just a website with a browser interface ...). > > Just what I was thinking. For example, SuSE Linux OpenExchange Server > is of that sort, using .comFire, http://www.comfire.de/ , for integrated > scheduling and group discussions (shared folders). But at least _some_ > As I see it, there are two obstacles: (1) The Outlook/Exchange problem: > Some of the major players (Bynari Insight Server, Oracle Collaboration > Suite that was formerly Steltor CorporateTime) so wear themselves out > achieving full Microsoft compatibility by reverse-engineering Microsoft's > proprietary RPC-based protocols that they end up offering little to > non-Microsoft clients. > > (2) The relatively poor state of open scheduling standards: RFC-2445 > iCAL has caught on in a big way, but that's just a file format. I've done this game. If you even want to show up at the table it MUST: 1) work with outlook without frightening the mortals 2) sync to a PDA. At an company in the early 90's, group ware was being foisted in at great expense. We setup my Mac speaking mail (to OS/2 to belie their "unix mail" term), speaking NetNews (discussions), speaking Zephyr (instant messages), speaking Kerberos (single sign on, high security). Ftp uploads with web down (would now to http uploads) allows for "file sharing" like they were doing. "Does this replicate? Can it sync to servers in the UK and .JA?" asks the network guy of NetNews. I tried to not giggle. The compelling thing offered by Notes/Exchange/Gropewise is that integration in the client. We couldn't do that then. Netscape's client held the most promise - a new reader, mail reader, browser, calendar tool in one. You wouldn't need a huge OS! They were, as we all know, crushed, beaten and fed to AOL and Sun (the equiv of plowing salt into their fields). Steltor allows you to use Outbreak natively, but get calendar stuff from a real server and mail from a real IMAP server (or an Oracle IMAP server, now). Outlook can be used, I'm told, in "internet mode" where it gets free/busy info from a server. Using ftp. Which means that in excahgne environments, you can ftp over people's schedules. It's not a security problem if we don't tell :( I love that philosophy) I've recently been forced to use Notes at a client. It's a good (temporary) experience for me (5 msgs/day on a laptop whose only purpose is notes reading). I'd been "forced" before, but I controlled the 'net machines. I split it but they exempted me when I was getting 1400 messages/day into Notes and, with no procmail to work out postmaster mail, sort of overwhelmed the machine I was on. When I get mail it's PRETTY. This is one reason I won't rail against HTML mail. People don't want "glass TTYs." We got rid of mainframes for workstations at companies using this reasoning. And yet people still use elm, mail, pine unable to display a freaking color! I have mutt set to use w3m to read HTML text. Mulberry allows users to set it to read HTML (fonts, color, bold, etc) but NOT GET EXTERNAL REFERENCES. That's critical and the biggest flaw of the bad mailers. No "webbugs" no images downloaded from naked-hamsters.org. But using CAPS above rather than something less 70's and being able to *emphasize* in better ways is necessary. Back to notes: When I get a "meeting" notice (I envision a MIME type), my client's buttons change into "it's a calendar" mode. This is good. This is all CLIENT based. So what is the option to get clients "smarter"? Well, first having a way to identify certain messages. A festival of calendar MIME types would help: - Here's an event - Meeting, go into calendar mode and reply to calendar server or sender if you can/cannot attend. - etc. You obviously limit from whom you will accept messages. If you can hit email, calendaring and personal directories (LDAP for corp plus a chunk of LDAP for your personal stuff), you hit a lot of Exchange users. Let users sync to their PDA and Exchange/lookOut is moot. Show that you can put 20k users on an old Sun/PC and you make an argument to start questioning Exchange's purpose. Instant messaging and chat are important within companies. Zephyr and IRC work for me. I've not found zephyr for Windows. It's a fine back end, and would be short work to wrap message catching/sending in a little GUI (tk, gnome, kde, whatever). Real groupware (concurrent edits, etc) is hard and there's a reason it's only really available in commercial software. CVS for file sharing (or web) isn't QUITE enough. And no "open source" group has shown the commitement to invest $4million of people time to make it happen.` Start with mail/cal/PIM and chat functionality and you've covered how most people actually use groupware. chuck From rick at linuxmafia.com Sat Jul 19 15:45:18 2003 From: rick at linuxmafia.com (Rick Moen) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 15:45:18 -0700 Subject: Groupware (was: Antispam - empowering employees) In-Reply-To: <20030719220616.GA12190@snew.com> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> <20030719181950.GI11823@linuxmafia.com> <20030719220616.GA12190@snew.com> Message-ID: <20030719224517.GL11823@linuxmafia.com> Quoting Chuck Yerkes (chuck+baylisa at snew.com): > I've done this game. If you even want to show up at the table it MUST: > 1) work with outlook without frightening the mortals > 2) sync to a PDA. This assumes that one's immediate goal is deployment as corporate infrastructure. Not everyone might share this (immediate) goal. For example, some might be seeking to make a compelling open-protocol implementation, which then either those coders or others would be subsequently free to create MAPI-provider extended-IMAP plug-ins for MS-Outlook and/or hotsync conduits for PalmOS. My point was that what primarily stands in the way of even this approach is distrust of the IETF protocol suite for lack of a reference implementation. > This is good. This is all CLIENT based. Yes, this is the part that's probably going to give open standards fits for quite some time, I fear. As I understand it, MS-Exchange Server is pretty much just a generic data repository without any real knowledge of data semantics. (It happens to use the atrocious MS-Access database engine.) We'll see what happens when/if someone implements iTIP, CAP, etc. I hear that Mitch Kapor's Open Source Applications Foundation plans to do so, after getting the Chandler PIM finished or nearly so. > Instant messaging and chat are important within companies. > Zephyr and IRC work for me. You might find Gale interesting; it's a rewrite of the ideas from Zephyr. http://www.gale.org/ Unfortunately, it remains even more cult-ish than Zephyr; mostly, I expect we'll see IRC and on a good day Jabber. -- Cheers, "Linux means never having to delete your love mail." Rick Moen -- Don Marti rick at linuxmafia.com From star at starshine.org Sat Jul 19 16:46:28 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 16:46:28 -0700 Subject: Antispam - empowering employees In-Reply-To: <20030719181811.GB11457@snew.com> References: <20030715164647.GA19021@snew.com> <20030719052202.GE26759@mercury.starshine.org> <20030719181811.GB11457@snew.com> Message-ID: <20030719234628.GA9018@starshine.org> > I find that's absolutely NOT the case in business. And larger > business created the DOS/PC market. If anything, Linux is replacing > Sun's and other Unixes. I've yet to see it stand in for a Windows > server. Then you haven't met most of my clients... . | . Heather Stern | star at starshine.org --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org ' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078 From hal at deer-run.com Tue Jul 22 09:01:35 2003 From: hal at deer-run.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 09:01:35 -0700 Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? Message-ID: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> I've inherited five APC "Back UPS Pro 1400" units with dead lead-acid batteries. I was just going to take them to the hazardous waste disposal, but it occurred to me that some enterprising BayLISA member might want to take the chassis and just replace the batteries with working ones. If you want to take them off my hands, I'm willing to give them to you for free if you haul them away. I'm in Oakland, so this will involve your taking a trip up to the East Bay to come get them. Send me an email directly if you're interested. First come, first served... I've also got a dead monitor if somebody wants a "do it yourself" science project... -- Hal Pomeranz, Founder/CEO Deer Run Associates hal at deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From hal at deer-run.com Tue Jul 22 10:27:30 2003 From: hal at deer-run.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:27:30 -0700 Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> References: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> Message-ID: <20030722172730.GL5415@deer-run.com> I hate following up my own posting this way, but one of the list members pointed me at a really good deal for replacement batteries for these units. The price is low enough that I think I'm just going to keep them and use them myself. Sorry to get your hopes up if you wanted them... -- Hal Pomeranz, Founder/CEO Deer Run Associates hal at deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From hal at deer-run.com Tue Jul 22 11:12:30 2003 From: hal at deer-run.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:12:30 -0700 Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <20030722172730.GL5415@deer-run.com> References: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> <20030722172730.GL5415@deer-run.com> Message-ID: <20030722181230.GM5415@deer-run.com> > I hate following up my own posting this way, but one of the list > members pointed me at a really good deal for replacement batteries > for these units. Several people have since asked me for a pointer to said deal, so here it is: http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=42800 That's $120, including the cost of shipping the dead battery back for disposal. -- Hal Pomeranz, Founder/CEO Deer Run Associates hal at deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Tue Jul 22 11:49:25 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:49:25 -0400 Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <20030722181230.GM5415@deer-run.com> References: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> <20030722172730.GL5415@deer-run.com> <20030722181230.GM5415@deer-run.com> Message-ID: <20030722184925.GB15349@snew.com> Quoting Hal Pomeranz (hal at deer-run.com): > > I hate following up my own posting this way, but one of the list > > members pointed me at a really good deal for replacement batteries > > for these units. > > Several people have since asked me for a pointer to said deal, so > here it is: > > http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=42800 > > That's $120, including the cost of shipping the dead battery back > for disposal. And just an FYI: most car places (Kragen/Napa) should take dead batteries. I know the City of Oakland (and much of the bay) have drop off places for these too. And while we're here, Radio Shack and others take those nasty laptop and cell phone batteries we want far from landfill. While the "proper" UPS batteries fit inside nicely, you could hack in a much larger battery to get the same amount of power (# of amps), but for a longer period. A large deep cycle battery could give your little UPS enough power to last days. From david at catwhisker.org Tue Jul 22 13:20:39 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:20:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: No subject Message-ID: <200307222020.h6MKKdpH009996@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Approved baylisa.admin Received: from Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (35-6.LINUX-CONSULTING.COM [157.22.35.6] (may be forged)) by www.baylisa.org (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h6MJm7Hn005920 for ; Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:48:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/check_local-5) with ESMTP id h6MJm5pA012674; Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:48:06 -0700 Received: from localhost (alvin at localhost) by Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com (8.12.9/8.12.8/Submit) with SMTP id h6MJm5Eq012671; Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:48:05 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com: alvin owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:48:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Alvin Oga X-Sender: alvin at Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com To: Chuck Yerkes cc: baylisa at baylisa.org Subject: Re: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <20030722184925.GB15349 at snew.