HAT we truly need is not SpamAssassin , but a SpammerAssassin [sic]. We have seen controversial cases where spammers got killed, but taking the law into one’s hand is a desperate and poor solution. However, what else can be done when the law in itself is futile and inherently lacking?

Something evil like comment spam gets blocked in the best of circumstances while nothing is done to penalise or catch the spammers themselves. How long must it take before globalised networks begin to hunt down the spammers, backed by excruciating laws to assist the enforcers? Surely not enough is done. In internationalised networks like the Internet, it is sufficient to have few countries (see spam maps) that are apathetic to spam and make havens for illicit traffic to be dispatched.

I recently joined an initiative to combat and ideally eradicate comment spam altogether. With a few tweaks I also found that SpamAssassin filters out my E-mail spam admirably well, separating ham and spam by putting them in separate boxes. Not all is lost as progress is still being made. Unfortunately, spammers get more ‘crafty’, usually keeping abreast of mail prevention methods. It is a never-ending race.

ROWING criticism becomes apparent as personal information on the Internet breaks new boundaries. This recently had CNET ignored by Google. CNET correspondent bluntly disclosed too much information about the personal life of Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. From that damaging article, which among another things, penerated a life of an individual:

“Your search history shows your associations, beliefs, perhaps your medical problems. The things you Google for define you,” Bankston (staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation) said.

The only way to avoid nasty information from ever being dispersed across the Internet is for everyone to recognise the danger of mentioning names. However, it is possibly too late already — too late to revert things, that is. The Web Archive, as controversial as it may seem, takes snapshots of the Internet periodically and makes these snapshots publicly available. Anything that was ever public remains public, perhaps under a few extra layers. Google cache introduces similar issues.

Recruitment agents or bosses can find out a lot about an individual nowadays. As a personalised instance, a search for my name (in Google) brings up approximately 70,000 results. Adding an extra term to query, ‘roy schestowitz microsoft’, for example, will draw a vivid picture of my mental views on the company. There are nearly 1,000 results for such a Web search.

Privacy is in jeopardy and is bound to be completely compromised as time carries on. Names do not have to be ‘contributed’ by will. Rather often these days, somebody else might mention one’s name, which will later be harvested and made available to anyone who ‘googles’ the name and binds it to some context. It was not too hard to discover a fair deal about families of famous IT founders. There needn’t be the will to disclose that information either. Sooner or later it will ‘leak’ and be made easily available due to. Search on the Web, as well as blogging, are a mixture that leads to dissemination and duplication. Take the embarrassing photo of Bill Gatesas a practical example.

On a different yet related topic, search engines slowly embrace spying, whether intentionally so or not, whether it is ethical or not. It is perhaps due to pressure from investors, who urge to do all that is necessary for increased profit. An IPO is never too helpful in that sense. There is a great deal of fuss revolving around the notorious Google cookie. Microsoft have been labelled “guilty” as well for MSN targetted advertising which involves spying, as well cross-site cookies exchange. Technologies advance and allow better monitoring than ever before, which is factor that raises even more concerns.

Has your privacy been broken apart? If not, it is probably just a matter of time.

HERE appears to be no perfect way to protect oneself from hard-drive crashes. Physical problems, which arise time after time, are always uncalled for, so backups are the best way to prepare and become immune to disaster.

This morning I woke up to find my home computer frozen, having heard suspicious rhythmic noises coming from the box. The hard-drive was dead indeed. The ‘knuckle’ noises confirmed it. Although I have my data stored in three seapare locations, I will still need to find a replacement, then restore programs and settings. It has only been 12 months since my previous hard-drive died.

ORDPRESS is finally most determinded to put a stop to comment spam. The introduction of rel='nofollow' never seemed to have done the trick. Yet, in then absence of this attribute, which was controversially introduced by Google (much like XML’d Site Maps), who knows what a jungle we would have lived in today.

