Most people end up using the same e-mail address everywhere, like chip@2bithacker.net. This is easy, it works, and it’s how e-mail was intended to be used in the first place. But you give it to some bad eggs and they sell it to some spammers and now you start getting junk to that address. So what do you do?

In the past, I’ve tried to use local-part extensions to identify who I gave the address to. These are usually things like chip+facebook@2bithacker.net, which many mail servers will treat just like mail sent to chip@2bithacker.net, but you can then filter on the +facebook part. Unfortunately, this is well understood by the spammers as well, so they can easily strip off the +facebook part and go about their business as usual. Also, there are websites out there that don’t think a + can be in an e-mail address, so they won’t accept it. There are various ways around this, of course. One could reconfigure their mail server to use a different characters, such as a dash or period, or even some letter if you wanted to be weird.

I’ve also seen people use virtual domain wildcarding to send any local-part at their domain to a default mailbox. In this case, you could just tell Facebook that your e-mail is facebook@2bithacker.net and it would still wind up in your inbox, and you’d know if Facebook gave your e-mail out to others if you start seeing non-Facebook e-mail coming in to facebook@2bithacker.net. This isn’t great though, as spammers regularly probe addresses trying to find common names to spam at, and with wildcarding, anything @2bithacker.net becomes a valid e-mail address to you.

So I had an idea, mostly building on the second use-case, but with some smarts added in. When signing up for a site, say Facebook, give them an e-mail address of facebook@2bithacker.net as above, but with your mail server configured such that mail to facebook@2bithacker.net is only accepted if facebook appears in the sender’s domain name. So mail to facebook@2bithacker.net is allowed from update@facebookmail.com, but mail from spammer@buystuffnow.com isn’t. In the latter case, the server will send back a 5xx error code just as if the address isn’t valid.

I’ve been trying to come up with a catchy name for this technique, something better than “semi-whitelisting” and I think Sender Domain Local-Part, or SDLP for short, might make sense.

It should be pretty trivial to implement as a Postfix policy server, and I’m working on a reference implementation there to try it out. I suspect it’d be pretty easy to do in Exim as well. I’ll try to remember to post again once I get it working.

A small box with a USB port on one side and VGA, USB, and PS/2 cables coming out the other side. You connect the VGA, USB, and/or PS/2 cables to one computer, and the other USB to another computer, and it gives you a window on your screen that acts as a monitor for the other computer.

I think this would be great for people who have to work on machines in datacenters and the like, where sometimes you just need a monitor and keyboard, but lugging those around are annoying. Just plug this device into the server and your laptop, and poof! your laptop acts like a monitor for the server.

I don’t think it would be terribly hard to implement. You’d need some sort of video capture chip for grabbing the VGA input. PS/2 is basically just a serial output. The USB would just emulate a keyboard and mouse (perhaps via a virtual hub) to the “remote” machine. The other USB would be somewhat trickier, I’m not sure if there’s a standard video transport over USB.

You’d probably be able to sell them to system administrators, PC technitions, and maybe people who want to run a small server at home, but don’t want to switch back and forth all the time with a traditional KVM switch. The closest competeing product I’ve seen is a one-port KVM-over-IP box, which runs $500+. I think an ideal price point for this would be in sub-$100, prolly in the $80-$100 range.

So, there’s the idea, someone go turn it into a product and sell me one…

I was also struck by the thought of registering 2 Bit Hacker as a business with the state, and start actively pushing my consulting a bit more. I think I’ve talked about that in my weblog before. But the thought occurred to me that a new laptop could then be considered a business expense. It would also be a good way of separating out any income I get from doing SimPro maintenance work.

I’m left wondering though, what happens when one of these things gets in an accident? They’ve got two tanks of hydrogen compressed to 5000 psi when full. Seems to me like that could be sortof dangerous, you know?

I think there’s something seriously wrong with the world.

Also, I’m tired of packing. My desk and computer bits and pieces are all in boxes now, save for the actively running system on which I am typing. I packed the foodstuffs and spices from the kitchen, but the dishes still need to be boxed, and I still need to dismantle the entertainment center. I am so not ready for this move. But it’s happening, somehow it’ll all work out, and by Monday, all my stuff will either be in the garbage receptacle or in the new apartment.

• Self Laundering Luggage: Ever been getting ready for a trip at the last minute, only to find that none of the clothes you want to take are clean? Well worry no more with the wonderful Self Laundering Luggage. Just toss in your dirty clothes and some detergent, and by the time you get to your destination, you clothes are washed and dried, just hang them up and you’re all set.
• Car Foam: Sure, airbags work pretty well, but wouldn’t it be a lot better to be completely restrained in case of a car accident? Car foam is the next generation in car safety devices. Upon impact, the foam is released into the passenger compartment, completely and safely surrounding all passengers and encasing them in a safe, non-toxic, breatable, fireproof, editble foam casing. Once the rescue crew arrives, they just spray the foam with a chemical agent to dissolve it, and you’re released intact and unharmed.
• Orbital McDonalds Construction: With the number of new McDonald’s restaurants that are built each year, it would probably make a lot of sense to build them in orbit then simply drop them into position. And orbital drops don’t need to stop with just the restaurant. Once space cows are perfected, they can be slaughtered in orbit, processed into patties, and dropped to restaurants as needed, being cooked automatically during re-entry.

