The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group PC (President's Comments) George Skarbek gskarbek@melbpc.org.au |
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E-mail and Spam
Spam, that is, Unsolicited Commercial E-mail is a big problem for many Internet users as there is a lot of it around. Time is wasted in sorting out which messages are valid and which are not. I write for several newspapers, my e-mail address is widely known and I receive about 30 to 50 junk e-mails each day. So, a facility to automatically filter these would save time and effort.
By now most members will have noticed that we have implemented the first stage of Spam filtering. All e-mail that meets predefined criteria has the text ??Spam?? inserted at the beginning of the subject line. This makes it very easy for all to implement some Rules or Filters in their mail reader to move these messages into a separate folder. By the time this is printed there should be detailed information on the group's Web site on how it is implemented.
Note that Melbourne PC User Group will not delete messages that are flagged as Spam on our servers. The reason is that occasionally requested commercial e-mail will have the characteristics of the unwanted commercial e-mail or Spam. Unlike a virus, there are no absolutely unique identifiers with Spam. The algorithms that determine which messages are likely to be Spam analyse the incoming mail and add points for things such as tell-tale words and phrases, known Spam domains, unsubscribe links etc and when a certain number of points are reached, that e-mail is flagged as Spam.
In the future we hope to be able improve the Spam service and enable users to set their own, individual Spam levels. However, this will require the installation of new e-mail software on the servers and new code to be written.
In order to improve the mail response we have purchased two new Dell, dual 2.4 GHz Xenon CPU rack-mounted servers. These have 1 GB of RAM and SCSI mirrored hard disks. The reason for purchasing two is that one is a hot spare in case the other fails, with mail arriving to both.
The reason for high performance specifications for the mail servers is that we process about 20,000 e-mail messages each day. They must be scanned for viruses as well as Spam and the volume will grow. During the SoBig virus outburst we were processing over 2000 virus-generated messages daily on top of the normal load.
We Are The Best!
A recent independent survey has rated Melb PC as the best ISP in the country, overall, and the best in the country for technical support as well as having the most useful Web pages. This shows what can be done by volunteers. On behalf of all our users I thank and compliment the hard-working teams of Internet admin and iHelp. Well done everybody.
Twenty Year History
On several occasions I have asked members to write articles for a publication to mark our 20 year history as the task of writing such a publication is too big for one person. Unfortunately in the last several months we have received only four articles.
Due to this lack of interest the committee has decided not to proceed with a special publication but to have just a few pages in PC Update to mark the occasion. I thank the members who have already sent in the articles. If anyone else has an article almost completed please send it in shortly as it will still be used.
October Monthly Meeting
The October meeting will be held on 1 October at the Pharmacy College 381 Royal Parade Parkville at 6:00 pm.
Teach Your Computer To Read
Around the world millions of books and billions of written and printed records are being converted to digital form. Computers have made the process possible through OCR - optical character recognition - which reads text and saves it. The leading company in this field is Fuji Xerox with their program OmniPage Office. See the latest developments - and take home a trial copy of your own.
Computers For Doctors
These days a computer sits at your doctor's desk. What is it used for, and how will it be developed in the future? Terry Murphy of the Division of General Practice is the man who teaches the doctors and he'll show us how computers can keep us alive!
Have you been to a monthly meeting yet? You don't know what you're missing. There's information and fun, entertainment and many prizes plus opportunities to socialise and meet new friends. The meeting will also have our Random Access session (your chance to ask the experts). It's a great night. Don't miss it!
Reprinted from the October 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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