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hi ya On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > Quoting Hal Pomeranz (hal at deer-run.com): ... > > Several people have since asked me for a pointer to said deal, so > > here it is: > > > > http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=42800 several other large pc shops carry "ups battery replacement" - i think(remembering) office-depot even has it in their catalog > While the "proper" UPS batteries fit inside nicely, you > could hack in a much larger battery to get the same > amount of power (# of amps), but for a longer period. > A large deep cycle battery could give your little UPS > enough power to last days. a 12v car battery lasts about 15 hrs with a Pentium class PC without monitor hooked up off the battery mini-itx mb w/ 12v dc input will last days-n-days c ya alvin From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Tue Jul 22 12:48:05 2003 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:48:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <20030722184925.GB15349@snew.com> Message-ID: hi ya On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > Quoting Hal Pomeranz (hal at deer-run.com): ... > > Several people have since asked me for a pointer to said deal, so > > here it is: > > > > http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=42800 several other large pc shops carry "ups battery replacement" - i think(remembering) office-depot even has it in their catalog > While the "proper" UPS batteries fit inside nicely, you > could hack in a much larger battery to get the same > amount of power (# of amps), but for a longer period. > A large deep cycle battery could give your little UPS > enough power to last days. a 12v car battery lasts about 15 hrs with a Pentium class PC without monitor hooked up off the battery mini-itx mb w/ 12v dc input will last days-n-days c ya alvin From vraptor at employees.org Tue Jul 22 17:51:06 2003 From: vraptor at employees.org (vraptor at employees.org) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 17:51:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: UPS batteries In-Reply-To: <20030722184925.GB15349@snew.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Chuck Yerkes wrote: >And just an FYI: >most car places (Kragen/Napa) should take dead batteries. I know >the City of Oakland (and much of the bay) have drop off places for >these too. And while we're here, Radio Shack and others take those >nasty laptop and cell phone batteries we want far from landfill. Home Depot also takes rechargeable batteries. If anyone knows of a place that takes non-rechargeable, I'd appreciate a pointer. >While the "proper" UPS batteries fit inside nicely, you >could hack in a much larger battery to get the same >amount of power (# of amps), but for a longer period. >A large deep cycle battery could give your little UPS >enough power to last days. There is a company that hits the radio swap at Las Positas and the flea market at Foothill that has a wide variety of rechargeables, including a lot of the ones that fit smaller workstation-type UPS units. Their prices are much better than HSC's, and they have a wider selection. =Nadine= From claw at kanga.nu Wed Jul 23 10:17:06 2003 From: claw at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:17:06 -0400 Subject: If there were justice in our industry ... In-Reply-To: Message from "Roy S. Rapoport" of "Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:34:54 PDT." <20030716073454.GA25164@nag.inorganic.org> References: <20030716073454.GA25164@nag.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <25538.1058980626@kanga.nu> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:34:54 -0700 Roy S Rapoport wrote: > This is eerily similar to the argument that CEOs should be paid a lot > of money because they take a big risk managing a company, since their > fortunes are tied to it, even though it seems that the last person to > typically get laid off by a company is the CEO. Lou Gerstener (ex CEO IBM) in "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?" suggests a much simpler and more direct source for high CEO compensation rates: Its a Garrison Keillor problem. ...where all the kids are above average. Periodically various sources publish studies of CEO compensation rates for various industries, among other things stating what the "average" compensation rates are for each field. Of course nobody wants to be "below average", most especially when they are CEO shopping. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw at kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From claw at kanga.nu Wed Jul 23 10:27:28 2003 From: claw at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:27:28 -0400 Subject: VI and casual meetups In-Reply-To: Message from Jennifer Davis of "Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:39:13 PDT." References: Message-ID: <25703.1058981248@kanga.nu> On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:39:13 -0700 (PDT) Jennifer Davis wrote: > On a different note, is there anyone interested in a group meetup on > the weekends at all to talk about system administration, or anything > else interesting and fun? I'm aware of several such groups, either centered around Anime and/or board gaming (mostly german/designer/euro games [1]) with a heavy side-dose of tech talk. Heck, I run such a group myself... ObNote: I'm on a consulting gig with Pfizer in CT right now, so said group is mostly on hiatus. [1] Things like Settlers of Catan, Tigris & Euphrates, Traders of Genoa, Citadels, Tichu, El Grande, Wongar, Domaine, Carcassonne, WarAngel, Ra, and Merchants of Amsterdam to name but a few. See http://boardgamegeek.com/ for details on what the above names reference and join the addiction! -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw at kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From Rob.Riley at oracle.com Wed Jul 23 13:05:18 2003 From: Rob.Riley at oracle.com (Rob Riley) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:05:18 -0700 Subject: UPS batteries References: Message-ID: <3F1EEA7E.5090600@oracle.com> Hi All, The Menlo Park Public Library takes drycell (flashlight) batteries for recycling. My employer has drop-off buckets for drycell batteries on each floor from Battery Solutions Inc. When the bucket is full, we seal it with packing tape and send the problem to Michigan. There must be other recyclers with similar programs. Battery Solutions Inc. http://www.batteryrecycling.com/ 734 467-9110 -Rob vraptor at employees.org wrote: > On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > > > >>And just an FYI: >>most car places (Kragen/Napa) should take dead batteries. I know >>the City of Oakland (and much of the bay) have drop off places for >>these too. And while we're here, Radio Shack and others take those >>nasty laptop and cell phone batteries we want far from landfill. > > > Home Depot also takes rechargeable batteries. If anyone knows > of a place that takes non-rechargeable, I'd appreciate a pointer. > > >>While the "proper" UPS batteries fit inside nicely, you >>could hack in a much larger battery to get the same >>amount of power (# of amps), but for a longer period. >>A large deep cycle battery could give your little UPS >>enough power to last days. > > > There is a company that hits the radio swap at Las Positas > and the flea market at Foothill that has a wide variety of > rechargeables, including a lot of the ones that fit smaller > workstation-type UPS units. Their prices are much better > than HSC's, and they have a wider selection. > > =Nadine= > -- Rob Riley Senior Systems Administrator, Security Engineering Global IT, Oracle Corp. 650 506-1435 work, 650 799-1607 cell From pozar at lns.com Wed Jul 23 14:43:30 2003 From: pozar at lns.com (Tim Pozar) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:43:30 -0700 Subject: UPS batteries In-Reply-To: <3F1EEA7E.5090600@oracle.com> References: <3F1EEA7E.5090600@oracle.com> Message-ID: <20030723214330.GA11930@lns.com> On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 01:05:18PM -0700, Rob Riley wrote: > The Menlo Park Public Library takes drycell (flashlight) > batteries for recycling. All Walgreen's Drugstores will take discharged drycells too. Tim -- Snail: Tim Pozar / LNS / 1978 45th Ave / San Francisco CA 94116 / USA POTS: +1 415 665 3790 Radio: KC6GNJ / KAE6247 "Be who you are and say what you feel because the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss From aub at coldstone.com Wed Jul 23 14:49:50 2003 From: aub at coldstone.com (Alberto Begliomini) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:49:50 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation Message-ID: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> I am shopping around for a DSL provider! SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. My connection was down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. Alberto From bill at wards.net Wed Jul 23 15:32:28 2003 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:32:28 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <16159.3324.963004.551287@komodo.home.wards.net> Why DSL? Comcast digital cable has been rock solid for me ever since it was Excite at Home. Alberto Begliomini writes: >I am shopping around for a DSL provider! > >SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. My connection was >down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they >had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down >for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened >(of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) > >Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a >support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? > >Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. > >Alberto -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMER, CLOSED COURSE. DO NOT ATTEMPT. From jxh at jxh.com Wed Jul 23 15:48:35 2003 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:48:35 -0500 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <2147483647.1058982515@[10.9.18.6]> > SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. Uh-oh. When I had DSL using three companies (Bell for the loop, Covad for DSL, and a third party as my ISP) I blamed my troubles on the fact of there being three companies. I thought surely if Bell owned the whole problem.... [1] I'm not sure if they're still into DSL, but contact Meer.net. They continue to earn my business every day, and they just totally rock. But the loop will still belong to the ILEC, and the DSLAM to the CLEC. So you'll still be doomed. (In my earlier 3-vendor days, the ISP was never the problem.) Consider moving in order to get cable modem service. Comcast has surprised me (in St. Paul, MN) for not screwing up, yet. Though it's early. -- [1] During that event I said to a friend of mine, "OK, it's time to start our own phone company. How much worse could we f*ck this up?" And the latter has since passed into a proverb. From rflii at speakeasy.net Wed Jul 23 16:06:06 2003 From: rflii at speakeasy.net (Ron Leedy) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:06:06 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> Message-ID: In your case, it really doesn't matter who the DSL provider is. They all must come over SBC physical lines and circuits. So if you are having a circuit problem now, you will have one with anybody else. Also, SBC will take their full SLA time allowed when resolving third party DSL issues. My ISP (Speakeasy) uses Covad and my only problems have been circuit issues. SBC won't fix the problem because its not cost effective and doesn't fall under SLA provisions with Covad. BTW - Speakeasy is a GREAT ISP with