I observed that provided one considered “real” aardvarks and zebras — addresses that received good email amongst the spam — then aardvarks got 35% spam and zebras a mere 20%.

This has been widely picked up, first in the Guardian, and later in many other papers as well (even in Danish). However, many of these articles have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. So besides mentioning A and Z, it looks as if I should have published this figure from the paper as well…

… the point being that the effect I am describing has little to do with Z being at the end of the alphabet, and A at the front, but seems to be connected to the relative rarity of zebras.

As you can see from the figure, marmosets and pelicans get around 42% spam (M and P being popular letters for people’s names) and quaggas 21% (there are very few Quentins, just as there are very few Zacks).

There are some outliers in the figure: for example “3″ relates to spammers failing to parse HTML properly and ending up with “3c” (a < character) at the start of names. However, it isn’t immediately apparent why “unicorns” get quite so much spam, it may just be a quirk of the way that I have assessed “realness”. Doubtless some future research will be able to explain this more fully.

iPhone tethering application up, down, up, down: The NetShare connection-sharing application from NullRiver has made a couple of appearances on Apple's App Store, the only authorized place from which owners of iPod touch and iPhone devices can purchase software for uncracked equipment. NetShare appears to violate the terms of service for AT&T, although this wouldn't be the case with all carriers worldwide, by bridging 2.5G and 3G network traffic via the Wi-Fi connection on the iPhone. A laptop or desktop needs special configuration to connect to the iPhone, but various reports show it works fine. AT&T offers tethering with other smartphones - but not the iPhone - for typically about $20 more per month, comparable to a national hotspot aggregated subscription.

Speaking of AT&T, they like WiMax as a wire alternative: AT&T is bullish on WiMax, but the fixed kind used to replace wires in places they have no cable.

When Indian police investigating bomb blasts which killed 42 people traced an email claiming responsibility to a Mumbai apartment, they ordered an immediate raid.

But at the address, rather than seizing militants from the Islamist group which said it carried out the attack, they found a group of puzzled American expats.

In a cautionary tale for those still lax with their wireless internet security, police believe the email about the explosions on Saturday in the west Indian city of Ahmedabad was sent after someone hijacked the network belonging to one of the Americans, 48-year-old Kenneth Haywood.

Of course, the terrorists could have sent the e-mail from anywhere. But life is easier if the police don't raid your apartment.

EDITED TO ADD (8/1): My wireless network is still open. But, honestly, the terrorists are more likely to use the open network at the coffee shop up the street and around the corner.

What's been clear is that after spending more than $3m, the city couldn't acquire more than a few hundred regular subscribers, about 10 percent of the point they'd need to pay expenses and pay down capital outlay. But it turns out that the backend was as important as their network deployment, IDG News Service reports.

The latest city network administrator brought in Aptilo Networks for backend authentication and session processing, opened the network to 15-minute free trials, and started accepted ad hoc payment. The new network guru also let outsourced contracts expire and brought customer support and other services back in house to reduce expenses and improve the feedback loop. He discovered their existing authentication system was licensed for 500 users, so that might have explained their failure to grow, too.

The city now has 1,000 regular users at all levels, from pay-as-you-go to monthly household subscriptions. They've revised breakeven down to 2,000 subscribers, and say they are breakeven for expenses.

The other problem Lompoc had, by the way, is that the cable and telephone companies didn't sit still. I exaggerate, but when Lomopoc was planning its network, it had very poor coverage for its 42,000 residents for DSL and cable modem service. When the Wi-Fi network was announced, the incumbents started pulling copper, coax, and fiber, and dramatically improved network coverage. The $3m wasn't entirely ill spent so far: it was a kind of reverse incentive to the private companies to get their act together.

TechCrunchIT reported today that a Rackspace data center went down for several hours during the evening due to a power grid failure. Because Rackspace is a managed service provider (MSP), the downtime affected several businesses hosted in the data center.

When companies think of disaster recovery and downtime, they typically think of catastrophic events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. What companies don't realize is that the most common cause of downtime is power failures. In a joint study by Forrester Research and The Disaster Recovery Journal of 250 disaster recovery decision-makers and influencers, 42% of respondents indicated that a power failure was the cause of their most significant disaster declaration or major business disruption.

To prevent power failures, businesses must ensure that they have multiple diverse connections to the power grid as well as install backup power generators and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) at the data center. But it's not enough to have these preventative measures in place, businesses must test the ability to switch over to backup power must at least twice year. And if your business has a recovery data center, it's best if the recovery data center is on a different power grid and is also equipped with backup power generation.

But despite all these measures, failures might still happen, in the case of the Rackspace power failure, the company successfully failed over to its backup power generators but some of its chillers did not start up correctly.

In North America, the risk of power failures is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. According to a 2007 report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), long-term capacity margins are still inadequate and significant investment in transmission is still required.

So businesses must not only invest in preventative measures such as backup power generators, they must think about where they locate their data centers. You must avoid areas that have clearly identified congestion issues and focus on areas that have access to cheap and abundant power. And, don't take it for granted that your service provider has effectively managed the risk of power failures.

List of Scheduled Talks Posted

Posted 18 Jun 2008 22:42:50 UTC

With a record number of 97 scheduled talks to be presented in three different areas, The Last HOPE has posted a list of talks with time and room assignments forthcoming.
We do plan on having an additional track for unscheduled talks so if you missed this deadline, you still have a shot in the somewhat smaller unscheduled track room. Look for the unscheduled track sign up sheet at the conference.

Of course you’ll be able to find Dave and I there. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Oh - and you might want to scroll that list of talks down… maybe just to the Featured Speakers section… or maybe just below that.

See you in NYC.

Tags: 2600, HOPE, the Last HOPE, hackers, conferences, NYC

I have been manning the NOC help desk for the past week and it has been a complete blast working with a world class team of engineers to set-up the “largest Temporary network in the world!”

First you start with the problem.

The problem was how to collect and real-time graph the aggregate inbound and outbound bandwidth from 4 Enterasys core network routers (Enterasys XSR 3250 Routers) on 42” & 52” flat screens used in the NOC at Interop Las Vegas.

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