June 2006 Archives

My Dad's health is really going down hill. Basically his heart, lungs, and kidney's are all on the verge of failure. It's a very delicate balance of drugs, oxygen, and lots and lots of doctors visits which are keeping him alive right now.

He's having a hard time of it - well, has been for a while, but it certainly seems to have gotten much worse over the last couple months. I really don't know how much longer he'll hold on.

The good news is he's facing it all with dignity and strength. He's not afraid of dying and I suspect he's ready for the peace it will bring him.

If anything, he's afraid of leaving his family alone without him. Not an uncommon feeling I would suggest. I hope he knows that I'm on a really solid foundation now, my life's doing well, and he should not worry about how I'll do when he's gone. I'm not "dependent" on him in any material sense of the word, tho I do enjoy his company (on the phone or in person). I'm only a little sad that I can't tell him exactly how happy I am these days, since we've decided not to tell him I'm gay - he's quite an old-school deep-southerner and it may very well not go over very well; in fact it may be just the kind of stress that would do BadThings(tm) to hm.

I've tried to do a lot over the last 6 months to show to him that I'm doing quite well, and that my future is secure - give him some peace of mind. As you may know, my future was not always so secure - tho that's well in the past now.

My mom's not even sure he'll make it through this week. He's going into the hospital for some drug therapy to boost his blood pressure today - it's temporary, but they're going to see if it helps.

I'm a bit worried about how my mom is going to get on without him. I actually suspect just fine, since I know it's been a huge burden on her to take care of him. I know it'll be hard on her, tho, being alone. I was thinking last night perhaps she should, after all that happens, sell the house and move in with my brother - keep her close, taken care of, etc. I have no facilities to do that I'm afraid (being in a small apartment) - my brother has a large house, tho. Even though he's just starting his family - but it was just a random thought which I would will go further than this random blathering.

For a few months I've been under virtual 'attack' by spam-bots. Two of my three servers are constantly being slammed by spam-bots.

About 4 weeks ago I put in a set of new rules for Postfix to try to immediately weed-out the bots, especially those who don't even bother to confirm to SMTP RFC standards. That actually helped a LOT.

From a systems point of view, my goal was to get postfix to drop as much of it as possible. If postfix accepts a message, it then has to get processed thru spam & antivirus scanners which are perl-based, and tend to (on Tsunami, being a slower/older system) eat up lots of memory. It's not too tough for tsunami to start paging AND run out of swap space. (I upgraded the memory in the box last falll, which has helped, but there's still SO much spam that it does become an issue at times).

Here's the other side-effect: Bandwidth. email isn't normally huge - but the amount of spam that's been incoming has been THAT big. It's not a super-huge issue for Tsunami, which is hosted gratis by a very good colleague of mine (tho I try to be very sensitive about the fact that I'm sharing bandwidth for his office).

The real bandwidth impact for me is on Shockwave (hosted at The Bunker over in the UK. I pay for bandwidth there. A year ago I was using around 1GB a month of data transfer in/out. The last few months I've been up around 4-5GB. So it costs me to deal with this spam. Luckily I have really good rates with them so it's not a huge impact, but still it's money out of my pocket.

MY QUESTION: What else can I do?

A friend of mine has recommended a 3rd party spam-filtering network. Yeah, but that would be MORE money out of my pocket - plus it's domain-based (if not account-based) and I don't want to limit myself so much (there are probably 20 domains running off my servers collectively).

What else can I do really, tho? I've been looking for any effective RBL lists I can use - it's helped a little, but not as much as I'd like.

Drop me a line if you geeks have any ideas.

This kills me. I see all these people who get all up-in-arms about MySpace, and claiming that it's their fault that underaged kids run into problems online.

Bloody hell, people, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS! Stop trying to blame your mistakes, your mis-judgements, your personal issues, on some entity with deep pockets.

Take the latest: 14 year old sues MySpace over sexual assult.

Complaint: "The lawsuit claims that the Web site does not require users to verify their age".

Response: And how exactly do you want that to happen? I administer our public community site at work, which is very social in nature. We come up against this issue periodically. For some person out there, who you'll never meet in person, how do you verify their identity? Take a minute and consider your options.

Some say that you have to put in credit card as "proof" that you're 18+. Maybe. What about those kids who just snag their parents' card and put it in? What about those who engage in credit card theft - they could sign up any number of accounts that way.

Remember, we're not talking about how to keep the honest people honest - we're talking about how do you sort out those who would try to exploit the system. THAT'S the issue. The problem is that you really can't with today's system. Anonymity is still somewhat protected these days (tho who knows for how much longer).

Another part of the article: In May, after a series of e-mails and phone calls, he picked her up at school, took her out to eat and to a movie, then drove her to an apartment complex parking lot in South Austin, where he sexually assaulted her, police said.