setups for the neophite and the guru. >From nation-wide dialup to DSL to T-1 lines. They are adding wireless access points. Any subscriber who is willing to be a access point gets reduced rates. That's how innovative they are!!! -Ron Leedy -----Original Message----- From: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org [mailto:owner-baylisa at baylisa.org] On Behalf Of Alberto Begliomini Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 2:50 PM To: BayLISA Subject: DSL provider recommendation I am shopping around for a DSL provider! SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. My connection was down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. Alberto --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.502 / Virus Database: 300 - Release Date: 7/18/2003 From rflii at speakeasy.net Wed Jul 23 16:07:27 2003 From: rflii at speakeasy.net (Ron Leedy) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:07:27 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <16159.3324.963004.551287@komodo.home.wards.net> Message-ID: But some of us are not able to get even after YEARS and YEARS of promising by every owner of the cable network. -Ron Leedy -----Original Message----- From: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org [mailto:owner-baylisa at baylisa.org] On Behalf Of William R Ward Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 3:32 PM To: Alberto Begliomini Cc: BayLISA Subject: Re: DSL provider recommendation Why DSL? Comcast digital cable has been rock solid for me ever since it was Excite at Home. Alberto Begliomini writes: >I am shopping around for a DSL provider! > >SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. My connection >was >down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they >had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down >for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened >(of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) > >Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a >support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? > >Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. > >Alberto -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMER, CLOSED COURSE. DO NOT ATTEMPT. --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.502 / Virus Database: 300 - Release Date: 7/18/2003 From david at catwhisker.org Wed Jul 23 16:31:56 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:31:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200307232331.h6NNVuwH016207@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >From: "Ron Leedy" >To: "'BayLISA'" >Subject: RE: DSL provider recommendation >Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:06:06 -0700 >BTW - Speakeasy is a GREAT ISP with setups for the neophite and the guru. >From nation-wide dialup to DSL to T-1 lines. They are adding wireless >access points. Any subscriber who is willing to be a access point gets >reduced rates. That's how innovative they are!!! Speakeasy may be great in many ways, but -- as a non-Speakeasy customer -- I recently had an interaction with them that I considered Pretty Annoying. I received some spam; the machine that was the SMTP client to my SMTP server when the spam was vectored had a hostname (that matched its IP address) in the speakeasy.net domain. Accordingly, I sent the usual "boilerplate" to speakeasy.net at abuse.net to let the folks there know that there was likely a problem with some resources under their purview. I received an autobot's response, whining that I had tred to send a message with attachments, or in some non-text format, and that my mesage was therefore not acceptable. Now, my usual (and in this case) MUA is /usr/bin/mail on a FreeBSD box. (For Solaris types, think /bin/mailx.) It does not prohibit me from creating any content I wish in the message body... nor does it provide any facilities for creating MIME of any type. After the second of these within 36 hours, I sent a note off to postmaster at speakeasy.net, asking that this misfeature be repaired. (I didn't get a definitive response; postmaster@ did indicate that support@ had such a filter, but the type of report in question should have gone to abuse@ -- but he then indicated that he had recently seen some evidence that abuse@ also had such a filter in place.) (Among other things, I pointed out that having such a filter in place, while the spammers are the ones controlling the content, was likely a Very Bad Idea, as it would allow certain spammers near immunity from being reported to abuse at speakeasy.net. I also noted that I suspected that the filter triggered a false positive based on seeing a regex that matched the beginning of an HTML sequence.) Take the above with a "grain of salt" of appropriate size for your situation. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From kabe at kabe.org Wed Jul 23 16:42:11 2003 From: kabe at kabe.org (Amol Kabe) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:42:11 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1058982515@[10.9.18.6]>; from jxh@jxh.com on Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 05:48:35PM -0500 References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> <2147483647.1058982515@[10.9.18.6]> Message-ID: <20030723164211.A21956@kabe.org> * Jim Hickstein [030723 23:10]: > > SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. > > [stuff deleted] > I'm not sure if they're still into DSL, but contact Meer.net. They > continue to earn my business every day, and they just totally rock. But > the loop will still belong to the ILEC, and the DSLAM to the CLEC. So I second meer.net. Their key differentiator is that you always get a clueful person on the phone. We have been using them for about 9 months and we are really happy. In that time we have had 2 problems with our DSL service - neither one of them caused by them. One was with the modem - they reproduced an intermittent problem in their lab and had a workaround to us pretty quick. The other was actually a problem with the circuit - again not their fault - but they were able to point in the right direction to look pretty quickly. -- Amol Kabe kabe at kabe.org From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Wed Jul 23 16:49:18 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:49:18 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <20030723234918.GA1276@snew.com> Quoting Alberto Begliomini (aub at coldstone.com): > I am shopping around for a DSL provider! > > SBC has been way too unreliable in the past few months. My connection was > down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they > had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down > for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened > (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) And that won't change with another IP provider on those wires. I live on a hill. Guy up the street has a very directional antenna going into downtown. To a T3. From a tall flagpole. >From flagpole, it goes to a box with a little magic and to OTHER antennae. Which the neighborhood sees. No DSL (SBC will screw up your line no matter who the IP comes from). Giving up ATT/Comcast cause the price has gone up 30% in the last year (no, I don't want cable. tv is bad, mm'kay?). I USED to have DSL before I moved. Static IP on SBC (I was early). It ate it every saturday for an hour. I grumbled and they slowed me down - "you're too far for the rate it was set it" (on saturday AM only?). When I moved, I tried to tranfer it to my housemates. No joy. They called to get DSL and were told it wasn't available there. Um, it was disconnected 2 days ago. "No, you're too far away to get DSL." /me awaits when the 96' telcomm act will create competition and let me choose to smack the SBC execs with the stick of "no thanks." Grumblings from the fine field woman who came to my house to install my phone when they had to dig up road to pull new cable and find the paved-over phone junction. It was offered that SBC funnels a lot of money out of the Bay to the less profitable south. in other words, bay area is very profitable, but they share tools among techs because they don't get NEARLY that budget back to run things well. At least with PacBell, the money didn't go too far away. > Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a > support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? > > Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. > > Alberto From brian.street at bayarea.net Wed Jul 23 17:40:52 2003 From: brian.street at bayarea.net (Brian Street) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:40:52 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> Message-ID: Alberto, I have used Bay Area Internet Services for over 5 years. They are on the expensive side, but the communications to the users regarding outages, etc. have been great. I can also speak highly of their tech support; they seem to get it right the first time. But, like already mentioned, all lines belong to SBC regardless of the ISP or the local loop provider and whenever it falls out of the ISP's realm of authority it can be a long and terrible wait at times. For that reason, I will never use Verio again after numerous outages sometimes lasting for over 8 hours during the business day - it just always came back on and never a word about what may have caused the problem or what was done to resolve the issue. Brian. -----Original Message----- From: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org [mailto:owner-baylisa at baylisa.org]On Behalf Of Alberto Begliomini Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 2:50 PM To: BayLISA Subject: DSL provider recommendation I am shopping around for a DSL provider! SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. My connection was down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. Alberto From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Wed Jul 23 18:05:31 2003 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:05:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: hi ya if a business cannot afford to be offline during business hours, they should have at least 2 dsl lines just in case one dies in the middle of the day outages and quality seem to vary depending on city/block location users at home on dsl should have a backup dialup or dsl or cable ( use 2 of the 3 .. not just one way to get to the world ) c ya alvin nobody mentioned rawbandwidth so far... so there ya go and if you're near charleston/san antonion, pacbell is supposed to be installing 12Mbps-up/6Mbps-down dsl line to be done by sep/oct time frame at roughtly the cost of business dsl line ( about $120/month ) On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Brian Street wrote: > Alberto, > > I have used Bay Area Internet Services for over 5 years. They are on the > expensive side, but the communications to the users regarding outages, etc. > have been great. I can also speak highly of their tech support; they seem to > get it right the first time. > > But, like already mentioned, all lines belong to SBC regardless of the ISP > or the local loop provider and whenever it falls out of the ISP's realm of > authority it can be a long and terrible wait at times. For that reason, I > will never use Verio again after numerous outages sometimes lasting for over > 8 hours during the business day - it just always came back on and never a > word about what may have caused the problem or what was done to resolve the > issue. > From schluntz at workofstone.com Wed Jul 23 19:11:12 2003 From: schluntz at workofstone.com (Sean J. Schluntz) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 19:11:12 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <20030723234918.GA1276@snew.com> Message-ID: <19064011-BD7C-11D7-BFFA-000A9567F918@workofstone.com> On Wednesday, July 23, 2003, at 04:49 PM, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > Quoting Alberto Begliomini (aub at coldstone.com): >> I am shopping around for a DSL provider! >> >> SBC has been way too unreliable in the past few months. My connection >> was >> down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they >> had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was >> down >> for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what >> happened >> (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) > > And that won't change with another IP provider on those wires. Actually I'll argue against that. Part of it does matter who the data comes from. Sure, if the cable gets cut it's SBCs fault no matter who your ISP is. But there are other things that can go wrong on the IP end. I ran side by side SBC and XO Communications (Concentric) DSL lines in to my house for almost a year. In that year I had one 2 hour outage from XO when one of their core routers went out in San Jose. In that same time I didn't go a month without losing between an hour and a day of connectivity from SBC. Both of the lines were pulled by SBC, but which one was more reliable? I dropped the SBC line for a second XO and my problems went away. Even after that it took SBC 3 months to stop charging me for the line, and two more months before they finally got all of the credits squared away. -Sean From david at catwhisker.org Wed Jul 23 19:19:09 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 19:19:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200307240219.h6O2J9FE016738@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:05:31 -0700 (PDT) >From: Alvin Oga >if a business cannot afford to be offline during business >hours, they should have at least 2 dsl lines just in case >one dies in the middle of the day Umm... that's going to depend a great deal on just what mode(s) of failure you hope to protect against -- and odds are that each of the DSL connections will have *both* ends in common: one for the customer premises; the other at the CO (note singular). >outages and quality seem to vary depending on city/block location Certainly. >users at home on dsl should have a backup dialup or dsl or cable >( use 2 of the 3 .. not just one way to get to the world ) Both that, and the above "2 DSL" approach can make things enough more complex that they really aren't feasible approaches. FWIW, I had had intermittent, but fairly severe, problems with my (home) DSL connection for several months... until a tech was sent out who had just come from another Pac*Bell DSL customer in the area with similar problems. He was *finally* able to pursuade his colleagues at the CO to investigate snfc21.pbi.net One More Time ... and viola! -- I had no more recurrences of the mode of failure in question. Unfortunately, I don't have valid statistics on this: a couple of weeks ago, my spouse noted a lack of connectivity (which I confirmed); I checked the log being produced by a little Perl script that was supposed to be monitoring the situation, and it gave no indication that there was a problem. Turned out that I had a nasty bug in the script; I made the cute optimization that I had put in there about 1.5 years prior a non-default option (thus the script was more accurate, at a cost of being more invasive). Last Monday evening, I had an opportunity to figure out what had gone wrong, and fixed the script (so that the passive, non-invasive approach worked). I have no outages to report since Jul 21 21:01:41, when the fixed version was implemented -- but that's less than 48 hours ago. (The script is intended as part of a circumvention for the original problems I was having with the line: if it detects a lack of connectivity, it tries various forms of evasive action, logging as it does so, culminating with using some X10 (home automation) stuff to power-cycle the Alcatel ADSL "MODEM" automatically. I suppose that merely the monitoring/reporting functions would be of some use to some folks; I can put it up on www.catwhisker.org, if there's interest. Fair warning: it is cobbled up assuming a FreeBSD environment; it parses and uses output from "netstat" a fair amount, so to the extent that this differs from FreeBSD's "netstat" in your environment, this could be annoying to work with.) Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From claw at kanga.nu Wed Jul 23 20:34:10 2003 From: claw at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:34:10 -0400 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: Message from "Ron Leedy" of "Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:06:06 PDT." References: Message-ID: <4615.1059017650@kanga.nu> On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:06:06 -0700 Ron Leedy wrote: > In your case, it really doesn't matter who the DSL provider is. They > all must come over SBC physical lines and circuits. So if you are > having a circuit problem now, you will have one with anybody else. > Also, SBC will take their full SLA time allowed when resolving third > party DSL issues. My ISP (Speakeasy) uses Covad and my only problems > have been circuit issues. SBC won't fix the problem because its not > cost effective and doesn't fall under SLA provisions with Covad. I've been quite happily with Rawbandwith under SBC for several years now (static IP for the price of dynamic, significant technical clue, very rapid response even on weekends for things like reverse DNS setups (2 hours before its broadcast for a request after 17:00 on a Sunday!)). A few months ago I lost link. Long story short. Some of Rawbandwidth's equipment in the CO had died (required full replacement). Longer story shorter: I had link less than three hours later. I've no argument with service like that from either SBC or Rawbandwith. Mike Durkin has a tight shop there. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw at kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From david at catwhisker.org Wed Jul 23 21:36:37 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 21:36:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: What do you do with a bouncing postmaster@? Message-ID: <200307240436.h6O4abiD017319@bunrab.catwhisker.org> (OK, so it doesn't *quite* scan like "What do you do with a drunken sailor?"....) Most of the time, I make a fairly concientious attempt to report spam to the custodian(s) of the resource(s) used to vector the spam to the SMTP server (that I control) in question -- at least, if the spam arrives in my mailbox (via any of my email aliases), I do. Accordingly, I have rather little patience when such a notification is bounced as undeliverable: as a general rule, I do not allow the SMTP servers under my control to accept mail from sources if I cannot notify the custodians of those sources of abuse of their resources. However, I realize that there are misguided souls who have seen fit to block a host using the IP address 63.193.123.122 from acting as an SMTP client with respect to their SMTP server(s) -- not because of spam received via that IP address (it's a static assignment, and has been since August, 1999 -- assigned to my home DSL connection) -- but because of spam from other addresses in the netblock, or because tghe hostname associated with the IP address (adsl-63-193-123-122.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net) indicates that the person using it isn't paying enough to be a "serious Internet user," I guess. Thus, in some cases, I will re-try the notification -- either from www.baylisa.org or from freefall.freebsd.org. I just had an "interesting" (think "Chinese curse") such incident: * I received spam; it was vectored from 12-246-16-195.client.attbi.com to www.baylisa.org. * After verifying that 12-246-16-195.client.attbi.com resolved to the IP address that was actually used by the SMTP client (12.246.16.195), I sent a standard boiler-plate notification to attbi.com at abuse.net. * I received a bounce-o-gram from a host named "abuse-garee", informing me: This is the Postfix program at host abuse-garee. I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned below could not be delivered to one or more destinations. For further assistance, please send mail to If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the message returned below. The Postfix program : host north-maroon.tci.com[198.178.8.167] said: 550 5.7.1 ... Access denied * After studying it for a bit -- the domain-less hostnames were a bit off-putting -- I satisfied myself that the domain really should be tci.com, and sent an inquiry to postmaster at tci.com, asking for an explanation. * That inquiry bounced, with isomorphic symptoms. * OK, well... blocking tci.com seems a bit overly broad, so I saved the bounce-o-gram as a file, used scp to copy it to www.baylisa.org, and sent another inquiry (as david at baylisa.org) from www.baylisa.org. * That inquiry bounced, with isomorphic symptoms. * Ummm... OK; that seems fairly bad. I logged in to freefall, and sent a (short -- no quoting of anything) inquiry/test to postmaster at tci.com from dhw at freebsd.org. * That inquiry bounced, with isomorphic symptoms. At this point, I am beginning to sense a pattern. :-{ Now, I don't have or use cable TV -- similar to the reasons elucidated by Chuck Yerkes earlier today -- but my recollection is that AT&T Broadband was sold to TCI, which was swallowed by Comcast. The former might account for the forwarding of mail addressed to attbi.com at abuse.net to tci.com, and the latter would account for the content of the From: header ("From: Comcast Forwarded Abuse ") -- well, sort of. Overall, I'm failing to get a warm, fuzzy, feeling of extreme competence here. :-( I could go ahead and block the lot -- attbi.com, tci.com, and comcast.com -- from the SMTP servers at baylisa.org and catwhisker.org. (I'm still a bit reluctant to be quite as Draconian with FreeBSD.ORG as I am with the other two. Besides, FreeBSD.ORG uses Postfix, while the others use sendmail.) I would welcome constructive alternative suggestions for dealing with the above. Thanks, david (current hat: postmaster at baylisa.org, I suppose) -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From aub at infoqualis.com Wed Jul 23 21:09:44 2003 From: aub at infoqualis.com (Alberto Begliomini) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 21:09:44 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <3F1F5C08.9000209@infoqualis.com> It seems most of the people are in favor of speakeasy.com, rawbandwith.com and meer.net, pretty much in this order. It's interesting that nobody has mentioned Covad. Anyone have experience with Covad? meer.net seems to use Covad. I also found some good information on this site: http://www.dslreports.com/ Alberto Alberto Begliomini wrote: > I am shopping around for a DSL provider! > > SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. My connection was > down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they > had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down > for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened > (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) > > Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a > support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? > > Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. > > Alberto From neil at askneil.com Wed Jul 23 22:08:33 2003 From: neil at askneil.com (Neil Katin) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 22:08:33 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F5C08.9000209@infoqualis.com> References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> <3F1F5C08.9000209@infoqualis.com> Message-ID: <3F1F69D1.8030101@askneil.com> Alberto Begliomini wrote: > It seems most of the people are in favor of speakeasy.com, > rawbandwith.com and meer.net, pretty much in this order. I can speak well of speakeasy, but let me also give a plug for two others: I recommend megapath highly if you're going under a business tariff (but they don't treat residential very well). And I'm very happy with my current provider: Sonic.net. They're particularly good about informing customers both before and after an event. Maybe it doesn't make an actual difference to uptime, but I feel better when informed about the reason for an outage; it lets me know they're on top of things. Needless to say, I never got that "on top of things" feeling from SBC... Neil From Brent at greatcircle.com Wed Jul 23 23:35:40 2003 From: Brent at greatcircle.com (Brent Chapman) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:35:40 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 6:05 PM -0700 7/23/03, Alvin Oga wrote: >if a business cannot afford to be offline during business >hours, they should have at least 2 dsl lines just in case >one dies in the middle of the day If a business cannot afford to be offline during business hours, they shouldn't be on a DSL connection. Many of the more common DSL failure modes will take out all the lines in a neighborhood: a cable cut, a DSLAM failure at the CO, or a failure of the T3 between the DSLAM and the carrier's hub, for example (there are many more examples). One of the reasons that DSL is relatively cheap is that it doesn't have all the redundancy and service level agreements and such that you get with traditional high-speed data lines (T1, etc.). You get what you pay for. I was Covad's original network architect, so I'm pretty familiar with the various failure modes... >outages and quality seem to vary depending on city/block location Yes, for a whole bunch of reasons. Quality of the telco infrastructure in that area, cluefulness/cluelessness of the local telco personnel in that area, the vagaries of a particular piece of equipment (a flaky DSLAM in the CO, for example), etc. >users at home on dsl should have a backup dialup or dsl or cable >( use 2 of the 3 .. not just one way to get to the world ) At home, and currently for my consulting business, I use DSL as my primary connection with a dialup backup. As I bring the consulting business back online, I'm considering moving my web presence off to my ISP's (SpeakEasy, by the way, who I highly recommend) hosting farm, to improve reliability over the do-it-yourself system I've got now (a Linux box at the end of my DSL line). I'll probably host my top-level pages (which are mostly static) at SpeakEasy, and my various mailing list archives and such (which are mostly dynamic) on my own host, so that I have total software control over them. