Finally, for a good laugh as you prepare for this holiday season, check out the “Scared of Santa Photo Gallery” at http://www.southflorida.com/events/sfl-scaredsanta,0,2245506.photogallery?coll=sfe-events-headlines&index=1
December 21, 2004
Best Of/Worst Of
If you enjoy the annual critics’ best of/worst of list ritual, you’ll like the list of links you’ll find at Fimoculous (http://www.fimoculous.com/year-review-2004.cfm). From the New York Times’ Magazine’s highbow “Year In Ideas” to the tabloid Star’s “Most Annoying People of 2004”, it’s all here. Be sure to check out the extensive “Books” section; you may find lists that will aid in your collection development duties.
New Top Level Domain Names
In the New Year, or maybe the year after that, look for two new top level domain names, the suffixes .jobs and .mobi. The jobs suffix will be for internet employment sites, and the mobi section will be used for sites that are specifically aimed at wireless users. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (INCANN), the international organization that approves such things, has given preliminary approval to these suffixes, but there’s a long way through the bureaucratic maze to final implementation. Two other top level domain names in the approval pipeline are .post (for postal services) and .travel (for travel services).
Spam Tasters
In bygone eras, kings and queens had food tasters to make sure that only untainted victuals passed the royal lips. Today, the world’s most wealthy man has a staff of employees who read his e-mail and keep the low-rate mortgage solicitations from his private inbox.
Yes, that’s right: In addition to being the richest person in the world, Bill Gates is also the most spammed person in the world. He gets an estimated four million e-mails per day at his official Microsoft e-mail address (which I think is billg@microsoft.com) and the vast majority of it is unsolicited and unwanted. Most of it goes unseen by the big man, too; because he has a whole team of human e-mail readers who make sure he only receives only email he would want to read. So much for Microsoft’s anti-spam technology.
Yes, that’s right: In addition to being the richest person in the world, Bill Gates is also the most spammed person in the world. He gets an estimated four million e-mails per day at his official Microsoft e-mail address (which I think is billg@microsoft.com) and the vast majority of it is unsolicited and unwanted. Most of it goes unseen by the big man, too; because he has a whole team of human e-mail readers who make sure he only receives only email he would want to read. So much for Microsoft’s anti-spam technology.
A Dubious Achievement—A Month Early
Usually, I like to put dubious Internet achievements in the January NN issue, because that’s when Esquire magazine does its “dubious” review of the year before. But this one can’t wait.
Someone at Lycos Europe (remember Lycos?) came up with a campaign called “Make Love, Not Spam” (MLNS). European users (or anyone willing to lie about his/her location) could download a screensaver from the project’s site (http://www.makelovenotspam.com/) that would bombard spammers’ websites with excess traffic. The idea, according to Lycos, was to overwhelm the spammers’ servers and generate high bandwidth bills for site owners. The happy consequence Lycos intended was to position itself a friend of web users who are sick of spam.
This type of assault on a web site is known as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, because all that excess traffic makes it impossible for legitimate users to get into the site. DDoS attacks are illegal in the U.S. and most European countries and are generally regarded as immoral as well. Lycos got around this difficulty by claiming that their screensavers weren’t mounting a true DDoS attack because they were designed just to slow down the targeted spam sites, not to make them entirely inaccessible.
In a technical sense, the MLNS project did work. Lycos Europe estimates that the response time of some of the spam sites targeted by the screensaver slowed by as much as 85%. But it seems that no one at Lycos counted on the spammers fighting back. For example, at least one of the targeted spam sites simply redirected their excess traffic to the Lycos Europe site, thus turning Lycos Europe’s own weapon against it. There is also a disputed story that hackers broke into the MLNS site and changed it to say that it was going to report screensaver down-loaders to their internet service providers (ISPs).
