Mendel Cooper: Advanced Bash Scripting Guide

One of the more powerful tools in the Unix arsenal is scripting, which allows automation of tasks without the complexity of having to know a full programming language. Mendel Cooper has provided an in-depth exploration of how to use shell scripting.

This tutorial assumes no previous knowledge of scripting or programming, but progresses rapidly toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction . . . all the while sneaking in little snippets of UNIX® wisdom and lore. It serves as a textbook, a manual for self-study, and a reference and source of knowledge on shell scripting techniques. The exercises and heavily-commented examples invite active reader participation, under the premise that the only way to really learn scripting is to write scripts.

TMCNet: GizmoCall the YouTube of VoIP?

Rich Tehrani talks about GizmoCall, which uses Flash to enable VoIP - because it uses Flash it's cross platform, does not require installing software, and can display ads.

I think there is ample room for many VoIP players and this is a unique enough approach to providing VoIP that many people will use it. This is especially true in situations where people are not allowed to download software to their computers.

Places such as, say, the workplace. While GizmoCall sounds cool, the possibility that it could clog up the network underlines the need for network monitoring.

Information Week: Spam Made Up 94% of all E-mail in December

How do you combat something like this? I'm almost despondent.

It's not just the rising volume of spam that's a problem, but the size of the spam messages. Because botnets use stolen bandwidth, spammers can send files of any size at no cost. And that's just what they're doing. In order to defeat content filters that might block their messages, spammers are increasingly using images. The result is that unsolicited bulk e-mail is getting bulkier. The 147% increase in spam that Postini observed in 2006 resulted in a 334% increase in e-mail processing requirement for companies. "This is causing the e-mail infrastructure of many businesses to melt down," says Druker. "Nobody budgeted for four-and-a-half times more infrastructure capacity in one year."

One of the big problems with the fight against spam is that the good guys - places like Spamhaus and others, are centralized in only a few places, and the bad guys, using millions of computer zombies in a botnet, are decentralized. Even in a best case scenario, where all the world's spam kings were rounded up overnight, their automated bots, having wormed their way into a phalanx of user computers, will still send out spam.

Again, how do you fight something like that?