Simple really.  You use it against itself.

 

So what am I wittering on about?  Well I help out on a newspaper message board for computer issues.  I have begun to notice an increasing number of times that large secure ISP servers are winding up blocked by the spamcop blacklist.

 

Now why, I wondered, would spamcop be blocking safe secure messaging servers?  So I went to look at how difficult it is to report a server as a spam threat.  What I found was interesting.  You can sign up and produce reports simply by giving a handle and a mail address.

 

Now maybe I'm losing the plot or something, but it seems rediculously easy for some spammer to sign in and start registering legitimate ISP hosts as a spam threat.  Then spamcop will block all mail from it.

 

The net result?  Well then all other ISPs will have to remove the spamcop blacklist in order to allow legit mail to flow.  Because once on the list, spamcop won't do anyting about updating it for 24 hours.

 

Job done.  Spam through.

 

Spamcop is looking increasingly aged on the web interface.  One wonders how responsive they are to new threats and the antics of a community who are taking services like spamcop to court to stop them blocking spam.....  You can get almost any judgement in the US if you have enough money and set up an office in the correct state.

Since I travelled to Stockholm, I have ignored this blog.  I suppose it's time to start adding a few comments again.

 

It looks like the job is coming to an end.  Politics is taking over and, of course, that has nothing to do with good design or qualiity systems so I have little place left here.  Another two months before being in the isolated world of the jobseeker again.

 

I shall miss the company here, however the office is breaking up with the changes happening and I have my doubts as to how long this office will remain post merger.  Personally if I was working here permenantly I'd be worried.  However as a contractor I don't have those kinds of cares.

 

On to my usual environmental diression, I have been monitoring the situation in the arctic and the scientific arguments backwards and forwards.  Some are good, some are bollocks.  Certainly there is a comprehensive attempt to understate the situation and even at that the naysayers are going full tilt to prove it's not happening.

 

Watch this space, you'll be able to get to the North Pole easily by the end of the decade.  The pictures don't lie, just the analysis.

 

Even more important an indicator are the political moves that are afoot.  Canada, Denmark, Russia and the US in a race to produce new ships to "mark" territorial space.  As if it's not enough that they piss on the environment, now they've got to run around pissing on the Arctic to mark their "turf"!  Politicians, always acting like dogs...

 

When the politicians start actually spending money to position themselves for an ice free Arctic, it's not "if" the changes are going to happen but "real soon NOW".

 

Looking at the images of the arctic ice cap over the last few weeks has shown a clear breakthrough of the warm water over about 1/3 of the ice cap.  With a clear path running right under the pole where the ice is thinning and breaking up.  Looking at the recent polynia images shows broken and fragmented ice right from the edges up to the pole.  That means the ice has thinned so much that the summer storms were able to break it up.  That also means that the warm water under the pole is right now working its way into the cracks and crevices of the fragmented ice and will melt very quickly in the summer season.

 

Unless we have a very harsh winter with extensive sea cooling and massive ice growth, we are likely to see a clear path to the pole by July 2007.  Not 2070, 2007!  Guesses about the chances of that not happening?  Not very likely given the influx of warm water into the pole which is still ongoing right now.  In fact it looks like the extent of the sea ice is going to make a new low this year, lowest October on record.  Given that, the chances of a harsh winter regrowth look minimal.

 

It should make interesting reading when they get around to publishing it.

 

I wonder when the scientists and pundits will wake up to the fact that it is the sea ice around the pole which holds the northern Greenland Glaciers in position???  lots of red and yellow on the thermal readings round that area.  I'm sure that'll make a big splash when it becomes aparent.  Literally because the way this cyoshpere science has been going so far, it's needed huge chunks of ice to break off and float away before anyone has worked it out.

 

Maybe then we'll stop hearing about how the Northern Greenland Ice cap is growing and get down to understanding why the gravitic Grace readings are showing a logrithmic drop in mass of the Ice cap over the last decade.

 

Maybe Mars is really inhabited by little green men.  Maybe the little green men are warming up the planet.....  Maybe I'm Father Christmas....