Saturday, March 14, 2009

Health caution "Always use filters"

4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?

Filters are a great time saver if you are constantly receiving emails that contain a similar message thread, from a group of friends or work associates, or other pattern forming expressions. The function is very similar to a GREP search (global regular expression print), it just looks for regular patterns in text, in this case to sort emails into presorted folders. (I use GREP search in Adobe InDesign, a graphic design tool.)
Although the filters in email software are very limited in their search function they can still handle most of the sorting work before I have to intervene. My normal work flow is to set sub folders that I can manage through Thunderbird (yes it's a tacky name but its a good email package, they should have a Australian version named CockyChatter - I must register that name, it sounds cool) and use the "create filter from message" button to set up parameters. Depending on whom I'm communicating with, the sub folders are arranged by group titles such as organisations, events, special interest, things to do, and then there's one for all the rest - emails that are one-offs. To presort the emails into the folders I use searches that contain the sender's name, subject, info that might be contained in the body of the email and so on. Once the email threads are finished I can easily archive the folder.

Generally, the types of filters one may use greatly depends on one's imagination, so be creative and think about it. They are a fabulous time saver.

Also anything that falls outside the filters in my case are usually spam, so it's an efficient way to manage something that can get into an awful mess very quickly.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Friday 13th

I forgot to say boo!

Email part 3, Opening the attachment 'big money to be made'

3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?

Opening attachments can bite you on the computer bum, so be careful!

To ensure the recipient is always able to open attachments, you must first offer them something amazing.

I was toying with the idea to include the following in the subject line:

  1. love from
  2. easy money from Nigeria
  3. increase the length of your nose
  4. free Viagra to help the dead stay stiff
  5. update your details from the banks of the world
  6. secure your place in the after world
but I think some of those have already been taken. Damn it!

But getting back to it.
Format of attachments
To ensure the recipient can open any of my attachments I will usually only send pdf files. If I suspect the person has limited experience in using computers I will include the url to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader with a short explanation of how and why.
http://www.adobe.com/au/

If I'm forced to use something other than Acrobat I will first determine which format they can accept before I send the email eg MicroSoft Word, Excel and so on.

Encoding
As suggested in Module Two notes "
First: communicate about your computer systems. Sometimes, when you expect to send attachments, particularly to users whom you suspect may not be as knowledgeable as you about attachments, you need to seek information from them and to assist them in dealing with the attachment."

I would think it would be highly unlikely that many people know anything about encoding email messages or its purpose, so I would certainly not be contacting the recipient as my first action. I would either follow up the original email with a phone call or send another email without the attachment and ask if they received the first successfully. Bothering people about something that doesn't interest them is just likely to annoy them. (Hey, if I don't like someone I should change the encoding on my email.)

When the encoding fails
Below is a picture of my beautiful dog after a swim at the beach, the image of Lizzy was correctly encoded to show the jpg as intended.



Below is the email opened with a text editor that shows the picture as ASCII text.
"e-mail messages can contain only text information, and attachments aren't text" howstuffworks, http://communication.howstuffworks.com/email5.htm

Because the file I was emailing was not text, the email software is required to encode the image before sending, the encoding used was MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). If the receiving email software is using different encoding such as, uuencode, Base64 or BinHex the image will not render and you will need to do some heavy maths or some creative thinking to interpret the attachment. Below is a sample of the same image of Lizzy but opened in a text editor. The text editor is only a basic word processor and will not interpret code or render the image.



If that fails I could format the attachment in html and place it directly into the body of the email, or just use ASCII text in the body of the email, assuming there are no images.

Of course there is always fax, sail mail, carrier pigeon or I could get on my bike and start peddling. I just hope its not overseas because I may need a snorkel.


Thursday, March 12, 2009

Email-part 2, you can't say no to "cc" or "bcc" but you can "reply"

2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?

How useful is "cc"—carbon copy, "bcc"—blind carbon copy and the "reply" button.

