Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - July 2003
A hard man is good to beat
Flaming June. And it really was a lovely month. Plus, I got my megastream connected back, and four DSL lines too. The garden's lovely at this time of year - some people will have seen pictures of it, I post them in the chatroom sometimes, expecially when something interesting happens, like a fox runs across the grass, or a mountjack deer.
Galleries added this month.
Stories added this month.
Nothing new
Movies added this month.
Nothing new
DSL number three was supposed to arrive on June 7. But I suddenly realised that this was a Saturday, and therefore pretty unlikely to be the day. So, on June 5, I connected up my router, fired it up, and behold! The DSL was active. Well done, BT.
June 10, my megastream connection was supposed to come back. So I called my ISP, they said BT hasn't connected it. I called BT, they said they had. My ISP swore that BT hadn't visited. I asked them to try it anyway, and ... it worked! So I could switch back from the DSL that was carrying the older newsthumbs, to my megastream, and all I had to do, was unplug the cable to my firewall from the DSL router, and plug it into the megastream router.
So now I have the 2 megabit megastream, and three (soon to be four) DSLs, each of which is 1/4 megabit outbound, and 1/2 megabit inbound. The DSLs are mostly used for doing the backup from Watford across the internet to Chesham, it's about 10 to 15 gigabytes per day. With all those lines combine, I can pull 1.6 gigabytes per hour, so it gives me some headroom for growth. I also use the DSL lines for big uploads (like when I upload a gigabyte of video), because it leaves my main megastream line clear.
On Friday 13th, my fourth DSL went live! So now I have 3 megabits outbound and 4 megabits inbound. I've put all the DSL routers onto the non-public ip address range that starts with 10, which means they can't be accessed from outside. That's fine, it means all inbound stuff goes via my megastream and through my firewall. THe DSLs are used for doing backups of Newsthumbs across the internet, and I access them from computers here that are told to route the download via the DSLs.
I ordered a motherboard with five slots, and installed five ethernet cards into it. Plus, there's an ethernet port on the motherboard. My idea is to have a feed going into it, and for it to spit out the data through all those ports, onto the different DSL lines, which will sort of tie them all together. But I'm getting slightly cold feet about doing this, because the way I'm doing it now is working so well (I simply told a server that all its outbound data would be via a DSL, and did the same for three others). Maybe I'll make a backup firewall out of that motherboard.
On June 9, my name server at Watford crashed. The name server is like a phone book, it translates names like www.thevalkyrie.com into the actual address of the computer, which is 62.25.96.136. I actually run three name servers for thevalkyrie.com, and if one isn't working, the others are automatically used, so it didn't affect any surfers. But one can't ignore a failure.
This failure started off as a reboot. The name server just decided to reboot itself - not a good sign. I wrote that down in my fault log (I keep a log of every fault, because reading that log can sometimes tell me it's time to take some action).
Then, a few hours later, it rebooted itself again.
Then it just stopped working. I tried cycling the power a couple of times, but that didn't get it working, and because the server is several miles away, I can't look at the screen to see why. I did think of getting the "hands and eyes" service to look at it for me, but since it had already rebooted itself a couple of times, I felt that I probably have a serious hardware problem there. So, I decided to use one of the spare computers I keep in Watford, all powered up and ready for use.
I have a backup of the configuration of the name server, so I installed that, changed the name and address of the spare computer to be the same as the old one, started the name service, checked that it worked, and then rebooted the computer.
When you reboot a computer that is several miles away, there's always a nervous feeling, because if it doesn't come back online, there's nothing you can do from a distance. So, you sit and hold your breath while you ping the thing, and hope that it starts responding soon.
After a very long minute, it responded, and it all worked. So, I added the other services I run from that box (it's the distribution point for the web site password files, and it acts as the master clock for all my other servers, it gets the right time once per day from the University of Manchester atomic clock, and all the other servers get the right time from the name server.
So, now I have three dead computers at Watford; that one, and two of the backups for the Newsthumbs system. And because I used another of the hot spares to replace freya (running messages and chat), that means I no longer have any unused spares in place. I'm planning to take a trip down there to fetch the dead boxes back to Valkyrie Central for re-education, and to install about eight computers to replace the dead ones and a couple more besides.
I also got a 200 gb tape backup system, an Ultrium 2. The idea is that I'll be able to use it to make a backup of the Newsthumbs servers, which tend to be a terabyte each. Currently, I do this by having one live machine, and two copies of that on two more computers, powered off. I'll be able to have a pile of five tapes instead of one of those powered-off machines. But I have to keep a machine in reserve already loaded with the data, because a backup takes over a week to do, and I'm guessing that a restore will take about as long.