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates, Inc. -- Silicon Valley's IT Infrastructure Experts http://www.greatcircle.com/ +1 650 962 0841 From Brent at greatcircle.com Wed Jul 23 23:41:19 2003 From: Brent at greatcircle.com (Brent Chapman) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:41:19 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F5C08.9000209@infoqualis.com> References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> <3F1F5C08.9000209@infoqualis.com> Message-ID: At 9:09 PM -0700 7/23/03, Alberto Begliomini wrote: >It seems most of the people are in favor of speakeasy.com, >rawbandwith.com and meer.net, pretty much in this order. > >It's interesting that nobody has mentioned Covad. Anyone have >experience with Covad? meer.net seems to use Covad. Are you talking about Covad as a DSL carrier, or Covad as an ISP (Covad.NET)? As you said, Meer.net uses Covad as its DSL carrier, as does SpeakEasy (I'm not sure about Rawbandwidth). I don't have any experience with Covad as an ISP (Covad.NET); we were in the early stages of implementing that just as I left the company (early 2000), and I haven't had occasion to look at it since then. I've used SpeakEasy (who in turn gets their DSL lines from Covad) for my own house and business, as well as a number of clients, and been quite happy with them. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Great Circle Associates, Inc. -- Silicon Valley's IT Infrastructure Experts http://www.greatcircle.com/ +1 650 962 0841 From herb at urusei.net Thu Jul 24 03:35:19 2003 From: herb at urusei.net (Herb Leong) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 03:35:19 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3F1FB667.7070104@urusei.net> Ron Leedy wrote: > In your case, it really doesn't matter who the DSL provider is. They all > must come over SBC physical lines and circuits. So if you are having a > circuit problem now, you will have one with anybody else. Also, SBC will > take their full SLA time allowed when resolving third party DSL issues. My > ISP (Speakeasy) uses Covad and my only problems have been circuit issues. > SBC won't fix the problem because its not cost effective and doesn't fall > under SLA provisions with Covad. Well, if you went with SBC, you may^H^H^Hwill end up with IP problems. At the very least you will be given dynamic IP address assignments which sucks if you want to have a server of some sort. And SBC frowns on servers. The SBC offerings are aimed at the lowest common denominator which I think most of us on this list do not fit into... > BTW - Speakeasy is a GREAT ISP with setups for the neophite and the guru. >>From nation-wide dialup to DSL to T-1 lines. They are adding wireless > access points. Any subscriber who is willing to be a access point gets > reduced rates. That's how innovative they are!!! I would have to 3rd or 4th Speakeasy as a GREAT ISP. I went with them instead of idiom.com only on the off chance that I may end up moving to Seattle and Speakeasy would let me transfer my account up north. I expected to take a hit on the service level vs. Idiom but I have been very pleasantly surprised that it has been good. Unlike SBC, you get static IP addresses with speakeasy and they will let you run servers within reason. They do not block ports. They don't have xfer caps on your link but they do have an xfer cap on USENET newsgroups. They also run nice promos--I got the choice of a XBOX or PS2 when I signed up for a gamer account. And speaking about gaming-- If you like gaming, they have private game servers that kick a lot of rear end... And you get a free fileshack login as well as a free Rhapsody music stream. And they offer shell accounts for us Ex-Netcom folks... The only complaint so far is that they declared a maintainance window in a email and the maint window actualy started a 1/2 hour earlier and ended a 1/2 hour latter than what was stated in the email. The call center blurb did have the correct hours, tho. The technology that they used for my particular link to Speakeasy involved using my sbc voice line via covad instead of the "dead" pair that was brought in for my previous covad link to my XO account. Unlike the the covad/XO link, the sbc/covad/speakeasy setup is affected by halogen lights. Gawd, I miss that link--it was one of the early adapter DSL lines that had a *min* commit of 1.5/384... With speeds hovering in the 4-6 range both directions. With a /28 (and I could have asked for and been given up to a /24). Not to mention being free... sigh. Those days ain't coming back... If I could somehow get that account back up and running (Phat chance!), that would be the only way I would drop Speakeasy. /herb From dk+baylisa at farm.org Thu Jul 24 03:37:52 2003 From: dk+baylisa at farm.org (=?koi8-r?B?RG1pdHJ5IEtvaG1hbnl1ayDkzcnU0snKIOvPyM3BzsDL?=) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 03:37:52 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <20030723234918.GA1276@snew.com>; from chuck+baylisa@snew.com on Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 04:49:18PM -0700 References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> <20030723234918.GA1276@snew.com> Message-ID: <20030724033752.E25181@farm.org> On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 04:49:18PM -0700, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > I USED to have DSL before I moved. Static IP on SBC > (I was early). It ate it every saturday for an hour. > I grumbled and they slowed me down - "you're too far > for the rate it was set it" (on saturday AM only?). > > When I moved, I tried to tranfer it to my housemates. > No joy. They called to get DSL and were told it > wasn't available there. Um, it was disconnected > 2 days ago. "No, you're too far away to get DSL." my favourite one from SBC is `you are too far from CO to get a static IP address, we can only give you a dynamic one.' (No, honestly, I am not making that up.) Try to guess what that really means. (answer below.) Back to subject: My current DSL is from Speakeasy. They are nice and clueful, mostly. My former circuit was from XO (then Concentric). Had no problems with them, either. Explanation: They give you a modem (bridge?) if you have a dynamic address, and a router if you want a static one. Apparently, the router they use has a shorter range. From david at catwhisker.org Thu Jul 24 05:54:46 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 05:54:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1FB667.7070104@urusei.net> Message-ID: <200307241254.h6OCsk3I018851@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 03:35:19 -0700 >From: Herb Leong >Well, if you went with SBC, you may^H^H^Hwill end up with IP problems. >At the very least you will be given dynamic IP address assignments which >sucks if you want to have a server of some sort. And SBC frowns on >servers. The SBC offerings are aimed at the lowest common denominator >which I think most of us on this list do not fit into... With respect, some of the above may be true now with the use of DHCP-assigned IP addresses. But since I deployed my DSL connection (single static IP address), I've run servers on it -- HTTP, SMTP, DNS, SSH -- with no hints from SBC (or successor organizations) that I was doing something unwelcome or inappropriate. Nor do they do any filtering of which I am aware. I *have* heard that Excite at Home and its successors in the IP-over-cable industry have raised objections (as well as technical hurdles) to doing what I sketched above. This has not made IP-over-cable more attractive for my intended use. And since my IP assignment is static, I do not have "IP problems". I have had connectivity problems -- but then, I've also had 8-hr. power outages (from the use of utility poles as braking devices for out-of- control vehicles). And my UPS presently only keeps things going for about 45 minutes. Peace, david (who would really like to set up a PV (solar) power-generation system) -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From gwen at reptiles.org Thu Jul 24 08:31:59 2003 From: gwen at reptiles.org (Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 11:31:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1FB667.7070104@urusei.net> Message-ID: <20030724112939.O3688-100000@iguana.reptiles.org> On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Herb Leong wrote: > Well, if you went with SBC, you may^H^H^Hwill end up with IP problems. > At the very least you will be given dynamic IP address assignments which > sucks if you want to have a server of some sort. And SBC frowns on > servers. The SBC offerings are aimed at the lowest common denominator > which I think most of us on this list do not fit into... FWIW, we recently acquired a /27 from SBC/Yahoo for our profoundly slow DSL line. Barring the fact that the previous inhabitants of our block seem to have been a spamhaus, it was a particularly painlessp process. YMMV. cheers! ========================================================================== "A cat spends her life conflicted between a deep, passionate and profound desire for fish and an equally deep, passionate and profound desire to avoid getting wet. This is the defining metaphor of my life right now." From david at catwhisker.org Thu Jul 24 10:53:14 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 10:53:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? Message-ID: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> I'm trying to help out a small startup that's finishing up a move from a "carriage house" to real office space (barely) in Belmont -- east of the Bayshore freeway, between Hobee's & Jameco. One of the things that's been "inherited" from some prior tenant(s) (who apparently went bust) is a couple of patch panels and a PBX in a 14U (24.5") wall-mounted rack. I've added a bit of stuff to what's in the rack, but needed to cannibalize about half the existing screws from other equipment in the rack. And I'm having a much harder-than-expected time of being able to buy a handful of additional screws -- thus this inquiry. The screws that fit are: * pan head * kind of a "hybrid slotted-Phillips" drive * 5/8" shank * 10-24 coarse thread * zinc-coated steel (though I don't really care about the finish). I've checked: * Empire Lumber (nearly next door) * the Jameco catalog * Ace hardware on Industrial Rd. in San Carlos * Home Depot in San Carlos I *think* I checked San Mateo Electronics, but I wouldn't swear to it. I had intended to check: * Graybar (815 American, San Carlos) -- couldn't find them; phone disconncted, no longer in service. * Danforth Screw Works (formerly on Industrial Rd. near Holly in San Carlos) -- they now seem to be in Tracy. One of my colleagues (who lives down in Santa Clara county) was going to check Weird Stuff and/or HSC, but that does not appear to have happened. Since I live in Redwood City, I have some preference for someplace not too far off-track from "between" Redwood City and Belmont. (The concept of "between" starts getting fairly fuzzy when the universe of discussion is more complex than uni-dimensional....) Thanks...! Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From pozar at lns.com Thu Jul 24 11:15:53 2003 From: pozar at lns.com (Tim Pozar) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 11:15:53 -0700 Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? In-Reply-To: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20030724181553.GA63984@lns.com> If you want to head up to SF, I can give you a bag of about 41 screws. I will need it replace. Tim On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 10:53:14AM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote: > I'm trying to help out a small startup that's finishing up a move from > a "carriage house" to real office space (barely) in Belmont -- east of > the Bayshore freeway, between Hobee's & Jameco. > > One of the things that's been "inherited" from some prior tenant(s) > (who apparently went bust) is a couple of patch panels and a PBX in > a 14U (24.5") wall-mounted rack. > > I've added a bit of stuff to what's in the rack, but needed to > cannibalize about half the existing screws from other equipment in > the rack. And I'm having a much harder-than-expected time of being able > to buy a handful of additional screws -- thus this inquiry. > > The screws that fit are: > > * pan head > * kind of a "hybrid slotted-Phillips" drive > * 5/8" shank > * 10-24 coarse thread > * zinc-coated steel (though I don't really care about the finish). > > I've checked: > > * Empire Lumber (nearly next door) > * the Jameco catalog > * Ace hardware on Industrial Rd. in San Carlos > * Home Depot in San Carlos > > I *think* I checked San Mateo Electronics, but I wouldn't swear to it. > > I had intended to check: > > * Graybar (815 American, San Carlos) -- couldn't find them; phone > disconncted, no longer in service. > * Danforth Screw Works (formerly on Industrial Rd. near Holly in San > Carlos) -- they now seem to be in Tracy. > > One of my colleagues (who lives down in Santa Clara county) was > going to check Weird Stuff and/or HSC, but that does not appear to have > happened. Since I live in Redwood City, I have some preference for > someplace not too far off-track from "between" Redwood City and Belmont. > (The concept of "between" starts getting fairly fuzzy when the universe > of discussion is more complex than uni-dimensional....) > > Thanks...! > > Peace, > david > -- > David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org > Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not > consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. -- Snail: Tim Pozar / LNS / 1978 45th Ave / San Francisco CA 94116 / USA POTS: +1 415 665 3790 Radio: KC6GNJ / KAE6247 "Be who you are and say what you feel because the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss From jxh at jxh.com Thu Jul 24 11:17:09 2003 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:17:09 -0500 Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? In-Reply-To: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <2147483647.1059052629@[10.9.18.6]> > * Graybar (815 American, San Carlos) -- couldn't find them; phone > disconncted, no longer in service. Try the San Jose store. They were still open last I checked, after the San Carlos one closed. Also I think they're in Oakland, if that's better. I know the screws you mean. I think they tend to come with Chatsworth racks. From trockij at transmeta.com Thu Jul 24 11:43:30 2003 From: trockij at transmeta.com (Jim Trocki) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 11:43:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1059052629@[10.9.18.6]> References: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <2147483647.1059052629@[10.9.18.6]> Message-ID: On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Jim Hickstein wrote: > > * Graybar (815 American, San Carlos) -- couldn't find them; phone > > disconncted, no longer in service. > > Try the San Jose store. They were still open last I checked, after the San > Carlos one closed. Also I think they're in Oakland, if that's better. > > I know the screws you mean. I think they tend to come with Chatsworth > racks. yes. i always order them from graybar. it's best to call them first because the will-call office in san jose doesn't always have the stock you might need. they'll gladly ship you the stuff, though. last purchase i made was $8.06 for a bag of 50 screws (chatsworth part #40605-001). these fit in the standard aluminum two-post 19" racks from chatsworth. From claw at kanga.nu Thu Jul 24 11:48:10 2003 From: claw at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:48:10 -0400 Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? In-Reply-To: Message from David Wolfskill of "Thu, 24 Jul 2003 10:53:14 PDT." <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <19773.1059072490@kanga.nu> On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 10:53:14 -0700 (PDT) David Wolfskill wrote: > The screws that fit are: > * pan head * kind of a "hybrid slotted-Phillips" drive * 5/8" shank * > 10-24 coarse thread * zinc-coated steel (though I don't really care > about the finish). I know the ones. I took a nut that a screw I already had fit well and took that to Home Depot -- 10 minutes of fiddling with screws later I had a box of phillips heads that fit. I'd give you the spec, except I'm in CT, and the box is in San Jose. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw at kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From pf-baylisa at freret.org Thu Jul 24 12:35:22 2003 From: pf-baylisa at freret.org (Payne Freret) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:35:22 -0700 Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? Message-ID: David Wolfskill wrote > ... I'm having a much harder-than-expected time of being > able to buy a handful of additional screws -- thus this > inquiry. > The screws that fit are: > * pan head kind of a "hybrid slotted-Phillips" drive 5/8" > * shank 10-24 coarse thread zinc-coated steel (though I > * don't really care about the finish). THE OLANDER COMPANY INC. 144 Commercial Street Sunnyvale, CA 94086-5298 800 538-1500 408 735-1850 www.olandercorp.com From david at catwhisker.org Thu Jul 24 12:53:46 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:53:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? In-Reply-To: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <200307241953.h6OJrk3r021400@bunrab.catwhisker.org> My thanks to all who responded, either privately, to the list, or to both. A private correspondent suggested: >Check with action systems in redwood city!!! I bought a rack there and they >have lots of "stuff" > Action Systems > Address: > 850 Main St > Redwood City, CA 94063 > Tel: 650-569-3990 Since it was practically on my way home, I did so. Don Gibson was both helpful and reasonable -- he merely asked to cover his costs. Since this isn't stock he really keeps on hand for sale, I picked up a dozen (and gave him a couple of dollars). Thanks again -- I think I'm set for now. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Thu Jul 24 12:56:00 2003 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:56:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Local source for rack-mount screws? In-Reply-To: <200307241753.h6OHrDOL020775@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: hi ya bring down working sample screws with you - specify stainless steel, aluminum, brass, etc - specify the thread type ( 4-40, 6-32, 8-32, 10-32 etc - specify your heads ( phillip, slot, countersink, etc - specify the lenght of the threads ( 1/4, 3/8, .. - specify what color too - if you want waashers, specify the inner, outter dimesons and thickness - or in metric too - olander ( commercial between central and kifer ) - plan to wait in line for up to an hour if needed ( go during lunch time ( noon-1pm) ... less people ) c ya alvin On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, David Wolfskill wrote: > I'm trying to help out a small startup that's finishing up a move from > a "carriage house" to real office space (barely) in Belmont -- east of > the Bayshore freeway, between Hobee's & Jameco. > > One of the things that's been "inherited" from some prior tenant(s) > (who apparently went bust) is a couple of patch panels and a PBX in > a 14U (24.5") wall-mounted rack. > > I've added a bit of stuff to what's in the rack, but needed to > cannibalize about half the existing screws from other equipment in > the rack. And I'm having a much harder-than-expected time of being able > to buy a handful of additional screws -- thus this inquiry. > > The screws that fit are: > > * pan head > * kind of a "hybrid slotted-Phillips" drive > * 5/8" shank > * 10-24 coarse thread > * zinc-coated steel (though I don't really care about the finish). > From bill at wards.net Thu Jul 24 13:30:40 2003 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:30:40 -0700 Subject: What do you do with a bouncing postmaster@? In-Reply-To: <200307240436.h6O4abiD017319@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200307240436.h6O4abiD017319@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <16160.16880.758275.52481@komodo.home.wards.net> David Wolfskill writes: >Now, I don't have or use cable TV -- similar to the reasons elucidated >by Chuck Yerkes earlier today -- but my recollection is that AT&T >Broadband was sold to TCI, which was swallowed by Comcast. The former >might account for the forwarding of mail addressed to attbi.com at abuse.net >to tci.com, and the latter would account for the content of the From: >header ("From: Comcast Forwarded Abuse ") -- well, >sort of. Did you try sending it to postmaster at comcast.com? That seems like the next thing to try. >Overall, I'm failing to get a warm, fuzzy, feeling of extreme competence >here. :-( > >I could go ahead and block the lot -- attbi.com, tci.com, and >comcast.com -- from the SMTP servers at baylisa.org and catwhisker.org. >(I'm still a bit reluctant to be quite as Draconian with FreeBSD.ORG >as I am with the other two. Besides, FreeBSD.ORG uses Postfix, >while the others use sendmail.) Would that block mail from cable modem subscribers? Specifically would that block my email to this list? My email is routed through an ISP smarthost (sasquatch.com) but it does originate from comcast-land... If so, blocking all the customers of one of the largest ISP's in the country because you can't get a solitary complaint through to their admin team (who probably mean well but are just overworked, like most sysadmins), is draconian to say the least. --Bill. -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMER, CLOSED COURSE. DO NOT ATTEMPT. From david at catwhisker.org Thu Jul 24 22:35:45 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:35:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: On noting patterns in spam attempts Message-ID: <200307250535.h6P5Zj2w023248@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Most of the stuff I do to block inappropriate use (i.e., "abuse") of email at the MTA is fairly ordinary. There are a couple of checks with respect to the Message-ID header, though, that are a little unusual -- and unlikely to be well-suited for all situations. I have recently been noting patterns with respect to the mail rejected by one of these mechanisms that may well help identify systems that are likely to be used in atempts to vector additional spam (that might not otherwise be intercepted). The first is fairly simple: once the Message-ID header is read, its syntax is checked. If the value of the header would match the Perl regex /^\w+\@\w+$/ , fine. If not, the message is rejected at the MTA: 553 Message-ID must be an addr-spec; see RFC 2822 I'll admit that this