So explain to me why it's the fault of MySpace (not that I'm very pro-MySpace, but work with me here) that this girl answered his email, that this girl took these phone calls, and that this girl went out on a 'date' with this guy?

Let's also consider- THE PARENTS ALLOWED HER TO GO OUT?! Tell me how the parents aren't culpable in this. Seriously. The parents ALLOWED this. And if they claim she snuck out and did this without their permission - it's STILL on them. Until that girl is 18, she is THEIR responsbility legally. It's on them.

If you read the article (if they don't make you "join" the bloody site just to read it), there's a huge slant on this story for the plaintiff. There's one quote in there from Stanford's Center for Internet & Society which says, very staccatto-like, they don't think that myspace is responsbile. Be objective, okay? Isn't that the role of journalists? Another reason I never subscribed to the Statesman when I lived in Austin. Far too biased to be useful.

Yes, it's sad what happend to this little girl. Maybe it's a hard fact of life she was going to learn one day or another. Her parents certainly didn't raise her very well to avoid stragers.

So here we are - parents & child are suing MySpace for $30M. TELL ME this isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. MySpace is going to end up settling out of court. The only way I would believe that the plaintiffs are serious about this and are suting for philosophical reasons, meaning they're really trying to affect change at MySpace, is if they press this into court and do NOT settle. But they won't, and they'll all settle, and this'll go away and nothing will change.

A company, a person running a website, whatever you are - you have to do what's "reasonable" to protect your users. You're not required to do 'everything under the sun.' What's "customary" and "resonable" in this case? And as I've discussed - once you've done that, then what? Do you totally shut down communications between those over & under 18? The Internet might as well shut down & we all go home in that case.

I signed up for MySpace a long time ago (a year ago?) - I don't even recall what, if any, age verification they did. So I do have to say I'm ignorant as to what methods they are doing these days. It may be nothing more than "I confirm that I have said the truth about my age." I just don't know.

The article states that the plaintiffs want the company to start using credit cards to validate age. I've brought that up and it is a possible course to consider. But again, it'll just keep the honest people honest. So once you've verified age - then what? That's not been discussed by this article. Do you block any & all communication between those who are verified (18+) and those who aren't? What if, for privacy reasons, I don't feel comfortable giving my credit card to MySpace? Do you require someone to be a verified member in order to see any profiles which are verfied (18+)? That virtually ruins why MySpace is in business.

So now go back to this article, this case. The only claim made by this guy (who assulted this girl) was that he was a senior in high school on the football team. Apparently the guy was 19 years old. Now, I don't know the facts of the case, but one certainly can say that 19 is not necessarily out of the range of being a high school senior (if the kid was ever held back a year, it's VERY possible).

Now let's take another approach. What if the kid was 17. What if they did credit card verification. Would that have stopped what happened? Nope. I'd love to hear arguments that it would.

What if they put a warning on every message sent from someone over 18 to someone under 18. Do you think that this 14yo girl would have stopped right there & said "oh, he's over 18, I better not talk to him." Absolutely not. Look at her behaviour in the situation - go out with him after messaging and talking to him on the phone. One could make a supposition that she liked older guys. 17 or 19, wouldn't have mattered. She still would have talked to him, and this still very likely would have happened, all other things being equal.

I see teenagers on our public forums at work every day - the Internet is a curse for them, really. They think they're "all grown up" because they can go online, say & do anything they want, be anyone they want to be. But when they hit real life, they get smacked down because they are, in that age-old phrase, "too big for their britches." The behaviour of this girl reminds me of those types of kids.

It just infuriates me that you see people doing this - grabbing headlines, and trying to get rich in the process - trying to blame their mistakes and issues on other people, other situations. It's always "not my fault" in today's society. Blame it on the terrorists. Blame it on the Republicans, the liberals, blame it on global warming. Blame it on anyone but my own self.

I have gone threw my own personal hell over the last 10 yrs. Sure, it would be VERY easy to blame it on a certain someone else. I might be justified in doing so. But you know what? I made the decisions that allowed it to happen. Me. My mistake. I took responsibility, I paid the price(s), and now I think I'm a better person for it. I've learned a lot about myself, and maybe even got rich(er) in the process (given my "new life"). But it would have done no one any good for me to sit here & blame that other person. Would not have solved anything, would not have paid any debts, nothing.

I'm not trying to rail on this 14yo who was sexually assulted. The situation is horrible. But let's focus on the CRIME that was committed and not lessen it's reprehensiblity with this repugnant lawsuit. It's the parents trying to blame someone else. It's the GUY who assulted her who's at fault, really. Why don't you sue ATT/SBC, while you're at it, for "allowing" this guy to call this girl while you're at it. How about the movie theatre for seeing this "obviously" underaged girl out alone with some guy and didn't question it. How ridiculous do they want to get about this?

[/rant off]

My advise to those of you with dogs: Do not watch the movie Best in Show within 6 months of having lost your dogs.