They claim you can get 400 gb on a tape, with compression. But since everything is already compressed, I'm seeing 210 gb. They also claim 60 mb/second, which is 216 gb/hour. I'm getting 5gb/hour, which is about what I expected. That's because the backup has to be read off the machine that the data is on, transferred across my network, and then written to tape. Still, it does everything I was hoping it would.
The installation of the eight computers at Watford went well, unless you count the fact that I managed to disable the main packet switch when I moved it, and for a while the entire web site was off the net. Oh, and you also have to quietly forget about the fact that I accidentally unplugged one of the power strips, leaving eight computers without power. When I got the faulty computers back to base and had a look, the faults was all pretty trivial. Two dead drives (easily replaced, and you can bet I'll be requesting replacements under warranty) and one that decided to start working as soon as I opened up the case, and hasn't failed since.
So now I have a backup to the main web site, and to the server that people access newsthumbs through. And I have a backup NNTP server again (I was running without a backup for a few weeks).
Boomer got upgraded to a much better camera.
The volume of Newsthumbs these days is so great that I have 750 gb accumulated in just two months. I made the current server into Older Server Number 8 in early May. But by the end of June, I was looking at about 400 gb of data on the current server again. I'm thinking, it might last until the end of July. Maybe.
Suddenly, at the beginning of June, I was getting a flood of emails from a list of addresses. Someone sent an email to everyone on the list, and people were replying to "everyone". I normally just delete such emails unread, they're only marginally more interesting than spam. Anything that is sent to a lot of people that I'm only one of, isn't really for me. I asked to be taken off the list, but you probably know how that goes.
So I did read them a bit. What I saw, was a lot of pain. And here's the story.
Some guy called "Cass" had been conducting online romances with a whole bunch of women. From their email addresses, these were tall women. Not only were they tall, their self-image was such that they were *defined* by their height. To explain what I mean by this, if someone calls herself sixfootonelady@aol.com, then she is saying that this is the most important thing about her. She is not merely self-conscious about her height, it's the one piece of information that she feels you absolutely must know about her. By the way, I made that address up, there wasn't someone by that name. But you see what I mean.
What he'd done, was trawl round the tall singles site (or sites), plus a few other sites, and gathered a list of email addresses. Then he was sending the same emails to all of them. The idea is the same as spam; the cost of sending an email is so small, that you can send lots and lots even if you only get a tiny hit rate.
But he wasn't selling body part enlargement, slimming or printer cartridges. He was offering love and romance. With his own little self (little - he was under six feet, although he told them he was a couple of inches over, and when they met, he told them that he'd become shorter because of parachute jumps, rofl). Actually, what he was after was sex. Of course. But that meant that his emails went straight through the mental filters that we all have that let us ignore recipes for 5,000 year old bread and septic tank fixers. It didn't look like spam.
For those who did respond (and I'd guess he'd get a very high response rate, these are people who are putting their email addresses on a singles site in the hope of getting replies), he'd send off an initial chatty email. If that got an encouraging response, then the romancing would start.
Here's a very neat trick he found. He would take chunks of romantic email that he'd received, and cut-and-paste them into his outbound emails. In effect, he was receiving the hopes and fears of these women, repackaging them as opportunity, and sending them back.
He appears to have been enormously successful. There's women who have pretty much shut down their lives in order to be with him (did I mention that he is already married, with children?). There's women who have been selling their household effects, getting ready to go live with him (did I mention that he claims to be in Afghanistan with the military, a colonel no less).
They only discovered this when someone got access to the hotmail account he was using to do this, and alerted everyone in his address book about it. I was in his address book, I guess he is or was a visitor to the web site, that's why I started getting these emails. Then they started to compare notes. "Hey, he sent me that email too!" "Hey, he said that to you? That's out of an email I sent him" and so on.
This is a bunch of very angry women. They feel "used". One said she feels raped, he bedded her under false pretences. They're angry, and they want to get even. They know who he is, some of them have met him. They know his name, address, SSN, everything. He's going to get shredded. Serves him right. Bastard. Preying on people's very natural wish to love and be loved.
