TechnoMagician's Weblog
(aka Tim Aiello)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke.


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Kosmo Systems Inc, along with Ashley IT are proud to present their spam detection service called SimpleFilter. It is so simple, there is absolutely no software to install and it works with virtually any email client on any operating system. Checkout www.simplefilter.com


Thursday, October 23, 2003
 
Federal US Anti Spam Laws

I'd like to here from some people on what they think about this. Will any sort of US anti-spam law really have any affect on spammers? Click on the comment link below to leave your feedback.

See this Yahoo news article.

 
8:27:48 AM    

Wednesday, October 22, 2003
 
X10 Goes Dim

In the last couple of years their ads were appearing everywhere. I guess someone was asleep in NOT recognizing that their ROI from advertising wasn't what it needed to be to stay in business.

X10 files for Chapter 11. The company that only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

I would guess that most of this is what they owe for advertising:

X10 owes Los Angeles law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter Ham $667,412; Microsoft $459,264; Yahoo $346,128; Google $69,984; and America Online $55,413. It also owes $95,047 to Overture Services, which was recently acquired by Yahoo.
 
8:01:03 PM    

Tuesday, October 21, 2003
 
Free Domain Transfer - No Thanks

Received an email today from Network Solutions. Here is the bulk of it:

For a limited time you can transfer as many domain names as you like to Network Solutions absolutely FREE. Each name that you transfer will receive a FREE year added to its current registration. That's two free offers — free transfer and a free year — when you move a domain name registration to Network Solutions today.

I just spent the last 2 years transferring domains away from these morons and would gladly pay twice what I'm paying to keep them away from Network Solutions. I couldn't care what they are offering for free, I don't trust them to do anything right.

I wouldn't doubt if this has something to do with the recent SiteFinder mess these guys go themselves into. They probably have customers leaving in droves over that. I left well before they started that nonsense cause they were into all kinds of other nonsense.

And while I'm at it. It was confirmed by an unnamed registrar that Network Solutions seems to delay domain transfer requests away from them if you are anytime near the period where they can say "it is too late". Happened to me a few times so I transfered the rest rest well ahead of the renewal time. They conveniently seem to loose the transfer request or conveniently don't send out the confirmation emails. Nice way to do business.

 
3:19:31 PM    

Monday, October 20, 2003
 
No More New Email Notifications For Spam

The Microsoft Outlook new email notification thing that puts a little icon in your windows task tray is pretty much useless when combating spam. That little notification goes off every few minutes but rarely does it really indicate that I have new legitimate email. 99% of the time it is just spam. Of course I'm using SimpleFilter to filter my spam and have a rule that deletes it but Outlook still considers that a new email. There is no option to turn that notification off or even just notify me when something new actually makes it to my inbox.

I finally went on a search to see if one can disable this thing with some sort of registry hack but instead found AutoRead. I'm testing it out so far and it seems to be working really well. With it you can use Outlook rules to mark a message read or to undisplay the new email icon. It actually can't prevent the display of the task tray icon but can remove it. So, now my rule to delete any spam also removes the little notification as well. I'm now no longer flipping to my email for absolutely no reason 99 out of 100 times.

Found AutoRead from this article in case someone wants to tackle the problem more directly with code.

 
2:38:42 PM    

Thursday, October 16, 2003
 
Buffer Overflow - lets plug this once and for all

Can someone please tell me why Microsoft (and I suppose other OS vendors) cannot provide a single patch at the network stack or higher/lower level to stop buffer overflow problems??? And could someone tell me why this wouldn't have been done in Win2K or before? Is it being done for the next Windows release???

More to the point, Ogren told NewsFactor, is that Microsoft has no excuse for not fixing buffer-overflow problems in its software, since the technology to plug such holes is available from a number of vendors, including Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO - news) and Network Associates (NYSE: NET - news). "The company has the ability to take a leadership role in buffer-overflow protection and has not done so," he said. [source: Yahoo News]
 
5:41:54 PM    

do-not-spam list

I don't think the do-not-call phone lists are helping any so why should a do-not-spam list. So I agree with this in general:

The premise sounds simple: To cut down on junk e-mail, simply submit your addresses to a "do-not-spam" list that marketers would have to check to avoid fines. With more than 50 million phone numbers already on a federal do-not-call list, many e-mail users are eager for a no-spam counterpart.

But don't hold out much hope, even if one is created. Phone and e-mail systems — and the marketers who employ them — are fundamentally different.

[source: Yahoo News]

Of course I may be a little biased considering I am co-founder of SimpleFilter.

 
5:13:13 PM    

Saturday, October 11, 2003
 
Joel On Unicode

Joel on Unicode:

October 10, 2003. When I discovered that the popular web development tool PHP has almost complete ignorance of character encoding issues, blithely using 8 bits for characters, making it darn near impossible to develop good international web applications, I thought, enough is enough. [source: Joel on Software]
While we are on the topic here is Tim Bray "On The Goodness of Unicode".
 
9:50:40 AM    

Wednesday, October 01, 2003
 
Concords Last Flight To Toronto

Tracking the Concord on its last flight to Toronto. Will most likely fly overhead within the hour. Using Flight Tracker to see when it might be overhead. Link probably won't work after the flight lands as I'm sure it will either reference a new flight or a non-existent one.

I wonder what this will look like:

 
2:15:07 PM    


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