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Happy Holidays!!!!! |
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Gozarks wishes everyone a happy and safe holiday season, filled with family, friends, joy and laughter!!!! Petit Jean Electric Cooperative Members to address Board of Directors tonight; Gozarks announces new editor-in-chief!!!
For the full scoop on each of these significant announcements, please click here!!!
Spam...
The bane of everyone who even mildly dabbles with cyber connectivity, email spam is a huge problem for those of us who endeavor to earn a living on the virtual highway. For example, from November 24 through December 2, 2006, the spam filtering system I use captured 1780 junk emails. That averages over 250 nefarious pieces of crap every day.
Before I had this paid service, which I subscribed to about a year and a half ago, I was only getting about 100 pieces of junk email a day and the count was split between get-rich-quick schemes and porn. And having to delete these buggers (no porn intended <ha-ha>) was about as much fun as scraping fingernails on a blackboard.
I fondly recall, however, that when surfing the net first started to become a groovy thing to do, nefarious emails were unheard of; ridiculed in fact. I remember once that I sent a business email to an IT professional who I'd not actually met but had come upon his contact info in a straightforward manner and was subsequently lambasted by him for having violated his privacy because he, personally, had not authorized me to use his email addy.
Though I found his attitude extreme, in light of what routinely goes on behind the scenes of cyberspace, I understand it. And, as 'responsible' Internet surfers, it seems important for all of us to come to grips with such facts now.
What facts and why now? Well, consider:
October 28, 2006: A massive surge of spam has hit the Internet in recent months that appears to be spammers increasing the use of botnets. The spam botnets have grown three times larger since June and are flooding the Internet with spam. [SecurityFocus.com] [zdnet.com blog]
October 31, 2006: A significant rise in the global volume of spam has security analysts worried that botnets are increasingly being used by spammers to stymie network defenses erected to curtail bulk email. Average spam volume has increased by anywhere from 30 percent to 450 percent in the last two months. [TheRegister] November 6: According Postini and Sophos, the spam storm has analogously increased to hurricane levels recently. The amount of “ViHya7ra” and “Its me, Natalie” emails are on the rise. Data shows that the US tops other countries in spam relays, followed by China. US based machines are being turned into botnets, zombies if you will. [ncircle.com blog] November 7, 2006: The last two days have seen a tenfold increase in the amount of spam. Mostly the same old stuff, just cranked into very high gear. [WordPress] A spam-sending Trojan dubbed 'SpamThru' is responsible for a vast amount of the recent botnet activity which has significantly increased spam levels to almost three out of every four emails. [Net-Security] The recent spam increase is attributed in significant measure to a trojan dropper called "Warezov." [MessageLabs] [SlashDot] November 20, 2006: The recent surge in e-mail spam hawking penny stocks and penis enlargement pills is the handiwork of Russian hackers running a botnet powered by tens of thousands of hijacked computers. Internet security researchers and law enforcement authorities have traced the operation to a well-organized hacking gang controlling a 70,000-strong peer-to-peer botnet seeded with the SpamThru Trojan, which targets computers running Microsoft Windows. The botnet controls about 73,000 infected systems which allow the Trojan to act as a massive distribution engine theoretically capable of sending a billion spam emails in a single day. [Eweek] TQMcube offers the following chart showing the alarming rise in spam of late. The red lines represent the total amount of spam while the yellow line represents the size of the botnet.
Looking at all this in the light of CIA assessments (dating back to 2001) about the parallel growth of 'denial of service attacks' which conclude that US military superiority is undermined by these "attacks on our military, economic, or telecommunications infrastructure" that can be "launched from anywhere in the world" and "used to transport the problems of a distant conflict directly to America’s heartland," it could be rightly asserted that our bucolic virtual byways are under siege by 'terrorist roadside bombers' and that this battle, the outcome of which effects all of us who utilize the Internet in any way, is being 'fought' by Internet Connectivity Providers (ISP, DSL, etc.) every nano-second of their 24/7 work-week. What can we end-users do to thwart this 'enemy'? For one, there is an organization called SPAM COP with whom you can register and report spam. SPAM COP will get the perpetrator shut down. Also, install and run a good spyware detector on your system. We are checking out this one now (which is supposedly free) and will let you know whether we find it effective. $acred
cow idol$ In light of this it
seems that Baruch petitioners are saying is... "Hey, Lord... we think we
get it now... We're supposed to be role models of 'living in glory' as
shown by our glad countenance and expressed as our happy actions which
all, in some way, bring honor, dignity and love to the world. And now
that we know this we can see where we've missed the mark. So how about
forgiving us, huh? Because, after all, if you don't forgive us we will
end up in hell, weeping and moaning... and NOT singing praises... which,
now that we've gotten a clue about 'how faith works', is what we are
choosing to make our lives all about."
And I think that this (what I'll call 'false humility') is the one stumbling block that is the cornerstone of all the 'unhealthy' crap that is made manifest in the world, ie: that 'faith' needs to be understood NOT as an abstract ineffable/mystical (uncontrollable) phenomenon but as a 'logical spiritual science'; that there is something wrong with trying to solve a problem without precisely defining just what the core of the problem is; that the 'real reason' things seem to get so out of whack is because of our own (free will) worship at the altar of 'the material' $acred cow idol$ by and through which the evil of innocence/ignorance is made incarnate.
If the general conversation
here is of interest to you I highly recommend the following books.
Order here through Amazon and we at Gozarks (aka: my kids and me)
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Christine Beems Hey! Come visit us at SassafrasWilds!!! |
With Special Thanks & Much Appreciation to Our Website Development & Internet Marketing Clients, most especially for their toleration of our sometimes extraordinary and routinely unique editorial point of view... with which they may not always agree and yet, being true to the spirit of mutual respect, honor our differences amicably.
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