Chris Linfoot - Comments

Comment From Frank Paolino

Frank Paolino — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:46:40 +0000

Haha! That reminds me of an actual government form that had a question that said "If you are blind, check here".

Comment From Daniel Lieber

Daniel Lieber — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:47:13 +0000

We've noticed a significant decrease in spam over the last few weeks and the last week in particular. From a record 52,000+ spam messages in one day in July to more common numbers around 9,000-11,000, the last week has averaged about 4,000 messages per day.

We are not taking any different actions due to the reduction.

Comment From Dave Harris

Dave Harris — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:19:33 +0000

We actually saw a significant upward spike for one of our customers last week, following a downward trend since early September:

920K spam against 500k the previous week, out of 2.83m and 2.39m messages (that's just with valid recipients).

Much of this may have happened before the shutdown though - Tuesday morning at the NYC site saw a peak of 25k spam per hour.

Personally I've been receiving a lot more phish over the last week or so than I have for a long time (and straight to the http://www.phishtank.com they go).

Comment From Charles Robinson

Charles Robinson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:52:13 +0000

At one site we're seeing a drop of nearly 60%. At another it's closer to 45%. It's still significant, and shows that there is a lot of work to be done getting hosting providers to do the right thing. The ISP's had to know what McColo was doing. Nobody uses that much bandwidth without a good reason. They turned a blind eye as long as the bills were paid.

Comment From Charles Robinson

Charles Robinson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:50:13 +0000

I have the Sharp Aquos LC52D64U. The sound is fine with the built-in speakers, and it has audio outputs so you can connect external speakers without a receiver. Recently I have been eying the Sony HTCT100, which is an all-in-one speaker bar with an external subwoofer.

Comment From Bruce Elgort

Bruce Elgort — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:41:40 +0000

Chris,

The Aquos TV's are very nice. Too bad you don't live closer as I could have hooked you up at a nice discount.

Comment From Carl Tyler

Carl Tyler — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:11:08 +0000

I have a Sharp Aquos (partly to support the likes of Bruce Elgort cos he works for Sharp), but also cos it's a great TV. I have the 1080p 52 inch and have been very happy. The speakers attach to the bottom of the TV, I have a pretty large living room, with a high ceiling and I have never had an issue with the sound. It has pretty much every input there is, multiple HDMI, Composite, VGA plus others.

Comment From David Leedy

David Leedy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:42:15 +0000

Chris,
I haven't looked at TV's in a long time but I remember some TV's used to have outputs to external speakers directly. So no receiver involved. Maybe that will be wife friendly enough since the control remains with the TV but still give you the better sound.

In my experience, where you sometimes lose the "wives" or the less technically advanced, is by giving too many options in the setup. For example, if you setup your TV where it could use the internal speakers OR a 5 channel receiver... you're asking for trouble. But if you set it to ONLY output sound via the reciever and not have the option of internal speakers, then even though it's a "more complicated" setup, it's easier for the user to understand. I typically avoid some features like Picture in Picture or whatever to gain the easier setup.

In my basement I have a large rear projection tv. Directv, DVD, AppleTV, Playstation and Wii. I run everything through my reciever so I only use 1 input (Component) on the TV. Not changing inputs on the TV makes things a LOT easier.

Also there have been great advances with remote controls - like the logitech harmony line... you program it via website and download it to the remote. Makes it easy for babysitters and whatever. Some even have a Help button where if something gets out of wack - you press help and it will ask you questions and turn on what needs to be turned on. (If only all equipment had discreet on/off codes...)

Food for thought....

Comment From Mark Haller

Mark Haller — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:22:51 +0000

Hey Chris

I'm not sure there is such a thing to be honest. You're going to fight what can happen from very small speakers and what you want from an audio quality. Is this for a lounge or bedroom?

I would say definitely don't do Samsung - their speakers are diabolical and will reproduce the sound of a mouse very well, but a lion terribly

Some of the best speakers built into LCD TVs come at a very high price - Bang and Olufsen. Their prices are ridiculous though!