All the excess traffic placed a heavy burden on ISPs as well, so they got mad too. Some went so far as to block access to the project. A British ISP, Global Crossing, issued the following statement, “[Our] acceptable use policy prohibits DoS attacks. As a result, we have 'black holed' the Lycos Europe Website … ‘Black holing' means we are not carrying any traffic to or from that Website on our network.”
The experts have minced no words in describing how stupid the MLNS fiasco has been. “I would have to characterize it as an astonishingly stupid idea,” said one. “This seems like a very shortsighted idea of theirs, lowering themselves to the same level as the hackers and spammers,” said another consultant. “In this case, it only causes traffic saturation. It's a noble gesture to fight back against spammers, but when you try to take down a spam site, a lot of innocent people get caught in the crossfire. As a big company, Lycos has to be more responsible than that," said yet another. A French security expert said it best: “I find the anti-spam downloadable DDoS tool to be without a doubt irresponsible, possibly illegal, sets a really bad precedent, gives the wrong impression to users, and possibly the dumbest thing I have heard of this week … I can summarize my thoughts into a single word. Dumb. With a capital 'D.'”
After just four days, Lycos took down the screensaver from the MLNS site, but not before it had been downloaded some 90,000+ times. And now, the final kicker; according to the MLNS web site on Dec. 18: “It has been reported in the media that fake software is being circulated on the Internet under the "makelovenotspam" name, which is actually not a screensaver but a computer virus. You are therefore advised not to download or install any software purporting to be the "makelovenotspam" screensaver, and to remove any copy you may have on your PC.” So, if you do come across anything called “Make Love, Not Spam” don’t touch it.
Someone at Lycos Europe (remember Lycos?) came up with a campaign called “Make Love, Not Spam” (MLNS). European users (or anyone willing to lie about his/her location) could download a screensaver from the project’s site (http://www.makelovenotspam.com/) that would bombard spammers’ websites with excess traffic. The idea, according to Lycos, was to overwhelm the spammers’ servers and generate high bandwidth bills for site owners. The happy consequence Lycos intended was to position itself a friend of web users who are sick of spam.
This type of assault on a web site is known as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, because all that excess traffic makes it impossible for legitimate users to get into the site. DDoS attacks are illegal in the U.S. and most European countries and are generally regarded as immoral as well. Lycos got around this difficulty by claiming that their screensavers weren’t mounting a true DDoS attack because they were designed just to slow down the targeted spam sites, not to make them entirely inaccessible.
In a technical sense, the MLNS project did work. Lycos Europe estimates that the response time of some of the spam sites targeted by the screensaver slowed by as much as 85%. But it seems that no one at Lycos counted on the spammers fighting back. For example, at least one of the targeted spam sites simply redirected their excess traffic to the Lycos Europe site, thus turning Lycos Europe’s own weapon against it. There is also a disputed story that hackers broke into the MLNS site and changed it to say that it was going to report screensaver down-loaders to their internet service providers (ISPs).
All the excess traffic placed a heavy burden on ISPs as well, so they got mad too. Some went so far as to block access to the project. A British ISP, Global Crossing, issued the following statement, “[Our] acceptable use policy prohibits DoS attacks. As a result, we have 'black holed' the Lycos Europe Website … ‘Black holing' means we are not carrying any traffic to or from that Website on our network.”
The experts have minced no words in describing how stupid the MLNS fiasco has been. “I would have to characterize it as an astonishingly stupid idea,” said one. “This seems like a very shortsighted idea of theirs, lowering themselves to the same level as the hackers and spammers,” said another consultant. “In this case, it only causes traffic saturation. It's a noble gesture to fight back against spammers, but when you try to take down a spam site, a lot of innocent people get caught in the crossfire. As a big company, Lycos has to be more responsible than that," said yet another. A French security expert said it best: “I find the anti-spam downloadable DDoS tool to be without a doubt irresponsible, possibly illegal, sets a really bad precedent, gives the wrong impression to users, and possibly the dumbest thing I have heard of this week … I can summarize my thoughts into a single word. Dumb. With a capital 'D.'”
