The author actually makes a couple of good points. One is that
there is nothing particular innovative about Java, but flies off on a
bit of a tangent about the bytecode representation. I think the Java
language introduced a bunch of useful programming ideas that aren't
present in C/C++ to a larger audience so it wasn't as complete a loss as
the author describes it. (Don't get me started about threads though).
The bizzare licensing of the JRE also comes up as an issue which is
more relevant now after SUN's recent cave in to Microsoft. posted at: 22:46 | path: /humour | permanent link to this entry
It is Monday morning ... and I'm really pissed off.
Why?
Well, our incoming email has been disrupted this weekend - this is the
second time this year, and we're only up to April.
No it's not a server failure at our ISP, and no it's not a virus (not
directly anyway) ...we've effectively had a denial of service on our
incoming business email, because of all the auto-response emails
kindly advising us that a message we never sent included a virus.
If you are a Sys-Admin, or Keeper-of-the-Mail-Server, I would ask you
to read this very carefully - there's some important stuff further
down that could affect you ...and if you happen to be feeling sharp
pains about your person, this is because I'm busy throwing darts at
your effigy.
Look - I'm genuinely pleased that you've managed to set up your mail
servers so they automatically trap a live virus - excellent, well
done!
In fact my pleasure is not unlike that of a proud father whose
offspring has just managed his/her first poo into the potty instead of
all over the floor. But my pleasure has waned as you continue to tell
me about it - repeatedly.
So, let's establish a couple of facts...
1. Here at "Visible Form" we do NOT send out infected emails -
ever. We have NEVER done so, and will do our utmost in the future
to ensure that this remains the case. Like you, we run up-to-date
virus checkers on incoming and outgoing, we have a hardware
firewall, and our mail server ISP does NOT have an open relay - in
fact we can only send email via this ISP if we connect directly to
their system. The ISP we use for our day-to-day connection will
only allow us to use their mail servers and 'spoof' our own FROM
address if we've already asked for (and got) permission, which
includes providing evidence that we own the domains in question.
2. Most viruses spoof the FROM email address.
Do I really need to explain to you that this means the
virus-containing email DID NOT come from the FROM address? You do know
this, don't you?
You do KNOW this?
DO YOU KNOW THIS??
These are facts - read them slowly and repeatedly until they sink in.
Write this in big letters and put it up on the wall: "most VIRUS
emails SPOOF the FROM address".
I am pleased you've pooed in your potty - sorry, trapped a live virus
- but it was not sent from here, and I do not need to know about it. I
especially do not need to know about it several hundred, even
thousand, times.
You see, what has happened here is that the virus is no longer the
problem - we can all trap those if we have a mind to ...the real
problem is YOU - for every virus your systems detect you automatically
generate a reply to the email FROM address - unfortunately you've gone
back to pooing on the floor and making a mess everywhere.
Your action in allowing this state of affairs to continue does
absolutely nothing to resolve the real underlying issue of people with
unprotected computers, and the virus-writers themselves - instead it
is creating its own new problem which has every chance of bringing the
internet to a grinding halt in the not-too-distant future.
If you do nothing else today, go now and switch off your auto-response
to virus emails. Do it now - never mind Mrs Miggins in Accounts whose
macros are not working - switch off the auto-response now ...do it
...NOW!
If all of this fails to move you, or causes a "whatever", let me put
it another way...
Fact 1: You are causing me a denial of service with your thousands of
auto-response emails.
Fact 2: I know who you are - your auto-response emails identify you.
Fact 3: If you do not fix it, I will talk to your Chairman, MD, Chief
Officer and make it very clear that YOU are the cause of this problem.
Go switch it off NOW and I'll put my darts away!
Rob Kirkwood, owner Visible Form, Nottingham (UK)
Heh. Samba's email server is set to swallow virus responder emails if
it detects them, as it does with the viruses themselves. I was
feeling uncharitable this morning and changed the settings to bounce
Norton AntiVirus email responders back to the sender. I figure if
they are incompetent enough to send auto-response emails due to forged
emails (we even have SPF enabled) then they can eat a bounce. posted at: 13:15 | path: People who write shared libraries for x86 often forget to compile
everything in the library with -fPIC. On x86 it seems to not matter,
but other architectures, ia64 for example, the library will not link.
Scons detects this situation and refuses to build a library
containing non-PIC objects. From the manual page:
I just locked myself out of a remotely hosted box. Luckily (?) it
was running a Linux kernel susceptible to the mremap()
vulnerability so we were able to get back in. I must say though the
example exploit code didn't compile, and there was no documentation.
Typical open source rubbish. posted at: 16:17 | path: /computers/security | permanent link to this entry