There's a lot of attractive but lonely women and men out there (some of them circulated pictures around the email list, and no, you can't see them, I deleted them). Our cultural norm is that the man has to approach the woman; all the woman can do is advertise her availability. Traditionally, that has been done via dress, makeup, appearance, facial expressions, body language. It's a one-on-one thing, one woman signals one man, the man signals back, you know how it works, and if you don't, then I can't teach you, except to tell you that a smile is more attractive than any other facial expression. Today, the advertising can be done on a singles site, making it a lot easier for the women to advertise availability, and for the men to find available women.
Two conclusions.
1) If you're a lonely man or woman, there's a *lot* of lonely women and men, advertising on the singles sites, and you can find someone to love, it isn't that difficult. If Cass could line up dozens of women (some fell in love with him without even meeting him), then you can find someone really suitable for yourself.
2) Have a properly sceptical attitude when it comes to the internet. Don't believe everything you read. Smile, nod, but don't accept unverified information as truth.
Remember this - all the rumours are untrue.
We get used to trusting our computers. After all, your own computer wouldn't lie to you, would it?
When someone sends you a letter and it eventually falls through your letterbox onto your "Welcome" mat, you'll often see, on the outside of the envelope, the name and address of the sender. That's useful to the Post Office, in case they can't deliver the letter. It's also useful to you, because you know who to write back to.
And, of course, if someone sends you something nasty through the post, they'll put their true name and address on the envelope, won't they? No, they won't.
Emails have a return address on the envelope too. It's that line "From:". And it's as easy to forge that as it is to forge the return address on a paper envelope. You just make it say whatever you want.
Does this matter? Yes. Because although no-one would trust that the return address on a paper envelope is always true, people will trust what their own computer tells them. And in this case, your own computer is merely repeating the lie it's been told.
So what?
The "so what" is demonstrated by a spam I got recently.
Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our routine security measures. This is a must to ensure that only you have access and use of your paypal account and to ensure a safe Paypal experience. We require all flagged accounts to verify their information on file withus. To verify your information, click here and enter the detailsrequested.
On the page that you get to when you "click here", they ask for your name, address, credit card details, social security number, driver's licence, email address and password.
Now, if it's Paypal that is asking for all this, you'd probably have no objection. After all, you gave them all or most of this information when you signed up.
But it isn't Paypal.
Oh, the web address certainly looks like it's Paypal. But "looks like" isn't the same as "is". It's a scam. The email "From:" line is Paypal, but I already told you how easy that is to forge.
So, what can be done about this? I would hope that Paypal are already tracking these people down, because what they're doing certainly looks criminal to me. But I doubt if they are. There's just so many of these scams, and it's so easy for them to hide in the internet.
I think that the only answer is for people to have a properly sceptical attitude when it comes to the internet. Don't believe everything you read. Especially, don't trust that the source of an email is who the email claims to be.
Remember this - all the rumours are untrue.
I don't make these up. These are actual spams sent to me, which just
strike me as funny. I don't include their contact details - go find your own spammers!
The Miracle Soap Wash Yourself To Health & Wealth!
This is not spam if you can be removed...see removal instructions below
Yes, it's still spam.
Beware of Scams
No. Really? You mean, some of these spam emails are scams? Who'd 'a' thought it!
Look Great in a new powered wheelchair
I'm not sure that's the accessory I'm looking for. Wrong image, you know?
flea and tick season is back
Scratch scratch.
The server is down
So pull a few funny faces, cheer it up a bit.
Anger Managment starts here
STOP SENDING ME SPAM, DAMMIT!!!
Paint like a pro!
I always wanted to be Van Gogh.
I haven't actually bothered to find out the name of this one, does it really matter? What it does, is it collects email addresses from your text files, from web pages you've visited, and (of course) from your address book. Previous viruses just used your address book. Then it mails itself to one of those addresses, while claiming to come from another of the addresses it found.
That means that you get a file which pretends to be something interesting (like a video clip) from someone who didn't actually send it. If you run that file, you're infected and now it sends emails from your computer (while pretending they came from elsewhere).
I've gotten a few copies of this, and I know of at least one person who got a copy that had my email address on as the source. So - be wary of clicking on enclosed things, even if they seem to come from someone you know.
I use a Linux program for my email, so these things don't really affect me, but most people will be using Windows Outlook, I'd guess.
We've sponsored lots of the women; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Peggy Schoolcraft, Larisa Hakobyan, Steph Parks.
We're also sponsoring individual events, and funding athletes to go to events with grant dollars.
We're also doing free hosting and free bandwidth for many of our sponsored women. Bandwidth can mount up to a large bill when you're running a popular web site.
And we've sponsored Heather Foster, Kara Bohigian, Priscilla Ribic, KerryAnn Allen, Linda Cusmano and Jodi Miller. Anita Ramsey and Rhonda Dethlefs coming up.