I’ll try to remember more of these, or write them down as I think of them.

For example, it’s been my experience that when two BSD users meet, and ask each other what they run, it goes something like this: “Hey, I run FreeBSD” “Yeah, so do I” “Cool” “Yeah.” and that’s about it. However, when two Gentoo users meet, you get something like “Hey, I run Gentoo” “Yeah, so do I” “Cool” “What kernel do you run?” “Gaming-sources, how about you?” “Gentoo-sources” “Cool, how’s that working out?” “Pretty good, you run reiserfs?” “No, I’m on XFS” “Ah, interesting, I’d been thinking about that” and so on and so on, covering basically every option that one could select in Gentoo, from the kernel sources down to the syslogger. With BSD, you pretty much know what the system is like just by knowing what it is, with a Linux system, at least with Gentoo, each system is as different as the person running it.

This leads to Linux people, or at least Gentoo people, spending vast amounts of time talking to each other about what little tweaky things they’ve done, or what they want to try, and so on, which inevitably is overheard by other people, who will sometimes think things like “Hey, that sounds neat, I should give it a try.” And so it spreads. BSD people on the other hand, don’t need to talk about it nearly as much, sometimes discussing new features in a new release, but never to the extent that Gentoo people talk. This means less people overhear, and ultimatly less people go around trying to use BSD.

And while this individuality is great for conversation and tinkering and taking up vast amounts of spare time, from a business perspective, it kills. When looking for a Linux system admin, you need to take into consideration what distrobutions he’s familiar with, and what daemons he’s worked with, and what versions, and a bunch of other factors. And when that admin does finally get hired, he’ll need to learn how the last admin did everything. With FreeBSD at least, this happens a lot less, since a lot more of the system is standardized.

So, it’s basically my opinion that Linux and BSD each have their place. I am very much enjoying running Linux on my laptop, and now on my desktop at home, but there is no way I’ll be running it on a server anytime soon. It makes a great discussion piece, but it just doesn’t have the stability and standardization that I desire in a server.

use Kismet::Client;
my $kismet = new Kismet::Client ( server => "localhost:54321" );
$kismet->add_protocol(NETWORK, "bssid,type,ssid", \&network_callback);
$kismet->run;
sub network_callback (
    my($info) = shift;
    printf("Found network %s (%s)\n", $info->{ssid}, $info->{bssid});
)

Basically, I figure it’ll work best as a series of callback for the various types of information that Kismet can provide, and have the module take care of enabling the various protocols and parsing the information out into hashes for easy access. Once I get my computer at home up and running again, I hope to actually write some code for this.

Well, I’ve been poking around some more, and come across the Xenarc 700TS. It’s a 7” 16:9 LCD panel with VGA input. I think it will be ideal for the car computer project. I’ve been talking with Dave a bit about it, and he’s talking about putting one in his Explorer. I think in the Focus, we’ll be able to remote the original radio, mount a plate of some sort in it’s place, and attach the panel to that on a swivel mount, so it can be adjusted. This will require no modification to the dash, with is one of the things I really didn’t want to do.

Since the 700TS is a touch panel, it makes interfacing with the computer much easier. I think I’ll probably add one of these for use as a volume control. I think adjusting the volume is one of the most frequently performed operations with a car stereo, so it really doesn’t make sense to fumble with a touch panel to do it.

However, by removing the car stereo, it means the computer needs to be able to do more, and I need to buy an amp to drive the car speakers from the computer’s line out. Also, I need to figure out how to do FM tuning on the computer. Two options present themselves. I could go with a Hauppauge WinTV-radio, which includes a TV tuner, FM tuner, and video input. This would add a bit of flexibility too, since I would be able to connect a camera to the computer as well, perhaps a video review mirror? But, it takes up the only PCI slot on the EPIA board, which I had planned to use for the 802.11b card. I could use a USB 802.11b device at that point, but would probably suffer some performance penalites.

I also found that the D-Link DSB-R100 USB FM tuner is supported in Linux. It’s just got a line-out jack, so I could easily plug it into the line-in on the PC and be all set, but I wouldn’t have any video capability.

Or I could use a different PC to base this whole thing off of, with more PCI slots. But then I’d probably lose the nice 12V DC ATX supply. Choices choices choices. I’ll try to put up a section on chocobo.cx for all this stuff at some point, to keep track of both the car PC and HTPC projects.

Not having a terribly inspired day at work, but I have been getting some ideas concerning a car computer project. I had originally been thinking of doing
something similar to the DashPC project, but that
requires hacking out part of the console for the touchscreen LCD panel.
Instead, I got to thinking that something like this
would work out well as a display. Then I just hook it up to something
along these lines,
which is powered from 12V, stuck under the passenger seat.

That takes care of display and the PC. I can hookup a serial GPS and stick in a PCI 802.11b card. It would be able to run GpsDrive
and Kismet, as well as be able to playback
CD, Ogg/Vorbis, and MP3 audio. The only thing I need at that point is some
sort of control interface. Maybe my old I-Opener keyboard would work initially.
Though what would I have the pizza button do?