Seems the ACT party is voting against the antispam bill, and then making ill-informed recommendations about alternative solutions.

While I do agree that spam is an international problem, defeatedly throwing our hands in the air and suffering with spam filtering software is not the answer. There’s an old (medical?) edict that I like to apply when analysing a technical fault, as it makes things easily justifiable and has the effect of ridding a lot of corporate politics. The edict goes like this:

So, spam filtering software is the cure, yes? So what are we doing to prevent spam, so as to supersede spam filtering software?

I do agree with Mr Hide that all the proposed bill will amount to is huffing and puffing in the Beehive, it will make nowhere near the amount of difference that its supporters are optimistically predicting. Each nation having its own rules, laws and punishments for spam is stupid. The same holds true for copyright legislation. What the world needs to help clear up the internet, an international entity, are international laws.

If all but a handful of countries can sit down and all agree to the Berne Copyright Convention, which is arguably the basis of international copyright law, then all but a handful of countries can sit down and agree on international antispam legislation, with extradition clauses etc. One unified law will make things very clearcut and will make capture and prosecution of the worst spammers equally clearcut.

Instead what we’re heading towards is a mish-mash of a couple hundred seperate sets of rules, leaving thousands of loopholes. While an illogical and inefficient situation, it’s certainly better than nothing.

My forearm has recently felt like it was about to fall off, so I went and saw the doc.

Moderate RSI and Insomnia. Anti-inflamms, accupuncture and sleeping pills.

In a twist of irony, I was given a pile of ACC forms… which I have to fill out with my right hand, which is attached to my right forearm.. the very forearm that is in pain.

In the meantime however, I have installed workrave on my work pc and it’s made an immediate positive impact. So if you’ve got some RSI/OOS going on, give workrave a look.

I’ve just deloused a few windows PC’s and had to justify to the users why it took longer and cost more to fix than a plain backup-reinstall like I recommended. That sucks.

However I noticed that I spent most of my time twiddling my thumbs waiting for scans to finish and updates to apply, and one of the trickiest things was installing an application and then connecting to the internet to download virus/spam/adware/etc updates while not letting resident worms get out or more crap get in.

So why can’t we have a set of wrapper scripts for existing tools that automates most of the delousing process?

So for example, at home you have an upgrade script that grabs the latest virus definitions, spybot definitions etc and applies them to a USB thumbdrive. You take that thumbdrive with you on your journeys and if you come across a PC that needs some TLC, you plug the thumbdrive in and…

… an autoexec.bat script or similar installs the applications you have chosen to use, or invokes a prebuilt package that you have made. You may also have the option to run straight from the thumbdrive.

Once they’re installed, they’re upgraded using the latest defs from the thumbdrive, and finally they run with a set of default arguments.

Caveats – the applications will have to be CLI friendly to make scripting easier. Also after a while the thumbdrive will pack a tantrum from a lot of writes. But it will have more than paid for itself, and they’re essentially disposable devices these days, so no biggy.

What I would have on my thumbdrive?
*AutopatcherXP for all the latest updates, and a copy of XP-SP2 just in case
*Adaware SE
*Spybot
*Hijackthis
*Clamwin-AV
*Maybe one other AV scanner, Clamwin can be pretty slow but it’s good to have in case you come across the typical cause of the problem – an expired copy of Norton/Macafee. Some of the better names do have free AV scanners, I havent looked into the options yet.

I’m not sure which order I’d do things in – patches before or after delousing? Probably before… and then all the applictions would be setup to run in order, and configured to either quarantine by default (safe) or nuke on sight by default (should be ok) Also appending to a log file with timestamps would be handy for both reference and accurate charging for your time.

So, essentially you plug in the thumbdrive and a few options later you walk away while the computer delouses itself. A few hours later you come back and pick up any human interactive stuff.

Or you could continue to do it manually and get yourself a Gameboy while you sit there waiting for scans to finish.

Throw this on the pile of things I could do but dont have the motivation quite yet. This has probably already been done too.. maybe based on Knoppix/Morphix… It could probably also be done with a customised version of UBCD or Bart’s PE. Looks like this could be a good start.

My favourite Australian and internet oracle, Dan, of Dans Data has FINALLY updated the look of his site after so many years

Check it out

So I just saw Serenity (Official Site) and I have to say I really liked it.

Having not seen Firefly, I didn’t know what to expect, but it appears that Serenity was made so as not to have Firefly as pre-required watching. It’s very gritty compared to usual sci-fi, the story is well structured and well developed, and there are injections of comedy and twists that keep it feeling a bit raw and unpredictable. I like that. 9/10