Existing users, 
User Name Toivo Perholt
Member Since 0000-00-00
Total number of Feedback Posts: 8
Total number of comments: 0
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Toivo Perholt [ Search for All ]
SpamSlam 1.1.3 (Mac OS X)
SpamSlam fights spam with more spam
In theory, the idea is great. Anyone not in my addressbook who sends me an email is challenged for a response; if the response is received the email comes through. Ilesa claims this will eliminate spam; I argue it will only work until spammers figure out ways to make sure their email gets through.
But worse: SpamSlam only adds to the spam problem, instead of getting rid of it. Every spam message gets challenged (spam). Many of these challenges will bounce (more spam). Many non-spam messages will get challenged (still more spam). Spammers will know that you're alive since you've challenged them; in fact, you've challenged them to send even more spam. Aahhrgh! Floods of spam!
Furthermore, this method requires serious effort of both me and the email sender. Me, because I need to make sure my whitelist is up-to-date, so I do need to do some serious setting up (any integration with Address Book yet?). The receiver because (s)he is challenged. I can imagine people not willing to respond to the challenges sent to them. I for one would be very reluctant to do so. And then there are the mailing list problems and unsolicited-yet-wanted email problems, as pointed out by previous reviewers.
This product fights spam with spam. Other spam fighting efforts (such as adding Habeas headers or just bouncing spam) fail for the same reasons: too much hassle, or spam generators themselves.
I say the only way to get rid of spam is (1) keep your mail address as confidential as humanly possible and (2) delete spam by intelligent or fuzzy filtering. Apple's own Mail.app does a pretty good job. It's setup requirements are next to nothing and it's effectiveness somewhere in the high nineties. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, August 06 2003 @ 04:59 AM PDT
XBase 1.0.1 (Mac OS X)
($499 for this version, 1.0.1) for a product that has freeware counterparts out there. To name but one: MovableType (http://www.movabletype.org) is essentially a weblogger tool but can be used as a full-blown CMS. MT is based on Perl and can use either MySQL or BerkeleyDB. Runs equally well on MacOS X, MacOS X Server, Linux, Windows, UNIX -- like the Beatles once sang, "All you need is Perl". You can have it run multiple 'blogs', with multiple authors, unlimited categories, commenting system (which can be misused to be a guestbook, for instance), TrackBack, it sports the XML-RPC API and has a plugin feature. Excellent support through user-driven forum. Lively user community. And still a free lunch. Just thought you'd like to know. [alert admin]
Monday, November 25 2002 @ 09:33 AM PST
WatchX 1.21 (Mac OS X)
That's http://www.recursive.nl, of…
course. [alert admin]
Monday, November 25 2002 @ 09:01 AM PST
Alarm Clock Pro 5.0.2 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
is getting there. I just tried the 5.4 version, and some of the comments I made in the April review (version 5.2.2) have been incorporated. The interface still remains a bit inconsistent. I'd like to suggest three buttons ('Add', 'Remove', 'Edit') and the rest of the options in a contextual menu, instead of the somewhat clumsy popup with an 'OK'-button. I would like to see the timer be able to continue counting down where it was stopped. And can you program it to run more smoothly and display the countdown time it's set at when it's not running? Furthermore some of the interface clutter has gone (Francois' letter has moved behind a button now, it won't be long before it moves into the Readme -- at least I hope ;-) ). Josh, I sent you an email elaborating on this. I guess the next update is just 'round the corner, folks. [alert admin]
Wednesday, May 15 2002 @ 06:49 AM PDT
Installer Observer 3.0.3 (Mac OS 9)
of them Killer Applications for System Administrators. It has saved me many hours of painful troubleshooting after errors or conflicts caused by inferior installation software. At the touch of a button, Installer Observer snapshots your System Folder (or entire harddisk for that matter) in seconds. After running the installer, comparison with the Saved System State tells you what got installed where, which files have changed and which files have been deleted. If running the uninstaller doesn't solve your problems, and you forgot to backup your System Folder before you ran the installer, this neat little util will help you out every time! Keep up the good work, Zachary! [alert admin]
Saturday, June 23 2001 @ 10:51 AM PDT
eeCD 1.2.1 (Mac OS 9)
very cool application! Intuitive interface, fast and versatile! I can see where this application may be going: communication with FreeDB (not CDDB as Gracenote has declared CDDB proprietary), adding CD's from eeCD to the CD Remote Database, having eeCD serving a second database file in which we can store additional information we'd like to store about our CD's... endless possibilities! Oh, Unremarkable: a magic number is a number calculated from the number of tracks and the duration of each track (in minutes:seconds:frames) with which a more-or-less unique entry in the database is guaranteed. [alert admin]
Wednesday, June 20 2001 @ 02:47 AM PDT
Citrix ICA Client 6.00.94 (Mac OS 9)
6.00.66 to 6.00.94 and response was instantly smoother, graphics handled better! This is the perfect way for system administrators to have Mac users work on Windows environments, even over ISDN connection! [alert admin]
Tuesday, May 22 2001 @ 03:46 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by Toivo Perholt [ Search for All ]
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