is, perhaps, rather severe. On the other hand, it doesn't happen very often -- but every time it does, the available evidence suggests that the message was spam. The other is a bit more controversial -- in no small part because it sometimes catches mail that is wanted: thus, it is appropriate to set up "exceptions" for it. For this one, we wait until all of the headers have been read. Then, we check to see if there's a Message-ID header that was specified. If the SMTP client is in one of our domains (or is one of the exceptions), the message is not blocked at this point. Otherwise, the message is rejected: 553 Unidentified messages are not acceptable here Now, I realize that RFC 2822 says (among other things): 3.6.4. Identification fields Though optional, every message SHOULD have a "Message-ID:" field. .... Thus, the Message-ID field is not required, and this rejection on my part violates the letter of the RFC, as well as the dictum "Be conservative about what you send and liberal about what you accept." I will make but one comment in my defense -- for the purpose of this note is not to defend the approach, but to illustrate something I think I've learned by deploying it: if the message arrived at my SMTP server without a Message-ID, and I later determine that it was spam, I will report the spam to whoever is supposed to be responsible for the machine that acted as an SMTP client. Without that Message-ID, there is no way to make a positive identification of the message's transit of that system. Now here's what I've seen that I find interesting: spammers don't seem to know how to cope with this. Here's an excerpt from today's maillog here at home: Jul 24 01:11:45 janus sm-mta ... ruleset=check_eoh, ... relay=[61.77.232.38], reject=553 5.0.0 Unidentified messages are not acceptable here Jul 24 01:11:45 janus sm-mta ... from=<5140ghxc at aci.net>, size=1762, ... Jul 24 01:11:45 janus sm-mta ... to=, ... Jul 24 01:11:58 janus sm-mta ... ruleset=check_eoh, ... relay=[165.246.189.33], reject=553 5.0.0 Unidentified messages are not acceptable here Jul 24 01:11:59 janus sm-mta ... from=<5140ghxc at aci.net>, size=1762, ... Jul 24 01:11:59 janus sm-mta ... to=, ... Jul 24 01:12:07 janus sm-mta ... ruleset=check_eoh, ... relay=[61.77.232.38], reject=553 5.0.0 Unidentified messages are not acceptable here Jul 24 01:12:08 janus sm-mta ... from=<5140ghxc at aci.net>, size=1762, ... Jul 24 01:12:08 janus sm-mta ... to=, ... Jul 24 01:12:18 janus sm-mta ... ruleset=check_eoh, ... relay=[211.209.23.36], reject=553 5.0.0 Unidentified messages are not acceptable here Jul 24 01:12:18 janus sm-mta ... from=<5140ghxc at aci.net>, size=1762, ... Jul 24 01:12:18 janus sm-mta ... to=, ... Jul 24 01:12:27 janus sm-mta ... ruleset=check_eoh, ... relay=12-237-128-54.client.attbi.com [12.237.128.54], reject=553 5.0.0 Unidentified messages are not acceptable here Jul 24 01:12:27 janus sm-mta ... from=<5140ghxc at aci.net>, size=1762, ... Jul 24 01:12:27 janus sm-mta ... to=, ... Now: based on the timing and the contents of the log, I think it's fair to figure that it's very likely that what we see here are 5 consecutive unsuccessful attempts to send spam to LENNON at ONLINEROCK.COM. (I provide some MX service for onlinerock.com. And yes, the person who asked me to do it has expressed appreciation for the spam-elimination I do.) Further, a quick look at the would-be SMTP client IP addresses shows an interesting variety: * 61.77.232.38 KORNET-XDSL-SEONGNAM (KOREA TELECOM, Korea) * 165.246.189.33 ITIS-NET (Inha University, Korea) * 61.77.232.38 KORNET-XDSL-SEONGNAM (KOREA TELECOM, Korea) -- again * 211.209.23.36 HANANET-CATV-SUNGNAMSO (Hanaro Telecom Inc., Korea) * 12.237.128.54 ATT (AT&T WorldNet Services -- probably Comcast now) I'm not much for betting, but I strongly suspect that the odds favor a bet that each of these systems -- at the time of the aborted SMTP conversation, anyway -- was an open SMTP relay. So, lately, I've been augmenting access.db with blocks on the specific IP addresses in question, with the message "Apparent open relay". Of course, the above is not representative of the only pattern I have seen: I also see one-offs, as well as repeated attempts from the same IP address (or netblock). But the above is the pattern that I find most useful. And every once in a while, I find an attempt to deliver mail to my SMTP server that is rejected because of one of these "apparent open relays". Yours for helping squelch spam, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From marc_news at merlins.org Fri Jul 25 11:03:37 2003 From: marc_news at merlins.org (Marc MERLIN) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:03:37 -0400 Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <20030722181230.GM5415@deer-run.com> References: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> <20030722172730.GL5415@deer-run.com> <20030722181230.GM5415@deer-run.com> Message-ID: <20030725180337.GC3512@merlins.org> On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 11:12:30AM -0700, Hal Pomeranz wrote: > > I hate following up my own posting this way, but one of the list > > members pointed me at a really good deal for replacement batteries > > for these units. > > Several people have since asked me for a pointer to said deal, so > here it is: > > http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=42800 > > That's $120, including the cost of shipping the dead battery back > for disposal. You won't beat going to the foothill flea market. You can find UPS batteries for 10 to 30 dollars a piece depending on size and condition I've dropped my dead batteries at the sunnyvale recycling center (smart station north of mathilda and lawrence) Marc -- "A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in" - A.S.R. Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f at merlins.org for PGP key From jxh at jxh.com Fri Jul 25 12:32:55 2003 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:32:55 -0500 Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <20030725180337.GC3512@merlins.org> References: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> <20030722172730.GL5415@deer-run.com> <20030722181230.GM5415@deer-run.com> <20030725180337.GC3512@merlins.org> Message-ID: <2147483647.1059143575@[10.9.18.6]> > You won't beat going to the foothill flea market. You can find UPS > batteries for 10 to 30 dollars a piece depending on size and condition Not to cast aspersions, but I bought a "reconditioned" APC UPS from a local warehouse-type surplus outfit, who swore up and down the batteries were "new", and indeed they appeared to have been replaced recently. It was toast within a week. I then bought, from a national distributor at some little cost, the actual APC ChargeUPS replacement kit (CURK12 in my case), which also _added a 2-year warranty on the entire UPS_, and free return freight on the dead batteries. About 15 months later, I claimed against this warranty due to over-temperature conditions in my old co-lo (50C(!), since corrected), and the whole thing paid for itself nicely. It came by FedEx Priority Overnight -- a thing weighing over a hundred pounds! -- and again came with a label for sent-paid return freight for the whole unit. I was well pleased. And I am since very skeptical about lead-acid batteries of unknown provnenance. If you care a lot about the availability of what's connected to it, and can afford the cash flow hit, consider the actual APC part number for the kit. It will also have the little cables and connectors just so, etc. From jxh at jxh.com Fri Jul 25 12:53:44 2003 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:53:44 -0500 Subject: Anybody want dead UPS? In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1059143575@[10.9.18.6]> References: <20030722160135.GF5415@deer-run.com> <20030722172730.GL5415@deer-run.com> <20030722181230.GM5415@deer-run.com> <20030725180337.GC3512@merlins.org> <2147483647.1059143575@[10.9.18.6]> Message-ID: <2147483647.1059144824@[10.9.18.6]> > unknown provnenance. Tsk. s/vn/v/ Typing too fast again. From star at starshine.org Fri Jul 25 15:05:03 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 15:05:03 -0700 Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> References: <3F1F02FE.1080203@coldstone.com> Message-ID: <20030725220503.GH31314@starshine.org> On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 02:49:50PM -0700, Alberto Begliomini wrote: > I am shopping around for a DSL provider! > > SBC has been way to unreliable in the past few months. My connection was > down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they > had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down > for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened > (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!) > > Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a > support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing? > > Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers. > > Alberto I can't say anything except hearsay (which others have much better experience of) for Speakeasy but I don't recall it being seriously flamed. Meer.Net is of course BayLISA's present website host. Maybe you could see if they want to offer a deal for BayLISA members :D My own ISP, Idiom.Com, has contracts which a few different DSL providers. Only one of them is particularly suited to my area, but you are a considerable distance up the peninsula, thus you may find yourself with the pleasure of some choices. When it comes to the backhoe fandango though, it all comes down to who or what owns the wires near you. Idiom's support crew is small but absolutely everyone there is clued. Not only do they generally know what's going on but they aren't afraid to say whatever it is. The only soft spot is that the little "status recording" is the last thing to get updated. Though this may be a symptom of me being a sufficiently active user of my broadband, that I'm early to notice when it glitches out, too. They can be paged for outages in the middle of the night; never heard of SBC managing to do that. They're a BSD house. Linux using customers are just fine too. Mac and Windows users have helpful notes on his website (sufficiently helpful, that I've used them to help non-Idiom people in other areas of the country figure out what's with their screen. No bs.) His business is optimized for keeping your bits flowing, not hand-holding complete dummies, though. I presume that is a feature among most of the folks on this list... If you decide for Idiom among your several choices, tell Dave Chernoff Jim'n'Heather sent you; we'll get a small credit on our account. And say hi to Vonnie. . | . Heather Stern | star at starshine.org --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org ' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078 From extasia at extasia.org Fri Jul 25 17:13:20 2003 From: extasia at extasia.org (David Alban) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 17:13:20 -0700 Subject: Too far for asdl...? Message-ID: <20030725171320.A17876@gerasimov.net> Greetings! I was just told by Speakeasy that I was too far (farther than 12,700 feet) for asdl. As I can't afford their sdsl, I have to go with someone else. Can anyone give me a testimonial for a sysadmin-friendly provider that also does reverse dns? I'm looking for static IP's. Customer support that has a clue would be a plus. Thanks! David -- Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors. *** Cave fruticem. http://extasia.org/cave-fruticem/ Come to sig-beer-west! http://extasia.org/sig-beer-west/ Unix sysadmin available: http://extasia.org/resume/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: not available URL: From npc at gangofone.com Fri Jul 25 19:43:51 2003 From: npc at gangofone.com (Nick Christenson) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:43:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DSL provider recommendation In-Reply-To: <200307241254.h6OCsk3I018851@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <200307260243.h6Q2hpRa057966@discovery.gangofone.com> > >Well, if you went with SBC, you may^H^H^Hwill end up with IP problems. > >At the very least you will be given dynamic IP address assignments which > >sucks if you want to have a server of some sort. And SBC frowns