] In an apparent attempt to quelch the amount of incoming
] spam, AT&T has asked their customers, partners, and
] business clients to provide them with IP addresses of
] their mail servers.

AT&T goes whitelist. I almost memed this last night when it got posted to Nanog... I'm still on the fence about its importance.

1. I think that whitelisting is the way to solve the spam problem. IF we can enable white lists then in the beginning there will be hassles associated with approving new people onto the whitelist. Technology can replace those hassles with a computational burden, and eventually you reach a place where the internet seems as open as it is today, but there simply is no spam. Replacing the hassle of manual whitelist maintenance with a computational burden will not happen when the default response to the hassle is to not use whitelisting. Improvements will only be widely deployed in response to an existing system. There may be a bit of an arms race over authenticating the whitelist, but the spammers will loose that fight.

2. Almost all the commentary about this on Nanog and Slashdot has been negative. If people are unable to see the long term benefit of this they won't cut over, and we will be stuck with incomplete anti-spam solutions for ever. It will be interesting to see if AT&T's admins will win out over the negative feedback. If they do, this announcement could be the beginning of the end of spam.

3. The problem with authenticating mailservers is some day you are going to end up with legitimate customers on the same mailserver as a spammer. You need to be able to authenticate individual senders AND mailservers depending on the situation.

4. This whitelist system can obviously be applied as a censorship technology, particularly if there is some sort of whitelist sharing system controlled by a central authority. Ultimately, the best way to defend against that is to run the whitelist on your PC and not on a centralized mailserver.

Slashdot | AT&T Moves Toward Mail-Server Whitelist

Fischerspooner is not something enjoyed in moderation. Just watch their stage show -- a synchronized sensory overload of throbbing keyboards, feathered dancers and flashing lights that looks and sounds like the court at Versailles visiting Burning Man -- and try to take it in small, measured doses. Just try to avert your eyes from frontman Casey Spooner. Corralling the audience with his gaze, he has more cajones than the Rat Pack and more attitude than a diva (with a few more costume changes thrown in for good measure). It's clear as soon as the first track is cued; this is an orgy of entertainment. Don't get squeamish.

For everyone who bloged about Fischerspooner back in September, here's a "rave" of a concert review.

An Orgy of Entertainment: Fischerspooner Up Close

] ICANN does not successfully put a stop to it, the single
] most likely outcome is for the community to view ICANN as
] irrelevant and impotent. Once this happens, the
] inevitable result is a fragmentation of the DNS,
] disparate roots, and, loss of the convention of a single
] recognized authority at the root of the tree.

Finally a commentary that makes me happy: someone who gets it.

NANOG: Re: data request on Sitefinder

] Why? It's an evolutionary mystery. The ability to regrow
] legs and eyes seems like a clear Darwinian advantage -
] one that surviving generations would have retained. But a
] paradox of regeneration is that the higher you move up
] the evolutionary chain, the less likely you'll have the
] ability to regrow limbs or organs. Keating's mission:
] figure out the cause of this paradox - and reverse it.

I wonder if giving the cells in a complex organism this kind of regenerative power makes them more likely to become cancerous, and so complex organisms with this feature died out from that.

U: This is what I get for not finishing the article before memeing... They discuss this possibility...

Regrow Your Own Broken heart? No problem. New liver? Coming right up. The road to regeneration starts here.

] Ralph Merkle, a Foresight founder who is now director of
] the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, says the
] group has always known its set of guidelines for nanotech
] regulation - really, a set of self-regulatory
] measures that ensure human control over nanotech -
] would not apply to real nanotechnology for decades. But
] one of Foresight's objectives is that there is adequate
] public discussion "well in advance of reality."
]
] "I think that one of the things that happens in any
] discourse about some complex subject is you get a lot of
] confusion," Merkle said. "That's part and parcel of the
] process, and so what you want to do is start the
] discussion early, and as time goes by the confusion
] gradually settles down. In other words, people make wild
] statements. Fine. They make statements that aren't
] accurate. Fine.
]
] "As time goes on, people will look back and see what was
] accurate and not."

This is an interesting discussion of nanoethics that has general implications for discussions of bioethics.

Small Times: NanoEthics

] SAN FRANCISCO -- Tech job postings on two popular online
] employment sites have increased sharply, a sign that the
] long moribund job market may finally be turning around.
]
] Craigslist tech job postings in the San Francisco Bay
] Area have doubled from a year ago and are up 50 percent
] from six months ago, said CEO Jim Buckmaster. Activity
] has particularly picked up in the past four weeks, he
] said.

Wow...

Wired News: Not So Quiet on Tech Job Front

] The plan calls for a media campaign to "generate positive
] public perception" of the companies and to "reduce
] substantially the level and amount of criticism from
] computer scientists and other security experts about the
] fallibility of electronic voting systems."

Brilliant... They publicly announce that they are going to engage in a PR campaign in order to "manage perceptions." Its like having an argument with someone who is mentally retarded. They just don't get it.

There are only two options in this discourse:

1. Computer security experts are satisfied. (You fixed the problem.)
2. Computer security experts are not satisfied. (Democracy is broken.)

There are only three reasons why someone would choose option 2:

1. They are absolutely nuts. (They think the fall of the Weimar Republic sounded like fun and they want to try.)
2. They are involved in a conspiracy. (They ARE the Nazis.)
3. They are mentally retarded. (They have no concept of the history of human societies and so they don't understand what they are creating.)

We all know the option is three. What I just don't understand is why there are so many people who are mentally retarded who are responsible for so many important things today. Its everywhere: Verisign, SCO, Diebold, Enron... Can't think long term. Makes significant strategic miscalculations. Underestimates the consul of intelligent people. Doesn't understand the obvious secondary implications of it's actions. Sees money as an end and not a means. ... Fucking mentally retarded. WHY do we let these people run things?!

This is how societies collapse.
1. People trust the elites because of their demonstrated ability. People stop putting pressure on the leadership.
2. The elites hand the society off to their children.
3. The children have never faced pressure. They are therefore lazy and dull.
4. The children's laziness turns to greed, and people suffer.
5. The situation slowly collapses into violence.
6. The old elites are replaced with a new group of elites who are fresh, hard working thinkers.

This is so well understood that it is now taught in grade school. We don't have to go through this anymore...

Wired News: E-Vote Firms Seek Voter Approval

] To this extent "innovation" might not be the right word.
] What VeriSign has done is to implement a previously
] unimplemented standard. The worst I can think to say is
] that they might have notified people more ahead of time.
] They certainly did not and, in my opinion, do not need
] permission to do it. It's all about being community
] friendly, but not about rights.

The creator of RealNames shows up in support of Verisign. More totally irrational claims. I referenced one of this guys RFC's in another forum because it was an interesting technical approach to replacing DNS with a directory system. However, what is also well known is that RealNames wished to manage that directory system based on the idea that the guy with the most money shows up on the top of the list. This of course resulted in their company going nowhere because no one was interested in turning the internet into even more of a spam nightmare then it already is.

Site Finder as Starting Point for True Innovation Above DNS

] "FTAA: A Threat to Freedom and Free Trade"

something to be aware of, among the many other issues at hand...

IP Justice: IP Justice White Paper

"DRM is the magic link that allows you to step into that secure world, yet do it in a smart, flexible way."

- Dave Fester
General Manager of Microsoft's Digital Media Division
WSJ 10-20-03, page R3

("Secure World" was also the answer that Mr. Fester gave when asked what planet he lives on.)