Making spam more difficult or costly to generate
I do like this track of thinking … how to create the various hurdles that have to be jumped … how to make spam more difficult or costly to generate.
Microsoft project aims to make spammers pay for spam. The goal is to use technology to make it expensive for spammers who send out millions of unwanted e-mail messages, according to a Microsoft researcher. [Computerworld News]
KISS … for a Wiki
Keep It Simple, Stupid … and this is a very simple implementation of a Wiki. I like it. I’m going to experiment with it.
Guiki .9. A graphical Wiki. [freshmeat.net]
Planet-Lab … planetary-scale applications platform
While looking around at some interesting monitoring software (Ganglia link below) I came across an Intel Research sponsored project that I hadn’t seen before … PlanetLab. The home page of their web site states:
PlanetLab is an open, globally distributed platform for developing, deploying and accessing planetary-scale network services. PlanetLab nodes support both short-term experiments and long-running network services. To date, more than 200 research projects at top academic institutions have used PlanetLab to experiment with such diverse topics as distributed storage, network mapping, peer-to-peer systems, distributed hash tables, and distributed query processing.
This is a very impressive project, and I downloaded a lot of their documentation and courseware to read through. I can only imagine what is going to occur as we all contribute our computers into communities of machines like this!
The link below is the distributed monitoring system that I was checking out …
Ganglia 2.5.6 (Monitoring core). A scalable distributed monitoring system. [freshmeat.net]
Visualizing Social Networks
While working with network management software I always enjoyed creating ways to visualize the networks, and more importantly their traffic patterns and flows. I am hooked on visualization. This is a very cool tool written to visualize the social networks on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels. Very good work …
Inferring and Visualizing Social Networks on IRC. By using an IRC bot to monitor the activity in an IRC channel, it is possible to infer a social network that connects the users in the channel. Visualizing these social networks is not only interesting, but has a variety of potential applications. [Advogato]
SVG continues to make progress
Working with the WebFace team has taught me a lot about Web Browser technologies. One that we have been tracking for a while is Scalable Vector Graphics – or SVG. This is now beginning to gain momentum, and I am impressed at this article that shows what is possible using this solution. In addition, it references information at the end about using SVG with mobile devices, and even how voice interfaces might emerge.
I agree with Rachel Reese that Adnan Masood’s Interactive Mapping Using SVG & ASP.NET is among the coolest articles I’ve seen done about ASP.NET.
The return of WebPhone
When I first started to really use the Internet, I was involved with a group of friends in lookin at what was possible. We played with a lot of software – including WebPhone and CUSeeMe.
WebPhone was an application that looked like a little phone on your desktop, and it allowed you to use Voice over IP (VoIP) to talk with other WebPhone users over the Internet. The other day I found a list, that I was keeping, of all of the places around the world that I spoke to using WebPhone. I remember one day when we talked to a professor and his class at Kent University. They joked about us having Internet in Utah, and we joked back that we just heard they had a shooting on the campus.
CUSeeMe was a Video Conferencing package that we used at the same time. It was really impressive to set-up a “reflector” on one of our servers, and then to connect to the server using the CUSeeMe client. You were able to see who was connected in a list, open a video display of one or more of the participants, and then type back and forth. Audio was possible, however not well implemented.
What was interesting is that we were doing this with 14.4kbps modems, and then 56kbps modems. It seemed that as the bandwidth increased, the use of these applications dropped off. I just spent some time to go and find some of the “remains” of CUSeeMe … I’m going to see if I can get a reflector going again.
In the mean time … it was interesting to read about this new application catching attention … a decade later! Skype is almost exactly what WebPhone was …
OK, Skype has 240,000 downloads in just half a month. It took ICQ 60 days to get that many back in 1996. What’s different? Well, for one it was an established company that released Skype. ICQ was released to 40 users and no one knew anything about ICQ. But, remember, back in 1996 no one had weblogs. In fact, I had one of the first five public pages up about ICQ, while Skype has been talked about everywhere.
Anyway, Skype is now my new bar of release excellence for a small-company software product.
Hey, during that Sun keynote this morning the IP telephone from Vodaphone failed on stage. They shoulda used Skype. Hasn’t failed for me yet and the audio quality is unbelieveable.
People are asking me “you were the NetMeeting bigot, why you so excited about software that just does audio?” (NetMeeting was Microsoft’s audio/video/collaboration product that was released in 1995). For one, it works. For two, its user interface is clean and uncluttered. Don Norman would love it. For three, it makes you feel good using it, and makes you want to use it with your friends and family. (Translation: the audio quality rocks and is better than NetMeeting, or even MSN Messenger 6.0).