on > >servers. The SBC offerings are aimed at the lowest common denominator > >which I think most of us on this list do not fit into... > But since I deployed my DSL connection (single static IP address), I've > run servers on it -- HTTP, SMTP, DNS, SSH -- with no hints from SBC (or > successor organizations) that I was doing something unwelcome or > inappropriate. Nor do they do any filtering of which I am aware. I also have a static IP from SBC and have run servers on it with no problem. > And since my IP assignment is static, I do not have "IP problems". I > have had connectivity problems -- but then, I've also had 8-hr. power > outages (from the use of utility poles as braking devices for out-of- > control vehicles). And my UPS presently only keeps things going for > about 45 minutes. I also have not had any "IP problems", moreover, I haven't had any real connectivity problems. Since December, my longest recorded connectivity outage is no more than 3 minutes, and my recording of this is as likely to be in error as it is to be a real outage (ICMP ECHO packets can get lost). While I'm no fan of SBC, I have to admit in all honesty, their connectivity has been first rate, two orders of magnitude better than the Frame Relay line for a small coop ISP in LA county I help out with. I, too, can demonstrate that SBC's DSL service is between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude better than PG&E's electricity service, which is easily the worst utility service I have ever had anywhere at any time. Of course, I've only lived in relatively civilized areas. -- Nick Christenson npc at gangofone.com From rsr at inorganic.org Fri Jul 25 20:57:55 2003 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 20:57:55 -0700 Subject: Too far for asdl...? In-Reply-To: <20030725171320.A17876@gerasimov.net> References: <20030725171320.A17876@gerasimov.net> Message-ID: <20030726035754.GA5110@nag.inorganic.org> On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 05:13:20PM -0700, David Alban wrote: > Can anyone give me a testimonial for a sysadmin-friendly provider > that also does reverse dns? I'm looking for static IP's. Customer > support that has a clue would be a plus. I can't rave enough about cliq.com. They're more expensive than PacBell, but when you call them you get a sysadmin on the phone. Also, they tend to approach it from the "we charge you more because it costs us more, so anything we can do for you without raising our cost is something we *will* do for you." Static IPs? Check. Lots of them. Reverse DNS? Ha. They'll do RDNS if you want. Personally, I just had them delegate it to me. -roy From star at starshine.org Fri Jul 25 22:31:07 2003 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:31:07 -0700 Subject: Too far for asdl...? In-Reply-To: <20030725171320.A17876@gerasimov.net> References: <20030725171320.A17876@gerasimov.net> Message-ID: <20030726053107.GC31874@starshine.org> On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 05:13:20PM -0700, David Alban wrote: > Greetings! > > I was just told by Speakeasy that I was too far (farther than 12,700 > feet) for asdl. As I can't afford their sdsl, I have to go with someone > else. :( > Can anyone give me a testimonial for a sysadmin-friendly provider > that also does reverse dns? I'm looking for static IP's. Customer > support that has a clue would be a plus. My provider (Idiom.com) not only has reverse DNS but a web widget under the accounts system that allows me to control it effectively. My publicly visible systems reverse perfectly. There's a first-Tuesday party I can invite you to in Redwood City if you'd like to meet the fellow who runs it. Not alone of course. But yes, they're definitely clued. Unfortunately some of his offerings are a little more on the expensive side. I simply point you at his website, you'll have to decide if you like what you see on your own. But during normal business hours you could just call 'em and they'd actually help you figure out the ranges :) . | . Heather Stern | star at starshine.org --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org ' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078 From claw at kanga.nu Fri Jul 25 23:04:09 2003 From: claw at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 02:04:09 -0400 Subject: Too far for asdl...? In-Reply-To: Message from David Alban of "Fri, 25 Jul 2003 17:13:20 PDT." <20030725171320.A17876@gerasimov.net> References: <20030725171320.A17876@gerasimov.net> Message-ID: <26887.1059199449@kanga.nu> On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 17:13:20 -0700 David Alban wrote: > Can anyone give me a testimonial for a sysadmin-friendly provider that > also does reverse dns? I'm looking for static IP's. Customer support > that has a clue would be a plus. Without attempting to beat the horse too badly: Rawbandwidth. Very clueful, static IPs only, reverse DNS setup and propagated with a couple hours of request every time so far, reliable, prompt response, etc. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw at kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Sat Jul 26 13:47:23 2003 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 13:47:23 -0700 Subject: On noting patterns in spam attempts In-Reply-To: <200307250535.h6P5Zj2w023248@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200307250535.h6P5Zj2w023248@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20030726204723.GA5394@snew.com> Quoting David Wolfskill (david at catwhisker.org): > Most of the stuff I do to block inappropriate use (i.e., "abuse") of > email at the MTA is fairly ordinary. There are a couple of checks > with respect to the Message-ID header, though, that are a little > unusual -- and unlikely to be well-suited for all situations. ... > The first is fairly simple: once the Message-ID header is read, > its syntax is checked. If the value of the header would match the > Perl regex > > /^\w+\@\w+$/ Per 822 (2822 came after my rules went in), message id's MUST MUST MUST be in "<\w+@\w+>" form. BRACKET SOMETHING @ SOMETHING BRAKCET. > , fine. If not, the message is rejected at the MTA: > 553 Message-ID must be an addr-spec; see RFC 2822 I block them with a generic "header error" (I'm not here to make spammers smarter). It can get 2-5% of all mail. I did once block ill-composed email from a script devised by someone who should have known better. It was fixed forthwith. Spamassassin will note when a message-id is added by a downstream relay and add a point or two. > I'll admit that this is, perhaps, rather severe. On the other hand, it > doesn't happen very often -- but every time it does, the available > evidence suggests that the message was spam. I'm seeing 60% spam rates at a client. severe is cost saving. > 3.6.4. Identification fields > Though optional, every message SHOULD have a "Message-ID:" field. > .... I don't recall that in 822, but many messages will NOT have a message-ID when coming from MUAs (especially when I compose via "telnet host 25" :) From claw at kanga.nu Sat Jul 26 16:25:25 2003 From: claw at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 19:25:25 -0400 Subject: On noting patterns in spam attempts In-Reply-To: Message from Chuck Yerkes of "Sat, 26 Jul 2003 13:47:23 PDT." <20030726204723.GA5394@snew.com> References: <200307250535.h6P5Zj2w023248@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <20030726204723.GA5394@snew.com> Message-ID: <4955.1059261925@kanga.nu> On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 13:47:23 -0700 Chuck Yerkes wrote: > I block them with a generic "header error" (I'm not here to make > spammers smarter). It can get 2-5% of all mail. Exim has a non-default configuration option which will hard reject (at the SMTP level) mail with illegal/improper headers. It makes quite a few checks and is quite effective at dropping your spam rate. Caveat: It also has the side effect of periodically unsubscribing/NOMAILing your Yahoo Groups/lists subscriptions as Yahoo sets NOMAIL on the first hard bounce. In every case where I've chased this down (roughly 15 of them), it has been due to an RFC2822 violating spam forwarded thru a Yahoo list which was then bounced by Exim. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw at kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From david at catwhisker.org Sun Jul 27 14:03:24 2003 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:03:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: OK; I kinda figured AOL was weird ... but this is bizarre.... Message-ID: <200307272103.h6RL3OqZ095968@bunrab.catwhisker.org> I received some (intercepted) spam that was intnded for one of the BayLISA lists; www.baylisa.org recived it from a machine using the IP address 172.131.68.202, which is part of the AOL-172BLK netblock, assigned to America Online. The output from "whois 172.131.68.202" includes: OrgAbuseHandle: AOL382-ARIN OrgAbuseName: Abuse OrgAbusePhone: +1-703-265-4670 OrgAbuseEmail: abuse at aol.net Accordingly, I sent a note, quoting the spam, to abuse at aol.net. I received a response that *claimed* (header-from, vs. envelope-from) to be from "daemon at catwhisker.org". Hmmm.... no, I think "bizarre" isn't really what I mean; how about "perverse"? Here are the headers; there's no way I would have thought to make this stuff up: >From daemon at ort-r01.mail.aol.com Sun Jul 27 13:52:38 2003 >Return-Path: >Received: from janus.catwhisker.org (janus.catwhisker.org [172.16.8.1]) > by bunrab.catwhisker.org (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h6RKqb30095939 > for ; Sun, 27 Jul 2003 13:52:37 -0700 (PDT) > (envelope-from daemon at ort-r01.mail.aol.com) >Received: from ort-r01.mail.aol.com (ort-r01.mx.aol.com [152.163.224.70]) > by janus.catwhisker.org (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h6RKqacs072444 > for ; Sun, 27 Jul 2003 13:52:37 -0700 (PDT) > (envelope-from daemon at ort-r01.mail.aol.com) >Received: (from daemon at localhost) > by ort-r01.mail.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/AOL-5.0.0) > id QAA19833; > Sun, 27 Jul 2003 16:52:35 -0400 (EDT) >Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 16:52:35 -0400 (EDT) >From: daemon at catwhisker.org >Message-Id: <200307272052.QAA19833 at ort-r01.mail.aol.com> >To: david at catwhisker.org >Old-Subject: Re: Your resources are being (ab)used by spammers >References: <200307272052.h6RKqV7l095935 at bunrab.catwhisker.org> >In-Reply-To: <200307272052.h6RKqV7l095935 at bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Precedence: junk >X-Loop: pmd at aol.net >Reply-To: postmaster at aol.com >Subject: Postmaster Mail Receipt Notification >Status: R > > ** Postmaster Autoresponder v.20000425 ** > >.... [rest elided -- dhw] So... anyone have any ideas as to why they're doing that? About the only thing I can think of is to discourage attempts to reply to the auto-responder. (Of course, I could set up "daemon" to be a private alias for some valid set of addresses....) Yours for a slightly more surreal day.... Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not consistent with reliability. I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems. From wolfgang+gnus20030727T162301 at wsrcc.com Sun Jul 27 16:32:55 2003 From: wolfgang+gnus20030727T162301 at wsrcc.com (Wolfgang S. Rupprecht) Date: 27 Jul 2003 16:32:55 -0700 Subject: OK; I kinda figured AOL was weird ... but this is bizarre.... References: <200307272103.h6RL3OqZ095968@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) writes: > Accordingly, I sent a note, quoting the spam, to abuse at aol.net. > > I received a response that *claimed* (header-from, vs. envelope-from) > to be from "daemon at catwhisker.org". The "@catwhisker.org" is probably being added my your mail transport. Sendmail and postfix both have the misfeature of fully-qualifying remotely generated strings on the header-from with your local domain. Eg. if aol had the header-from line of: From: abuse team It would be re-written as: From: abuse at catwhisker.org, team at catwhisker.org This is way more helpful than I would like, but not quite annoying enough (yet!) for me to get off my duff and hack the code. -wolfgang -- Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/ (NOTE: The email address above is valid. Edit it at your own peril.)