You can tell that the Internet industry is maturing...
Unlike the last few years, I've noticed that things are really starting to
slow down on the news front as the festive season draws near.
Finding interesting and relevant news stories, particularly those with a
local flavour, has already become distinctly difficult.
The problem is exacerbated by the way some publications such as Stuff/Infotech
and Netguide NZ have already gone into "reduced service" mode and significantly
reduced their Net-industry news coverage.
This rapid maturing of the industry means a lot of people are going to have to
carefully review their plans and strategies for 2001 -- because, as many
entrepreneurs and investors have found in recent times, a mature industry
behaves far differently to an immature one.
Port Scanning Legal In The USA
The war between anti-spammers and spam-friendly operators just took another
interesting twist with a US district court ruling that port scanning is
legal.
Port scanning is an operation often used by spammers and anti-spammers alike
to determine whether a computer on the Internet is running a mailserver and
whether that mailserver is open to relay spam.
This is, of course, a double-edged sword. On the one hand it legally allows
organisations such as
ORBS to interrogate and
identify open mailservers in order that their operators can be advised -- or
that the site can be added to a black-list if they remain open.
On the other hand however, it means that hackers, crackers and spammers will
be free to troll the Net with impunity -- searching for vulnerable computers
worthy of covertly recruiting for their activities.
Once again it's worth reminding everyone that you really ought to download
some free personal firewall software such as
Zone Alarm. It's may not
offer 100% guaranteed protection against malicious attacks on your PC through the Net,
but it's a whole lot better than nothing at all!
Aardvark Weekly, Have You Got Yours?
Yes, it's still trickling out -- but the Aardvark Weekly subscription list
has grown enormously over the past two weeks which has required a bit of a
change to the back-end here so there's still going to be a few who haven't
received the latest edition. My apologies.
If you want to subscribe, just
drop me a note and I'll put you on the list.
As always, your feedback is welcomed and...
Did you tell someone else about this website today? If not then do it
now!
