Stats: Blowing Bubbles in the Blogosphere

By | November 24, 2011
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 It’s not that new an observation but it’s worth making again, based on fresh data: blogs — those bastions of independent guy in underpants with computer publishing — are just as concentrated as Big Media. These stats from The Truth Laid Bare show that, as Oscar Jnr puts it, “the total average daily traffic of the top 10 sites (109,707 visits) exceeded that of the 671 other sites (102,500 visits)”.
 
In effect, the top 10 blogs account for more than 50% of all traffic, while three quarters of the sites monitored, some 660 sites, had fewer than 100 daily visitors over the past week. Ouch. It’s not easy to make a splash in blogland.

News: Yes! Another Spam Solution

By | November 24, 2011
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  I feel this blog is becoming spamblog. Really. I plough through dozens of press releases every day just to find something good for you guys, and it’s all about spam. Here’s another one (and it’s just the headline): MailFrontier Matador(TM) 3.0 Learns and Adapts to Offer Consistent Maximum Spam Protection Over Time Also Protects Mobile Devices from the Increasing Spam Deluge. Excellent. That at least is interesting, although they’ll be really upset when they realise most screens will only read the first half, which will be MailFrontier Matador(TM) 3.0 Learns and Adapts to Offer Consistent Maximum Spam. Anyway, I digress.
 
MailFrontier’s new release is “the world’s smartest desktop anti-spam solution”. It even wheels in a Senator, Arizona’s Scott Bundgaard to confirm it, although he does sound a bit like a guy trying out different brans of mouthwash. “I tried other products on the market, but only with MailFrontier Matador was I able to receive my important email and get rid of spam. Now I can avoid unwanted ads for ink cartridges or home mortgages and can focus on emails that are significant to me,” said Bundgaard.
 
Anyway, on to the product. MailFrontier Matador 3.0, it turns out, “monitors incoming email, analyzing each message to learn more about specific patterns and vocabulary that define good email and bad email for each individual. The software creates an eProfile — a custom rule set — for each individual user, which adapts over time.” Matador also, interestingly, will “filter incoming email before it gets downloaded to a wireless device” which does sound useful.
 
MailFrontier Matador is a desktop application that sells for $29.95. This includes spam signature file updates, product upgrades, and email support for one year at no additional charge. MailFrontier Matador is available for users of Microsoft(R) Outlook(R) (2000 and 2002) and users of Outlook Express(R) (5.0/5.5/6.0), and Hotmail, MSN, and IMAP, when used through Outlook Express. To download a free trial please go to http://www.mailfrontier.com/ .
 
 

News: Another Spam Solution. No Really

By | November 24, 2011
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 From the I’m Not Sure I Understand This Press Release Dept here’s another spam solution, just in case you thought there weren’t any more. Challenge/Response is a technique used to prevent spam by challenging folk who send an email to you to confirm they are human by responding. I.e: you send an email to me, my spam filter sends a challenge to you, you respond to that, your first email gets through. Easy enough. But Mailblocks, Inc. today reckon that with the new release of its Web-based
Challenge/Response 2.0 ($10 a year and up), they’ve come up with a major innovation: cutting out the challenge bit.
 
 
Now of course I could be getting this all wrong and Mailblocks, please put me right here), but the press release quotes Phil Goldman, Mailblocks’ CEO as saying, “We continue to innovate in all areas of our email service, but our most recent release concentrates on removing the greatest perceived barrier to widespread consumer adoption of Challenge/Response – the Challenge itself.” In this version, new senders to Mailblocks’ subscribers will only be challenged once, then, unless they go bad and start sending spam, they won’t be challenged again.
 
E, I thought that was how it worked anyway. I’m no great fan of Challenge/Response (why inconvenience people who are trying to contact you?), preferring good Bayesian filters, which, you’ll be delighted to know, are 99.25% accurate. I haven’t seen spam in weeks. I kinda miss it (kidding. Don’t spam me). Anyway, back to Mailblocks. Maybe what they’re saying is that if you get accepted by any Mailblocks customer, you’re automatically OK with all the other Mailblocks user. That’s not a bad idea. But how many folk out there are using Mailblocks? The other option seems to be to fill out Challenge to be universally approved to send to all Mailblocks’ customers by going to
 http://about.mailblocks.com/trustme.html. I can’t see folk queuing up to do that, to be honest.
 
Maybe I just love my free Bayesian Filters too much, but what’s the point of farming out spam filtering when you can do it yourself so much better for free, and not upset your friends by challenging them?

News: Cracking a Password is Fast

By | November 24, 2011
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Now your Microsoft Windows password can be cracked in 13.6 seconds, a vast improvement over the slow and tedious 101 seconds it took previously. An improved cryptanalytic method uses large amounts of memory–in this case, 1.4 GB–to speed its cracking of
keys, says Security Wire Digest.

I won’t bore you with how they did it. But the bottom line is that this attack doesn’t pose any practical threat, since only an administrator would be able to encryped password to conduct the attack, and users can resist by using passwords that contain more than just letters and numbers.

Hardware: A Computer For the Price of a Pedicure

By | November 24, 2011
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If you’re cheap, skint, or just like buying stuff that doesn’t cost very much, check out the $169 Lindows WebStation. The Lindows WebStation is “the first ultra-affordable, ‘unbreakable’ computer designed specifically for Web work.” Just plug it into a broadband connection and you’re off. Apparently it’s idiot proof too: “It’s literally impossible to destroy the system configuration or settings, making the WebStation the ideal computer for many situations.”

It includes a “complete, Microsoft-compatible Office Suite making it possible to open, edit, save, and email Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint files without additional software!” Needless to say, the gadget works on Lindows, a Linux version of Windows (and nothing to do with Microsoft despite the name). So don’t expect too much. it doesn’t have a hard drive, so boots from a CD. Oh, and bring your own monitor.