the pod bay door

:: Didn’t think spamming could get any worse? Think again:this isn’t good news:

SPAMMERS TRY A NEW TACK – Tired of being blocked by “blacklists,” spammers are turning to a new technique — routing it directly through the computers of their Internet service providers, rather than sending it from individual machines. The result poses a dilemma: to block spam coming directly from an ISP’s servers would mean blocking all its mail, crippling the system. “From what we’ve seen, the volumes of this type of spam are going up dramatically,” says Steve Linford, who heads up the Spamhaus Project. “We’re really looking at a bleak thing” if ISPs don’t quickly deploy countermeasures, he adds. Such measures could include more aggressive monitoring and limiting how much mail is being sent from individual machines on their networks. In addition, ISPs should beef up efforts to authenticate mail they pass on through their own computers, says Linford. A study released yesterday estimates that deleting spam costs nearly $22 billion per year in lost productivity, based on a survey of 1,000 adults who said they spend about three minutes per day trashing spam when they check their e-mail. (Washington Post 4 Feb 2005) <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61901-2005…> – (requires registration to view)

:: The entire state of Connecticut was almost evacuated today, when someone pushed the wrong button.

:: First Brad and Jennifer, now Bloom and Bosworth? Methinks Legolas has shot too many arrows in the wrong direction. What was he thinking? Breaking up with Kate? That radiant smile, that thoughtful gaze? Kate, if you need a shoulder to cry on, gimme a call.

:: Without going into details, it appears that my three-month foray back into the world of rock music has come to an end. Perhaps at a later date I will explain. Suffice it to say that circumstances leading to this event were beyond my control and had nothing to do with me. However, it is a great disappointment, as I was very much enjoying the creative process, and playing loud and angry electric music again after a 14-year break. Damn it.

:: I am around, just really busy and really tired from work and other stuff. I’ll be back soon. One thing I am working on is consolidating as many sites in my Bloglines account as possible, and that is taking some time to make happen.

:: A week ago we were living through -35C temperatures in Edmonton. Currently it is -2C, and there is a light rain falling, turning to ice as it hits the ground, making driving a hazardous affair. The east coast is getting hammered with another major winter blizzard. While the temperature never gets that hot in Edmonton in the summer, and while I do wish winter was a bit shorter here, overall it’s tough to complain about the weather in this part of the world. We don’t seem to get the extremes that other regions do. The 1987 tornado that ripped through the east half of Edmonton took 27 lives, but was considered a rarity, an disaster not expected to happen all that often.

I am continuing to rehearse with Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys. The band knows 10 songs, and is learning two covers. There is much more to learn. I am enjoying it, the challenge of learning original tunes, most of which are very unconventional, featuring mixed time signatures coupled with jamming intervals. A song’s framework is sidestepped for 30-60 seconds while the my guitar, the drums and the bass play, well, whatever. Each time a song with such a component is played, it will sound different as a result. There is much more work to do. It’s a new experience, playing in a three-piece rock band.

I played boggle on Sunday night with Marissa, Melissa, and Sarah. Melissa is a Boggle Queen, and Marissa and Sarah are no slouches. Needless to say, the girls cleaned my clock in every round. Saturday night Marissa and I saw End of the Century, the movie about the seminal 70s NYC punk band, The Ramones. The film is a real eye-opener, highly recommended.

It’s January, and I’m restless for any number of reasons. The year is barely two weeks old, and planning for activities in the summer and fall has already begun. I am also about to agree to do to something that could result in a three-year professional time commitment, to June 2008. More on that at a later date.

:: The Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan will be covered live tomorrow on NASA-TV, on the web, very early in the morning. The European Space Agency’s Huygen Probe will begin its descent to Titan on Friday. More info is available on the ESA Cassini-Huygens site. The detailed Huygens descent timeline provides details to the minute, including parachute deployment, data transmission to Cassini, atmosphere sampling, and surface touchdown.

:: This is the time of year that can be called The Cold and The Dark. Late sunrises and early sunsets, coupled with sub-sub-zero temperatures. The forecast is calling for -34C tonight. It is nights like these that give us character. Next Thursday, the high is predicted to be +5C.

:: From Google Groups, access to 800,000,000 Usenet messages back to 1981. Very scary. Thank God all I did in the 80s was discuss music and movies in those damn newsgroups.

Google has fully integrated the past 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups, which now offers access to more than 800 million messages dating back to 1981. This is by far the most complete collection of Usenet articles ever assembled and a fascinating first-hand historical account.

Google has fully integrated the past 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups, which now offers access to more than 800 million messages dating back to 1981. This is by far the most complete collection of Usenet articles ever assembled and a fascinating first-hand historical account.

We compiled some especially memorable articles and threads in the timeline below. For example, read Tim Berners-Lee’s announcement of what became the World Wide Web or Linus Torvalds’ post about his “pet project”. You can find more in-depth information about the archive here.