Two other ideas:

Get an all-in-one speaker that goes under the LCD - I know Yamaha do one (they brought first one to market - the DSP1, but just checked and it's come on quite a way - http://www.yamaha.com/yec/products/productdetail.html?CNTID=554369)

In-wall speakers. I know you can get speakers that go in the wall, and are plastered and painted over and are supposed to be superb. Needs work up-front but might be good.

If you really care about the sound quality, you'll never get anything good connected directly to the LCD TV and need to get separate drivers.

Another idea - get some gorgeous speakers that look great in the room! I did - I saved up for a good while and got some lovely looking understated mid cherrywood speakers that fit into the pared down room! The subwoofer is of the same range and I had a tempered glass top made for it and it makes a smashing corner table with lamp, phone, remote on!

Comment From Conrad Longmore

Conrad Longmore — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:00:41 +0000

Our spam appears to be down 30%, but these figures can be misleading - our statistics only count spam sent to VALID email addresses, not the huge amount of stuff that is sent to INVALID addresses in Directory Harvesting attacks etc (which are filtered externally).. we don't get stats for that so it's hard to see the whole picture.

Comment From Bob Baehr

Bob Baehr — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:06:14 +0000

I am down to about 30 per day! Really!

Must be that new "Obama-Spama" that was recently installed :)

Cheers
Bob Baehr
The Unofficial Poster Child For Lotus Notes, Domino, and Lotus Foundations

Comment From Frank Paolino

Frank Paolino — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:22:44 +0000

I am seeing spam down over 60%. I don't believe it will last long, as the McColo people will eventually regroup. Here is a posting I did about the drop in spam:
http://blog.maysoft.org/blog.nsf/d6plinks/FPAO-7LCJSG

Comment From Another postmaster

Another postmaster — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:06:17 +0000

Yep, I agree that 75% were pretty optimistic but I guess it also varies whose spam we are looking at and where. There might be different pattern for some home users who have given their email address to weird companies or participated to lotteries and so on. As you know, very old email addresses and domain are also collecting more spam than a new ones

Our company daily spam average drop from 12M to 7M which is quite impressive with over 40% drop

Comment From Colin

Colin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:59:43 +0000

YMMV: Last month we were topping 45,000 spams per day (stopped by Marshal Spam Profiler). This week, we're floating around 9,000. I welcome the relief but as you suggest, its only temporary.

Comment From majid ghaderi

majid ghaderi — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:58:03 +0000

I recieved 11/12/2008 an email telling me i have won 1000000British Pounds .i want to know if its true that microsoft has run any lottery this month or what so ever?
Thank you

Comment From nrajashekar

nrajashekar — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:19:16 +0000

hi, i have recd., the similar mail today, pl., let me know is it true or false. is microsoft company is running a lottery business to fight povery of the individuals.

pl., feedbackme

Comment From goli

goli — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:08:29 +0000

I have received the same mail 2 days ago but before doing anything I searched the name"Dr. Agnes Palmer " in google and found this page telling all that was a trap

Comment From Chris Linfoot

Chris Linfoot — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:08:11 +0000

On a market stall covered with the sort of hand made wooden items you might expect to see, there was a small display of fridge magnets. Most had local imagery and said things like Praha or Czech on them. Perhaps half a dozen were this Birmingham City Football Club design. BCFC was the only football club represented. It is this that I find remarkable. Manchester United I'd have understood. Or AC Milan. But BCFC?

Comment From anita prague

anita prague — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:48:27 +0000

I may miss the point (apart from the fact it was taken in Prgue) why it is so remarkable?

Comment From Matt Buchanan

Matt Buchanan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:04:59 +0000

It's usually worth checking the Virgin Support newsgroups - see here for details: http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/newsgroups/ - they're looked after by 2nd line support, so you generally get a better answer than if you tried phoning.

