TriNetre - Archive for April 24, 2003

(no longer updated)

"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him" - Swami Chinmayananda


Once I used to visit Kuro5hin(K5) more than two times daily and spend at least an hour reading the articles, taking time to digest them. Technology was the main section and almost all stories had some element of technology in it. Even the section on culture had some link to some technological advance that created a cultural change. K5 was true to its <Title>technology and culture, from the trenches</Title>. I was so impressed by the site that I even contributed stories and hacked up some codes for scoop, the engine that runs K5.

But now, I rarely visit the site. I look at the headlines using the RSS feed and there usually is nothing that interests me. Now, you have to realize that I am sometimes very bored at office (given my resignation notice, so no new work). So, anything and everything remotely connected to technology would interest me. Even then K5 goes unvisited for days. Take a look at the main stories running on K5 right now, you will see what I mean.

Recently, after a long time, I visited the scoop site and was struck by this post by rusty. For the first time in the recent past, rusty had to post a story to find out if anyone was working on scoop! The comment by "coryking" to that story is revealing.

I am sad at the demise of K5. First /. and now K5. Where will I go next?


Joel Spolsky equates the process of changing SMTP to the introduction of Euro in EU. The recent article by Larry Seltzer seems to have woken up some of the thinkers in the area. However, I would have to say that the comparison to introduction of Euro is not right at all.

The fundamental reason for this stance in the difference in power structure. The EU had a structure of authority - committees to decide these changes and who are, at the same time, given the power to enforce these changes. The democratic nature of Internet just does not allow that to happen. You may point out that IETF and IRTFdoes a similar job by churning out RFCs and Standards (exclude those published on April 1st). However, these are bodies that provide, as the C in RFC suggests, comments and suggestions on best practices etc. They do not have the enforcing power. IETF does not have any power to say "Srijith, we have decided to make SACK a standard. You will be disconnected from the Internet if you don't implement it in your TCP stack. Now off you go". A similar argument can be drawn against any protocol proposed to supersede SMTP. Only when a critical mass of people starts to use the alternate protocol, threatening the cyber-existance of the others, will there be a sudden acceptance of it.

Another worrying factor (I am not going on with the comparison with Euro change anymore) is that we are talking about a protocol that sits above transport level, but not right there at the application layer. This makes it more difficult to implement across the general population, unlike something like SSH etc. which is mainly an application level protocol. Changes in SMTP would affect changes in DNS. So those issues have to be considered. I would say that we have better understanding of how changes in monetary laws changes lives than how a new protocol would change the Internet. Right now, we don't even know why TCP works!

So, even though the idea of replacing SMTP with a more secure protocol is a very good suggestion, it would take a long long time to come down to practice, if the deployment of IPv6 is anything to go by.


Great, now we have a SARS computer virus! :( Given the fact that we in Singapore are so paranoid about SARS, I can forsee a lot of people opening these infected emails.

As of now, it doesn't seem to do anything other than just email a lot more people. The payload doesn't do anything nasty to the host machine. Details at Symantec. The removal instruction is as follows:

1. Update the virus definitions.
2. Restart the computer in Safe mode.
3. Run a full system scan and delete all the files detected as W32.Coronex@mm. Manually delete the files that were placed in the C:\My Downloads folder by the worm.
4. Delete the value that was added to the registry.
5. Reset the Internet Explorer home page.

I have the bad habit of checking email frequently, too frequently for my own comfort. So, to organize myself a bit, I have decided to cut down on the checks. Henceforth, I will be checking my srijith.net email only 3 times a day - morning , afternoon and in the night. Only important emails will be replied to on the spot. Others will be replied in the night. Important email that require very urgent replies will have to be sent to my office email address. If you don't have my office address, I am not expecting urgent emails from you.

So, if you have been in the habit of emailing me once in a while and been getting instantaneous replies, don't be alarmed if you have to wait a day to get replies from now on.

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