After just four days, Lycos took down the screensaver from the MLNS site, but not before it had been downloaded some 90,000+ times. And now, the final kicker; according to the MLNS web site on Dec. 18: “It has been reported in the media that fake software is being circulated on the Internet under the "makelovenotspam" name, which is actually not a screensaver but a computer virus. You are therefore advised not to download or install any software purporting to be the "makelovenotspam" screensaver, and to remove any copy you may have on your PC.” So, if you do come across anything called “Make Love, Not Spam” don’t touch it.
The Past of NN
I was able to easily find the above quote from volume 1, issue 1 of Net News (November 21, 2000), because I’m in the process of creating a Net News Archives blog, which you may find at http://netnewsarchives.blogspot.com/. When completed (as of this writing, I just finished June 15, 2004, so there isn’t that much more to go), this archive will contain all the news-type articles from NN, with ephemeral information (such as “What’s New on the Web Site”) omitted. You’ll be able to access articles by date (Blogger allows you to backdate articles back to 1999, so the articles come with their actual dates), by title (there’s a “previous post” listing that runs down the right hand side), or by using a Google-powered search mechanism that doesn’t seem to be working as of this writing.
I will continue working on adding back articles to the archive as time permits. When a new issue of NN comes out, it will also be added to the archive (but, as stated above, it will still be a newsletter as well, so you won’t have to check the archive if you don’t want to).
This arrangement takes the place of my trying to index the last four years of material by hand. I’m finding it interesting to look over the back issues and see what seemed important at the time. Look for a future NN “Where Are They Now?” issue.
I got the idea to create an archive blog from Sarah Blake, a woman whom I don’t actually know, but whose life story I’ve followed off-and-on on the web for the past several years. She’s put her entire diary (with many entries edited for privacy; most of what remains deals with her evangelical spiritual journey) in her blog going all the way back to 1984. Her site is at http://www.growingstrong.org.
I will continue working on adding back articles to the archive as time permits. When a new issue of NN comes out, it will also be added to the archive (but, as stated above, it will still be a newsletter as well, so you won’t have to check the archive if you don’t want to).
This arrangement takes the place of my trying to index the last four years of material by hand. I’m finding it interesting to look over the back issues and see what seemed important at the time. Look for a future NN “Where Are They Now?” issue.
I got the idea to create an archive blog from Sarah Blake, a woman whom I don’t actually know, but whose life story I’ve followed off-and-on on the web for the past several years. She’s put her entire diary (with many entries edited for privacy; most of what remains deals with her evangelical spiritual journey) in her blog going all the way back to 1984. Her site is at http://www.growingstrong.org.
The Future of NN
Thanks to all of you who commented regarding the possible change of Net News from a monthly newsletter to a blog. How this is for a compromise: NN will stay a newsletter, and also be a blog. For more details about the blog part, see “The Past of NN” below.
At some point in the future, those of us who work at WNPL’s may acquire NewsGator on our PC’s. NewsGator is a “news aggregator,” or RSS feed reader that integrates with Microsoft Outlook, so that checking your RSS feeds becomes like checking your e-mail. If NewsGator really catches on with the staff, the format of NN may be re-evaluated. But it is going to remain a once a month publication, no matter what format it goes to.
Whatever happens, NN will continue to keep you up to date on “Internet trends, gossip (if I can find any), and other technological news of interest to the staff.” (as I wrote in the first issue so many years ago).
At some point in the future, those of us who work at WNPL’s may acquire NewsGator on our PC’s. NewsGator is a “news aggregator,” or RSS feed reader that integrates with Microsoft Outlook, so that checking your RSS feeds becomes like checking your e-mail. If NewsGator really catches on with the staff, the format of NN may be re-evaluated. But it is going to remain a once a month publication, no matter what format it goes to.
Whatever happens, NN will continue to keep you up to date on “Internet trends, gossip (if I can find any), and other technological news of interest to the staff.” (as I wrote in the first issue so many years ago).
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