Posted on 09/17/2007 6:13:24 AM PDT by webschooner
I agree.
And, I’d have been a faithful champion of Microslop from early on IF they’d been even a half way decent company toward their customers.
Enough already yet. The time wasted being exasperatingly frustrated and extremely angry at their abusiveness has been enormous over all these years. VIRTUALLY ALL UNNECESSARILY.
They have had the money and the mental horsepower to write much better, cleaner, simpler, more concise code from the beginning. They’ve been egregiously sloppy and arrogantly so.
And that doesn’t begin to touch their deliberate mangling of other software options. I still can’t use EUDORA on my MSN QWEST ADSL because of their arrogant cheekiness.
That would be that famous European Operating System...
>>>
Who exactly was crushed?
what OS are you running?
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The EU forms a major consumer base for them, though. Poorer countries are rife with pirated knock-offs, and other developed countries are few and far between (although the number is growing).
Anyone remember this computer company named “Bull?” Anyone? Anyone?
What about “Olivetti?” Damn fine typewriter, the Olivetti.
And they only use that for *incoming* mail spam bots don't take incoming mail they send *outgoing* mail which goes out on the same unprivileged port range that every other non server initiated tcp connection does.
You do not need any open incoming ports to use the Internet, unless you are acting as some kind of server.
You sure as heck need ports 1200(I was off on the 32K)-64000 else you're going to have a real fun time establishing a tcp/ip socket with any servers out there. When I send a mail to my buddy Bill I make an outgoing connection from port 35436 (random) to his mail provider (like AOL) server port 25. I really think you're overlooking the fact that the storm net does not *receive* mail, it only sends it.
Ordinary users do not send mail via SMTP
Maybe less then back in the day but yes many users still send to port 25! thats why mail client software like outlook, thunderbird, .... still have an smtp configuration section!
If you don’t believe me, check your firewall and see if SMTP is open.
I really dont think you get it... Most OS level firewalls like windows block incoming, not outgoing traffic and *especially* not in the 1200-6400 range or you cant build a socket!
As for sending spam via arbitrary ports, who will be listening?
ALL SMTP TCP/IP connections initiate on random ports on the client side.
Ok Im going to give you an example (removeing the real server name of course)
telnet ABCDEFG.com 25
this establishes an SMTP connection with the server ABCDEFG.COM (assuming it is listeing with an smtp server on 25
Lets look at the netstat
Proto---Local Address----------Remote Address---State TCP-----172.24.45.171:1216-----172.25.3.52:25---ESTABLISHED
Please look at the local address! blocking port 25 to my end (the user) would not stop this connection only the remote address which is, in fact, a mail server.
So blocking port 25 wont stop a single spam bot out there from sending mail it will only stop mail servers from receiving it and services like yahoo, google, aol, msn, and their users might have a problem if you choke off the mail which goes to their accounts!
That’s what I was thinking -
Microsoft COULD stand to shut the EU down to their products COMPLETELY for a year or two and see what they have to say then.
XP-P
AMD DUAL PROCESSOR CPU ASUS MOTHERBOARD 1 GIG MEMORY 1 GIGHZ SPEED
UMPTEEN GIGS HD
Admittedly a 5 yr old system.
The memory leak problem alone is a very bothersome time waster.
And, having bought the system according to my specs from an OEM before I left Taipei, Microslop has always refused to give direct tech help unless I pay.
I’ll stop there. I don’t want and mostly can’t remember all the horror stories vis a vis Microslop. 100’s of wasted hours over these years.
TCP-----172.24.45.171:1216-----172.25.3.52:25---ESTABLISHED
Better formatted netstat output..
I would not be at all displeased if Bill Gates told the Euroweenies that Microsoft products would no longer be available in the EU.
It might look anti-American but I think it isn’t. The EU is quite rigorous when they find anti-competitive behaviour. Half a year ago ThyssenKrupp, a German firm, was fined 480 million Euro for being part of an elevator cartel. Several European firms were found guilty of fixing prices for elevators in Europe and fined around one billion Euro altogether.
I remember Group Bull
ALL mail clients send mail via SMTP to their outgoing mail host on its port 25. They receive mail using different protocols and different ports (i.e. POP(110), IMAP(143))...
You are supposed to configure your mail clients to send mail through your ISP's mail host. If ISPs actually enforced that (by blocking port 25 at the border router for user subnets), that might stop most of the spam (the stuff sent out by Windows spambots and worms).
Alas, there are commercial spammers out there, with entire subnets full of spam servers. The only way I know of to stop that crap is with blacklists.
Micr'soft doesn't like competition. If it did, it would offer the TD for free.
“Microsoft COULD stand to shut the EU down to their products COMPLETELY for a year or two and see what they have to say then.”
I really wish they would do that so people would finally figure out once and for all that they don’t need MS.
The reason MS won’t do that is because it would be suicide. But I really wish they would.
Arg... color me caffeine deprived... Thanks Tech..
The only problematic part of this is that many times people have an smtp mail provider outside of their use ISP subnet..
How does one know when they've crossed the line between success and "too much success"?
“How does one know when they’ve crossed the line between success and “too much success”?”
The problem with MS is not “too much success.” The problem is that their success is based on the widespread adoption of their proprietary standards as de facto public standards.
Their original OS became a de facto standard PC OS simply because it was the first one selected by IBM (combined with the fact that IBM did not understand at the time the importance of an OS standard). Thus programmers had no choice but to program for DOS if they wanted to sell anything, and PC users had no choice but to run DOS if they wanted to have any programs to run. This had virtually nothing to do with the technical merit of DOS.
The same thing basically happened with MS Office. The reason it is so widely used is not so much due to technical merit, but rather simply that its proprietary formats have become a de facto public standard.
If the public continues to go along with this ridiculous dependence on proprietary formats, it will get exactly what it deserves: a tax paid to MS in perpetuity for the priviledge of using its formats.
I believe in the free market as much as just about anyone, but I don’t think the world owes MS a perpetual tax for the privilege of using its (crappy) proprietary formats and standards.
That is why all government operations should immediately standardize on the Open Document Format (ODF). MS is perfectly free to support this open format and compete on merit with everyone else, but they refuse to do so because so many suckers are willing to perpetuate their monopoly forever.
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