In the past I have only used "cc" and "bcc" sparingly, mainly because I had no reason to and I never really understood the difference between using the multiple "to" functions and "cc" but from reading Module Two notes all was explained. You can quickly forget that there are such things as email ethics hiding behind the computer screen. I have taken points from this lesson and I trust will make me a better person. (If not, at least abuse the system more efficiently.)

In brief
The "to" function is to direct the communication at a particular person or persons.

The "cc" function is just to spread the love further and keep others informed—it may not necessarily require the receiver to action on receipt. It's usually for 'your information only'—FYI.

The "bcc" function is for ratting on your work mates to your boss without them knowing you have passed on the same information in one easy process. This is probably used in ASIO a lot. In my experience it's also used in "request for quotes" or "request for tenders", when the sender is required to keep details of who else is invited to quote, secret.

The "Reply" function is when I need to keep a copy of the previous email within the body, hence "quoting" or maintaining the thread of the conversation in the one document. or. When I'm just too lazy and I need to quickly respond to someone, even if the threads don't follow and the conversation wonders all over the place.

I have received emails from people that I suspect may have "bcc" in the original email and have often wondered if that information can be extracted. Please leave a comment if you can help me out.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Email part 1

1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

Email taskdeath to all spammers. As you may have guessed from the title, my first sample is from your happy fiend to spammer. Yes I hate them. One day the web will takes its revenge!


Its obvious the email above is from deprived person only set out to cause trouble, just look at the garbage in the address block. I find the best way to quickly and easily identify who the email is from is to use filters that automatically presort any new mail. Any incoming email that bypasses this first stage of sorting is either a new contact or spam—this method is a great time saver.
The next screen shot is from an email that has been automatically forwarded from the beautiful people in NET11 through my uni email to my main email account.



So, which path? Follow the yellow brick road. Before I started this question I had a look at the Discussion Board which just confused me more.
I'm not to sure in which direction I should take this question. The two possible answers I can see are:
  1. Hit the road Jack and take the IP path—as talked about on the Blackboard which I had to think about how to extract the meta data out from the head of the email. I started as usual to search on Google but this proved fruitless and I got bored because most of the searches came up with PC suggestion—pointless for a Mac user. I then had a brilliant idea to just save an email to the desktop as an html file and open that in a text editor. Bingo, it worked. See the results below. ps I'm still trying to decode the info but I can see IP addresses and domain names so I trust this is correct.
  2. The path can be traced if the user has forwarded the mail to another participants. This is simple providing the user has invoked the "forward" function in the email software which just appends the new message to the old, just like chain mail. To find, just scroll down within the body of the email and look for "quoted" information in the email and bingo, info revealed.
    It views very must like threads on the Discussion Board.


If it was only that easy to trace spammers the web would be a quieter place.

more soon.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Telnet part 2

This was just to prove I can—I climbed the mountain because it was there.

I just tried Telnet again through the browser as suggested on the Discussion Board and I got it to work, amazing. (very pleased I tried again even though I succeeded in the first version when I used MacTelnet 4.09b0213, see entry date March 8 )

The first time I tried this through a browser my Mac opened Terminal, something I haven't seen before and I was a bit concerned to mess with because it look to much like programing. Anyway after read the Discussion Board and building up my courage to toy with something that looked like could destroy my computer if I entered the wrong commands—I had a go and was rewarded with a computer that was still in one piece. phew! As I said before remote learning is more challenging without the support of direct contact with students and lecturers.



Spam on my blog

Being very green to blogging I was unaware that I could get spam posted as a comment. I now know differently. See March 5 entry on Plagiarism comments. The audacity of some people astound me!

Ping it!

For the ping task I was able to us both Network Utility and Visual NetTools and came up very similar answers. On an average it was slightly faster to ping the Black Board than it was Curtin Uni. I suppose this might indicate that they reside in different location.

According to Wikipedia the function of ping








Monday, March 9, 2009

TraceRoute

TraceRoute task I tried the built in software Network Utility that came with the Mac which for some reason I could not get to work. It kept returning time out signals. Then I when to the Mac web site and downloaded Visual TraceRoute which worked first go.