A nice Network Management Tool
I use MRTG for monitoring and graphing many of the devices on my personal network, and also on our 80211.net wireless network. MRTG is a very simple, yet powerful application. I happened to come across this project the other day, and we’re about to give it a test. It appears to be a very good extension of the capabilities of MRTG without getting too complex.
NetMRG 0.10pre2. A network monitoring, reporting, and graphing system. [freshmeat.net]
Testing another operating system … ReactOS … virtually!
I haven’t yet written about my experiences with Microsoft Virtual PC (formally a product from Connectix) however I am using it again today … to take a look at another operating system – ReactOS.
First some comments on Virtual PC. While I was working at Novell, I had the opportunity to use VMWare, a product that allowed me to run multiple operating systems on my laptop – at the same time. Connectix created a similar product and was then bought by Microsoft … and that product is now Microsoft Virtual PC. The incredible thing about Virtual PC is that I will now test and experiment with almost any operating system now … since I don’t have to find an extra computer with a clean hard disk! Now I just run Virtual PC, create a “virtual” computer, and then boot the CD ISO image and install! All of this is while I’m sitting here typing this blog post, and watching my e-mail.
I have now installed numerous operating systems in Virtual PC – including an old version of CP/M 86 that I found – and it’s amazing to have the ability to run almost any operating system as an application under Windows.
ReactOS appears to be an open source attempt to recreate Windows NT v4.0 … or something close to it. The installation went very smooth, however booting it within Virtual PC didn’t take me too far. I got to where it’s checking the C: drive … and it hangs.
Looks like I’ll have to take a look at it when the next update is released … or when I can find some physical hardware. It might be a while.
ReactOS 0.1.3. A GPL open source implementation of an operating system like Windows NT [freshmeat.net]
RSS … the alternative to e-mail …
I really like the essay that Adam has written about using RSS as an alternative to the existing protocols used by traditional e-mail. In the “essay” link below, Adam outlines many of the advantages and ways that this could become a much more effective medium for communication when compared to e-mail.
The one area that I have to disagree a little – or at least have my own ideas – is when it comes to managing the “publish-subscribe” relationship creation. He indicates a variety of ways to encrypt the content, however after doing a lot of work in the past on digital identity, I have to think that there are some ways that I like the “username/password” schemes much better.
In my own thoughts, I believe there is a space for the creation of a new “personal introduction” protocol for the creation of digital relationships. This protocol – and I’m only beginning to think through how this would work – would automate the management of identity information, and the exchange of the necessary information to create the relationship.
I have to agree with Adam, that once such a relationship has been created between two people (or entities) then the ability to terminate the relationship becomes much easier. The entire process becomes a “pull” of information that I am interested in … instead of being spammed with information that I do not want!
email dying – rss alternatives. Steve Outing [via sn]: “Any e-mail publisher with a survival instinct should be publishing RSS feeds of the content that it currently e-mails.” Nomention of my essay, so here’s the link again. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]
TMDA … an anti-spam solution …
Several years ago, while at Novell, I began work on a simple idea that I called AgreeMail. It never went anywhere, however it was an anti-spam solution based on an idea that I got at a Foresight Institute conference.
The idea was pretty simple. For any e-mail that was sent to me, the AgreeMail engine would check to see if it came from an “approved” sender. If it wasn’t, then it would automatically kick back an e-mail to the sender with an “agreement” that had to be replied to. When the AgreeMail engine received the “agreement” it would add the person to the approved list and let their e-mail through.
Well … years later … here is the solution as an Open Source project! I am now updating my mail server, and will soon be installing the TMDA engine.
This article is a great overview of TMDA, and the benefits!
TMDA Ends Spam. Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA) is a challenge/response style anti-spam system which I’ve been using successfully for about six months. The system is based on a white list. When someone not on the list sends me a message, their message is held in a queue, and a challenge is emailed back to them. When they respond to the message, they’re added to my white list, and their original message is delivered to me. I’ve seen some resistance to systems like TMDA. This resistance comes in two basic objections: (1) it doesn’t work, and (2) it’s too rude. These objections are based on encounters with systems with various obvious faults, but condemning all challenge/response systems based on some bad implementations is like saying that cars are a bad idea because the Model A Ford has some problems. I intend to show that TMDA works well and that the real debate is over whether a system like it makes victims out of the people who aren’t using it. [kuro5hin.org]