While my LJ account is (supposed to be) relating to my personal life, I have opened another blog - one that will be filled with content much more regularly, I expect. It is a blog that will be filled with game reviews, and by that, I mean board and card games, with an occasional smattering of role-playing games included. I do specifically not intend to review computer games. One of the reasons being that I wouldn't have the time to do so. Also, I plan on including gaming news and commentary occasionally, though the main point will be the reviews.

I started the blog yesterday, and so far have two reviews (and one piece of localized gaming news). Updates should occur thrice weekly for reviews, as long as I have material. The first games reviewed: Cronberg/Bonobo Beach and the Nuclear War series from Flying Buffalo.

I was thinking of feeding the blog here, but that would need a paid account, and I am frankly not willing to pay only to syndicate that blog.

Apart from that, I hope to add some content here soon, so well. One never knows...

(edit: it's nice to know there is a blog, but much nicer to also have a link to access said blog...)

Current Mood:	accomplished
Current Music:	Tùatha dé Danann - Eala fa Leòn

One of them is spammers. (If you have lived on Xena for the last couple of years, the Spam Primer is a great resource explaining most of how spam works in easy words -- Randy Cassingham is a genius!) Now, it's not hard to be, ahem, somewhat antagonistic towards this specific incarnation of the scum of the earth, but it's nothing a good spam filter cannot handle.

... Which, come to think of it, is a problem when you have had to reinstall your system and the finely tuned Bayes-filterlist is gone. Like it happened to me two weeks ago. Several mailing lists I am on (and that are definitely no spam -- Elfwood Moderators, for example, or the mailing list for Campaign Cartographer 2) get at least partially flagged by the RBLs as spam, so this will take a while until the auto-whitelisting of senders kicks back in. And only after that, I can think of training my Bayes filter again.

Still, it's something that doesn't come as a surprise.

What really gets me riled at the moment are postmasters that seriously misconfigure their email servers. As in "You get an e-mail that cannot be delivered? Send a reply to the poor sod in the From:-field about this." Why 'poor sod', and why is that bad, I hear you ask?

Simple. With spam -- which according to recent statistics makes up about 75 per cent of all emails in circulation -- the chances are higher that they cannot be delivered than with honest mail. Honest mail at least assumes that people are thinking, sensible beings as opposed to the brainless invertebrates that make a living out of sending spam.

*knock, knock*

Just a mo'

***

Sorry, I have just been informed by a lawyer for the World Organization for the Rights of Molluscs (WORM) that this is highly objectionable language and considered libel against invertebrates. So, I will in the future refrain from calling spammers 'invertebrates'. Maybe in a couple of million years, when the spammers have evolved far enough to join those ranks, I might re-consider, though…

***

Ahem. Where was I?

Oh yes, with spam, chances are higher than average that the recipient email address doesn't exist. Mail addresses that were abandoned due to a spam deluge centuries ago, mail addresses that never existed, they all are in the lists of 'valid and checked' email addresses some spammers sell on CDs to train their successors. And then, there are the dictionary spammers. Take a domain you know that exists, and send mail to, say roaca@, roacb@, roacc@... roacg@, roach@, roaci@ etc. You know, just try everything. Just make sure your insertion point isn't in the headers, so you don't get flooded by the 'cannot deliver' messages coming back.

And remember to use some made-up address as a From:-address.

Best use 'valid and checked' addresses to send to, and a dictionary attack for the From:-addresses. Just grab an email from your CD, remove the part in front of the @, and start adding names, numbers, whatever instead.

Get it now why replying to the From:-address with 'cannot deliver' is a bad idea that is strongly discouraged by everyone wise to the ways of spammers and the ins and outs of e-mail?

I guess you realize what is coming. My email is collected through my own sub-domain. It's the Demon-setup where every customer has his own subdomain, and anything addressed to that subdomain -- no matter what is in front of the @ -- gets delivered. Cue ominous sounds here.

The last three days, I have been weeding out more 'cannot deliver'-mails delivered to email addresses like joeshmo28343@mydomain, asdffdjkl@mydomain, i.am.sutpid@mydomain, name.family@mydomain etc. than I get in spam in several busy months. And believe me, I am not someone the spammers leave alone, never mind the fact that I never ever react to spam at all, except for sighing and deleting.

This is, let's face it, more a question of idiot sysadmins not configuring their mailer daemons correctly than that of spammers. It feels weird, defending those ... yes, sir, I remember not to use that word again ... those eejits, but either refusing those messages outright, or sending them to the real sender address (if it can be determined, if not, the message should be dropped anyway), would be the correct way to do it.

Well, writing this has taken me about 30 minutes, guess my mail box is well-filled again with "cannot deliver" messages. Let the spammers all join Vardan Kushnir in whatever circle of hell has been reserved for spammers. My guess: they go to hell made up as little kids, and get dropped into the hell for pedophiles. Double punishment when the latter realize how old their victims were...

Current Mood:

pissed off

Happy B-Day

hippo22

But ihn the meantime, I couldn't help but notice the BBC headline here

( Read more... )

Current Mood:

mischievous

In case of doubt, I could also live with a screen shot of forumspamming :-) Or. for the Elfwooders out there, a case of commentspamming, if it's really bad (like, 10 lines of spam terms or somesuch).

Thanks in advance.

Current Mood:

hopeful

( The Questions )

( The Answers )

Current Mood:

accomplished

For all the real fans out there, I created a small quiz to see whether I can stump you. :-)

Current Mood:

devious

Why?

If you can read German, click here

For everyone else: despite the European Parliament being soundly against it, and the fact that since its passing in may, the majority in the European Commission has changed as well, the directive proposing software patents in Europe has been rubberstamped by the agrarian ministers. Now the Parliament has to get an absolute majority to stop this monster cold.

Not to mention the fact that the agrarian ministers are IMHO not the right people to rubberstamp this thing, the only force in favour of software patents are the big, multinaitonal companies, not even the medium-sized businesses want it, much less the common peoiple. But these havwe to pay taxes, while the big businesses make donations and therefore are much more important to keep on the good side of.

And as to the law making process: the reading in the parliament now (in which they have to get an absolute majority to cvhange or stop it) is the first chance the parliament gets to change anything. Weird, seeing that Europe is supposed to be a (direct) democracy, but the Parliament is the only body directly elected. Democracy my @$$...

I can only say I'm glad I'm not working as a programmer any more, otherwise I'd have to face joining the ranks of the unemployed soon, as medium-sized and small software producers will not have the means to defend from the software patent mafia. Didn't we just have a new all-time high in unemployment? Gosh, that must have been a dream.

Current Mood:

pissed off

Well, while I (being not an American) feel bound to agree with the thought that the school may have a point regarding the "gang-related" nature, I still think this is going waaaay to far...

It's snowing, and the snow is 'falling' horizontally due to the wind.

And I have to make the bigger drive tonight, visiting my 'rents, about an hour drive away (so it's only 35 km, but most of it through cities, and with drivers who lose all ability to manage a vehicle the moment they see the first snow flake in the air).

Current Mood:

grumpy