There were 23 hops from my base to curtin.edu.au with hops 1, 20, 21 and 23 failing.
Now I know you have asked for the average time taken to hop but hope you won't be too upset when I say work it out for yourself, the information is below. I don't have the inclination.

The interesting point is that I went through this process three or four times and received the same results when it came to failed hops, it was always hop 1, 20, 21 and 23.

Ideas anyone?

Don't worry about answering I have read some more. According to Wikipedia the act of Traceroute opens up doors for hackers, "Traceroute information has been frequently used by hackers as a way to acquire sensitive information about a company's network architecture." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute, 13 March 10:15pm
So the hops that consistently lose packets are in all probability being blocked at the server for traceroute requests. I guess the server may be down but I did try traceroute over a few days so I think that's unlikely.

Not being an expert I guess there may be other reason to.

------------------------------------------------
Trace to curtin.edu.au

Hop 1: Reply 1: PACKET LOST
Reply 2: PACKET LOST

Hop 2: core-32-25.grapevine.net.au (203.129.32.25)
Reply 1: 15.664 ms
Reply 2: 12.879 ms

Hop 3: gigabitethernet1-4.core01.eqnx.transact.net.au (202.55.149.209)
Reply 1: 15.160 ms
Reply 2: 11.501 ms

Hop 4: gigabitethernet14-17.core01.gate.transact.net.au (202.55.144.193)
Reply 1: 12.071 ms
Reply 2: 22.742 ms

Hop 5: gigabitethernet1-1.core01.eqnx.transact.net.au (202.55.144.82)
Reply 1: 17.030 ms
Reply 2: 19.115 ms

Hop 6: ge-0-1-0-46.a02.sydnau01.au.ra.gin.ntt.net (202.68.66.57)
Reply 1: 16.912 ms
Reply 2: 20.666 ms

Hop 7: ge-0-0-0.r01.sydnau01.au.bb.gin.ntt.net (202.68.64.225)
Reply 1: 18.272 ms
Reply 2: 16.330 ms

Hop 8: as-0.r01.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.93)
Reply 1: 177.392 ms
Reply 2: 176.178 ms

Hop 9: p16-0-1-1.r21.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.182)
Reply 1: 179.008 ms
Reply 2: 175.100 ms

Hop 10: ae-1.r21.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.32)
Reply 1: 178.053 ms
Reply 2: 180.007 ms

Hop 11: po-3.r04.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.218)
Reply 1: 179.055 ms
Reply 2: 176.563 ms

Hop 12: 140.174.28.138 (140.174.28.138)
Reply 1: 176.975 ms
Reply 2: 179.716 ms

Hop 13: so-3-3-1.bb1.a.syd.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.173)
Reply 1: 175.731 ms
Reply 2: 178.296 ms

Hop 14: ge-0-0-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.198)
Reply 1: 180.335 ms
Reply 2: 174.478 ms

Hop 15: so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.33)
Reply 1: 185.321 ms
Reply 2: 187.045 ms

Hop 16: so-2-0-0.bb1.a.adl.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.17)
Reply 1: 193.864 ms
Reply 2: 194.194 ms

Hop 17: so-0-1-0.bb1.a.per.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.5)
Reply 1: 223.796 ms
Reply 2: 220.002 ms

Hop 18: gigabitethernet0.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.198.178)
Reply 1: 219.910 ms
Reply 2: 221.319 ms

Hop 19: gw1.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.198.186)
Reply 1: 226.028 ms
Reply 2: 218.888 ms

Hop 20: Reply 1: PACKET LOST
Reply 2: PACKET LOST

Hop 21: Reply 1: PACKET LOST
Reply 2: PACKET LOST

Hop 22: Reply 1: PACKET LOST
Reply 2: PACKET LOST

Hop 23: systems.curtin.edu.au (134.7.179.56)
Reply 1: 219.450 ms
Reply 2: 223.142 ms



Screen shots and data listed below.