The new spam prevention mechanism will be capable of serving all sites in principle (via API‘s), not only WordPress-powered sites. Meanwhile, I volunteered to be among the testers, but further details are not intended to be disclosed. I can only say that spam flagging is collaborative, much like Google Mail filtering (mentioned and recommended to the audience in my recent talk on security).

The spam protection plug-in presently has a test-bed on this domain. The following link will get things going, i.e. get spam to surge in:

http://www.schestowitz.com/Spam/

Prepare yourself to the end of comment spam!

Related items:

• Black Hat Search Engine Optimisation
• Spammers Map
• Spammer’s Death

Photo from around 1984

ORDS have leaked to my ear that I may have won this year’s rowing competition at the Midland Hotel health club. There is no official announcement yet, but I am rather excited to have heard it. I will definitely take a shot of the prize after the official ceremoney is held.

Having worked out consistently for 10 years, I am now managing to win a pleasant reward almost every year, which I am ecstatic about.

That’ll keep everyone away for a few hours

O anyone who wonders why I have not posted in 24 hours or so, I am working on a new Mandrake Linux machine at home (photo). The work primarily involves setup, customisation and data migration. The nature of my ‘disappearance’ is symbolised by the amusing picture above.

I have been settings everything up so that I can seamlessly work from all locations, including a Ubuntu machine (photo) at work and the SuSE machine (photo #1, photo #2)¹ at the University. In this state of affairs, I can handle data quite uniformly, keeping files and settings in a single place. I also need to work on installing some peripherals like scanner, digital camera and a Palm handheld. Linux on the desktop has made so much progress recently. Installation is, quite frankly, easier than that of Windows, assuming no prior experience with Windows. It is no wonder that Dell is beginning to ship pre-installed Linux machines, much as I predicted a several days ago and also mentioned briefly some months ago.

¹ I’d post pictures of my children when I am old enough to have a family. In the mean time, may computers be equivalent to kids ? I’ll take the risk making that perverse ,very sarcastic statement!

previosuly mentioned one site that was using my GPL‘d theme.

Further on that particular aspect, somebody in Panama bought schestowizt [sic.] dot com only a few days ago. Should I feel flattered as my site is only 13 months old? Can this registration be an attempt to ‘absorb’ IBL‘s from some misspellings? I continue to wonder, but I came accoss an article titled “Para-Sites that Live Off Misspellings of Bigger, Better Sites” Just to clarify, my family name is very rare so it could not have been a coinidence.

A quick whois.net record lookup returns:

Registrant:
   Unasi Inc. (SCHESTOWIZT-COM-DOM)
   Galerias 3
   Zona 5, Panama 5235
   Panama
   +1.3094067818
   +1.3094067818
   info@domaincar.com
   
   Domain Name: SCHESTOWIZT.COM
   Status: PROTECTED

Administrative Contact:
   Unasi Inc. info@domaincar.com
   Galerias 3
   Zona 5, Panama 5235
   Panama
   +1.3094067818
   Fax- +1.3094067818

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
   Unasi Inc. info@domaincar.com
   Galerias 3
   Zona 5, Panama 5235
   Panama
   +1.3094067818
   Fax- +1.3094067818

Record last updated on 13-Sep-2005.
Record expires on 13-Sep-2006.
Record created on 13-Sep-2005.

Domain servers in listed order:

Name Server: NS1.MY-NAME-SERVER.COM
Name Server: NS2.MY-NAME-SERVER.COM
Name Server: NS3.MY-NAME-SERVER.COM

As I compose this item, I am told by Trevor from nntp://alt.www.webmaster that the same guys snatched a domain that he had dropped. I suppose it is indeed just a case of so-called ‘para-sites’, which I consider to be flattery.

I actually noticed that my site keeps climbing in Google quite rapidly. For example, a search for ‘roy‘ had me ranked 248^th in June, 151^st in July, 99^th in August and now I appear in the top 50! Google sourcers have recently shown some interest in me; specifically, the position of System Administration/Software Engineer that maintains the google.com site. I wonder if I am permitted to blog about this. After all, I am still employed by the University…