New feature in the chatroom - you can choose to ignore people.
To use it, log in to the chatroom in the usual way. You'll notice some new options on the sidebar.
And you can switch between those at any time, just by clicking on the link.
If you decide to ignore someone, then you would use the command
/ignore Badperson
where "Badperson" can be with their login userid, or the handle they are currently using in chat.
To take someone off your ignore list,
/unignore Badperson
The ignore list that you make, is permanent; you don't have to make it on each chat. But, of course, you can take people off your ignore list.
New feature - the Valk-Signal. There's two ways you can use it. You can go to http://call.thevalkyrie.com or you can use it from the chatroom with "/valksignal on" and "/valksignal off".
It uses the stuff I developed a long time ago for remote control of computers, and which I then used for the Bionic Arm. What it does, is switch on a signal light in my office, and if I'm in there, I can log into the chatroom to see why I was called. It could actually control a searchlight that shines onto the clouds, but Batman already did that. Besides, I wouldn't want to attract the bats that roost around here.
Yes, I do have bats here; a couple of weeks ago I had to evict one that had flown in through the window and couldn't find its way out again. They're tiny little things, about the size of a mouse, and dangerous to flying insects and fruit. I coaxed him into a box, closed the box, took it outside, and released him. He was terrified, poor thing, but I'm sure he recovered once he was free again. I guess the bats in Gotham City must be a different species, they look much larger and scarier.
So - the Valk-Signal. Useful? Not very. Cool? Totally.
Inspired by the Valk-Signal, I decided to fix the Bionic Arm, which has been non-working for a while now. I needed to put the camera on a different computer, because for reasons I can't fathom, the computer it was on, wouldn't recognise it any more. So, I decided to move the whole thing. I had to do a couple of minor repairs on it (the gripping hand wasn't flexing, I needed to resolder the joint and loosen the nuts slightly), and I've put in the same place as I've got the Valk-Signal (the same bank of relays that switches the Valk-Signal, now also switches the Bionic Arm). You can see, if you switch on the Valk-Signal, the Bionic Arm gets lit up too (but it isn't powered up, you still have to switch on the power to the Bionic Arm before you can move it).
You know that the site must be running pretty smoothly when I've got the time to do stuff like that!
Anyways, totally useless, but coolissimo. I don't think anyone else has put a robot arm on the internet.
There's six more relays on that relay bank. I wonder what else I could do?
Following the EEC health and Safety Directive 391823b, 2003, I've installed an emergency off switch for the web site. Obviously, you shouldn't use it unless there's an imminent danger of injury to someone.
I don't know why they have such stupid regulations, but a computer comes under the heading of "Mains voltage electrical machinery", and so falls within Directive 391823b. It's all red tape if you ask me.
Member | Posts |
| alphacentaurian | 8834 |
| zig563 | 4660 |
| gonzo7025 | 4215 |
| pamela69 | 2988 |
| mikeac | 2987 |
| buffy18976 | 2890 |
| 1973manc | 2844 |
| rainer0000 | 2765 |
| gman292 | 2579 |
| mit19237 | 2356 |
| boomer444 | 2200 |
| TomNine | 2151 |
| JohnDavis | 1992 |
| barca1999 | 1850 |
| lament2syn | 1512 |
| hiram2000 | 1354 |
| ginny2442 | 1292 |
| gaily304 | 1246 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 1233 |
| ricko1973 | 979 |
Alphacentaurian makes a valiant effort and posts more chat than the next two combined.
This month, we had 3291 posts to the boards.
Most posted Board of the month | Poster of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Boomer's board was boosted by the competitions he's running. | maxt is back!. |
Mavis is counting the number of times the message list is checked for each board. This gives a very different picture from the one above.
Most listed Board of the month | Most read Board of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The usual boards are in top place | The Grinch got the stats. |
The answers to last week's quiz:
The sound was a cat being dragged across a blackboard, claws dug in, followed by the sound of air being let out of an inflatable ball. Mr Futtockson gets no points at all for his disgraceful suggestion.
The picture was a Wellington boot with a cucumber inside it. Why did so many people think it was obscene?
And the answer to the riddle was "shake hands". Most people guessed something quite disgusting.
I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of June 2003, there were about 627,000 pictures (35 gigabytes), 99 gigabytes of video, 7100 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 135 gigabytes. The Current Newsthumbs had over 4 million pictures; there's 49 million pictures altogether in Newsthumbs.