FTP

CAPITALIZATION MATTERS!
The FTP task was very easy with a Mac—I used Cyberduck which I was already experienced in from my work. Hey Ernie, I love my rubber ducky!
I work in the printing industry as a graphic designer and I would be lost without my ducky's ability to transfer those large files to the printers. It's a tremendous advantage NOT to have to use couriers or have to get in the car to move the files around. I now just have to educate all the printers to have a ftp service!






Comparing Telnet to ftp there is only one winner. First prize goes to ftp with no runner-ups. Please read disclaimer below.

Disclaimer: Section 28, subsection 103, para 14, states that I have very limited experience using Telnet and the information I used for the comparison comes from very shallow knowledge. So all information can be used however you like, believe it or not it's up to you. No credit or returns accepted.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Mod 1 Telnet

TASK A
First I'd like to say what the hell is Telnet?

I started the task and goggled NCSA telnet and downloaded version 2.6 from Huston Uni. It didn't work! I then tried a search on the MacUpdate site and downloaded a version of MacTelnet 4.09b0213 and then installed it. I suppose the version on Mission Control (Huston Uni) was an archaic version that they used to fly to the moon. Anyway, still no idea what this was about, so I looked up the discussion group and found a post by Ernest Hojilla and then looked up his blog for some helpful instructions. The light insight my head was starting to glow, but only a 40 watt bulb at the moment.

Once MacTelnet was started I then entered the suggested text from the mod 1 and pressed return. Nothing happened! Oops, I had the wrong protocol eg. SSH version 1. Once all the information was entered correctly it actually worked. "Fantastic" as Dr Who said.
Can you guess which Doctor that was?

See below the screen shots.










the email address has been removed to avoid spam.

So the whole point of this is to find books in a library? What is Telnet used for now apart from some long lost use of remotely accessing other computers through the web?

TASK B
towel.blinkenlights.nl through Telnet is a very cool version of Star Wars for stick insects.
I don't know why they made a movie when they had the Telnet version! (This comment was suppose to be sarcastic!) The dot matrix reminded me of high school computer classes, the printer would always wake me up in the middle of class.




Telnet—Remote computer access
The Telnet system was probably an efficient method for remotely accessing and moving ASCII data back in the dark ages of the 1980s but is weak on security.
Advances in computer technology are usually initiated for the same reasons that have influenced development throughout the ages. The need for creative expression , entertainment, monetary gain or religion has been the basis for most development throughout history. When I think "history", I usually end up in a reverie about ancient Roman or the BBC's Time Team not computers, but as in ancient Roman, security of their people was considered a right. The use of computers in our everyday life is so profound that no one should underestimate the impact.

The original use for Telnet was, "When Telnet was initially developed in 1969, most users of networked computers were in the computer departments of academic institutions, or at large private and government research facilities." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telnet date 11 March 2009 at 11:12am.

Whether Telnet was originally used to view animated versions of Star Wars as seen in
towel.blinkenlights.nl is only known to a few, but I suspect it was a creation of a bored academic student wishing to avoid tutorials. However, it is an example of how people expressed their creativity—extending the use of their tools beyond their initially conceived purpose has generated exciting new opportunities for the internet. Developers may have had an initial intention for their products but the users will unintentionally spawn new ideas as they explore its use. The technology evolution has become in part a self-perpetuating entity.

Remote access has now become an integral part of the internet which has allowed other industries to flourish—this simple act of blogging could not be accomplished without its use. One exciting emerging technology which exploits remote access is called Cloud Computing and Cloud Services.
"Cloud Services—Consumer and Business products, services and solutions that are delivered and consumed in real-time over the Internet.
Cloud Computing—an emerging IT development, deployment and delivery model, enabling real-time delivery of products, services and solutions over the Internet" http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=190, 11 March 2:20pm

Will this change the future of the personal computing and how we interact with technology? Where will it stop,—as humans increase their thrust for knowledge and build ever increasing smart systems, artificial intelligence may find a need for cyber-religion as an emergence of new niche market.

Where do all the calculators go? (silicon heaven?)
Kryton, Red Dwarf. series III episode 6 http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/news/index.cfm