Comment From Rafal Woz

Rafal Woz — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:08:35 +0000

go to workspace in Lotus Notes the if your databases are stackable click on arrow in right hand upper corner all SF Action options are visible there, though like you mentioned cannot see then right from Action menu

Comment From Jerry Carter

Jerry Carter — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:09:58 +0000

Maybe ISPs are too much like some public utilities in that they are so protected and insulated from real economic strain as "essential services", maintained by federal grants or loans they have no keen eye for opportunities to expand services. Or perhaps they feel partially responsible or fear potential incrimination if they acknowledge the existence of bot controlled computers on their network? Perhaps taking some responsibility would naturally open the door to censorship to reduce the effort involved in the clean up, or IP black listing, or bandwidth throttling. Excuses are not lacking for inaction on their part.

I agree, it would be a fine service and added source of revenue for ISPs, which in turn might be useful for funding IPv6 upgrades. But given the canned nature of services provided, and the seeming lack of imagination or fear of making things too messy, your final word is likely prophetic.

Comment From Jerry Carter

Jerry Carter — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:01:39 +0000

Clearly a lack of proper culture on my part.

Comment From Chris Linfoot

Chris Linfoot — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:04:54 +0000

Remote images are images referred to by http:// locations in the HTML part of an email. That is, the HTML will say something like

The benefit of remote images is that only the HTML needs to be transported with the message, which makes the email much smaller. The drawback, and the reason that remote images are often blocked, is that these can be used to track who has read an email.

The opposite of remote image is therefore not strictly local. It might be more accurate to call it in-line or something like that.

In-line images in email are contained in a multipart/related MIME wrapper where the first related part is usually the HTML part of the email. They are thus transported with the email, increasing its size, but cannot be used to track who has read an email and are often regarded as safe to load without user intervention.

In-line images are generally base64 encoded MIME parts and have a MIME attribute called a content id tag. The HTML part of the email refers to them thus:

This will not help you if you want to be able to select which http locations are considered safe and from which images should be loaded without user intervention.

However, adding the sender to a local address book should help.

Comment From Chris Linfoot

Chris Linfoot — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:33:21 +0000

@3 - The real name of the MP who complained is Mole. Molesworth is a fictitious 1950s British school boy who hates latin and can't spell. Follow the link under "Molesworth" above for more information.

I just very loosely paraphrased Mole's complaint in the style of Molesworth, as the said complaint seems to have about as much merit as any written work by Molesworth (that is, not very much at all).

Comment From Jerry Carter

Jerry Carter — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:29:43 +0000

I kent beeleev the inkredibly bad spelleeng. Is thet four reeel?

Comment From Dan Murphy

Dan Murphy — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:36:37 +0000

I would like a work around to this. I don't want to enable ALL remote images... just some. So, I thought maybe I should re-read the message "do not show remote images without my permission" ... That makes me wonder -- what are LOCAL images? Does anyone know? Maybe by putting the images in the right place (client's notes directory???) they would display???

Comment From Stephen Goodfellow

Stephen Goodfellow — Sun, 9 Nov 2008 17:36:18 +0000

The guy should have done his homework. The micropointillist technique was invented by Stephen Goodfellow in 1978 and further developed with Lowell Boileau.
Google the names and artwork. you'll find lots of example.

Comment From Lucy

Lucy — Sat, 8 Nov 2008 15:03:33 +0000

This is getting, ridiculous people are just getting too sensitive, and isnt it funny how most of the complaints are made after it is put on the news. If things keep going on like this you wont be able to joke about anything on the bbc and nothing will be worth watching anymore

Comment From David Vasta

David Vasta — Sat, 8 Nov 2008 04:19:33 +0000

I said to someone the other day when everyone is upset with Jezza, he came to America and called a Chevy Camaro a murderers car and now one was bent out of shape about it then, why are they all upset now? So it's funny when they say it about American Camaro Drivers, but not when it's about UK Lorry Drivers. Get over it. To all the people upset you're all to stiff and stuck up. He is just here to entertain you, it's not like he is running for PM or anything? Not Yet anyway?