What part of anti-spam don't they understand?

When you run a mail server you learn a lot about spam, and spammers. Tonight I learned about Bigfoot. A company that had the really great idea to advertise its products, including an anti-spam product using... you guessed it... spam. Yes they actually sent out their mail to a list of addresses that could only have been reaped by sucking mailto: addresses from web sites. I know because I saw a good half dozen come my way from email addresses on web sites that I host.

So appreciating the irony of a company using spam to selling anti-spam tools I thought I'd send them an email indicating (quite politely I might add) that maybe they should think about firing someone in their marketing department. That is after I'd added bigfoot.com to my list of banned domains that cannot send any email to me which I also told them. I was hoping they might be dumb enough to repsond to me, but no such luck. But it was with much delight that I received a swift response from their mail demon indicating that their mail server has filled up and my email couldn't be delivered.

Now you tell me, do you think their mail server filled up with email from people wanting to buy their products? Or was it from people wanting to complain about their spam? As they say, if you live by spam, you'll die by spam...

Why are deskphones so primative?

Why is it that no one is selling a desk phone, or even cordless phone that can be programmed with phone numbers via a USB cable, or accepts a flash card you could plug in? I mean this feature has been around in mobile phones for years and years. Yet every programmable desk phone I've seen still requires you to enter numbers into it by hand. No, no, no, it will not do. No wonder people buy software and headsets for their computers to avoid using a "real" phone.

This highlights another corner of technology that is still delightfully retarded - the phone system. I'm very glad to see that consumer voice over IP offerings from people like Packet8 and Vonage are finally begining to catch on. For $20 you can have an all you can eat long distance phone service from Packet8 with caller ID and all kinds of features thrown in. Your only problem remains just how to get your IP "dialtone" without the phone company being involved since ADSL requires an active local phone line that will cost you $10 or more per month. If you have cable modem, or some other non-DSL connectivity you're home free! Vonage costs a little more but allows you to transfer you current phone number to your VoIP service. Sweet.

Is that a vault in your pocket or...

Since I've only just started this blog, on this occassion I don't get to say "I told you so". But believe me, for years now I've been wondering when someone would invent a product like the new Pocket Vault from Chameleon. This nifty device will scan data from any card with a standard magnetic strip and program one master meta-card with that information on demand. The meta-card is programmed by the Pocket Vault sleeve, and released after a finger print scan has been passed. For added security the meta card will only hold its information for a maximum of ten minutes. The only problem I see are price: "under $200" i.e. $199.95, and just how hack proof the vault system is if lost.

Of course this kind of thing would be a lot easier with a single smart-card in your wallet that could be reprogrammed to accept info from multiple banks and other card provider. However smart cards have just not taken off in the USA, unlike over in Europe where they are ubiquitous. But then again those cunning Europeans long ago figured out that working together to define standards (like smart cards, SIM cards and GSM networks) is so much more effective and efficient than waging wars and empire building to force standards on everyone.

Just say no to Verisign!

The Internet manifestation of evil, Verisign, is at it again. Now they are suing ICANN for stopping them exploiting DNS for their own financial benefit. If you have any modicom of sense you'll pop over and sign the petition to get ICANN to remove their rights to the .com and .net domains right now.