Subject: SDF Newsletter October 2003 [1] MetaARPA packets phase II are out with about 174 left! [2] SDF LAPTOP Raffle Winners! [3] VERISIGN wildcard thwarted locally. [4] Reinstating the SDF DIALUP?? Dump your commercial ISP? [5] SDF at the Vintage Computer Festival this year! [6] Other means of continual sponsorship. [1] MetaARPA packets are out with about 174 left! We're sending out the next batch of MetaARPA member gift packets this week. At the last count, we have 174 left. The gift pack includes a limited edition gold SDF lapel pin, new round stickers, a Red Martian CD and of course, your lamenated SDF membership card. If you're an ARPA member and you're thinking about joining MetaARPA now is the time to do so. At the same time, I ask that you think carefully about committing $36 a year to SDF. If you feel its worth supporting SDF for that amount and you will enjoy the benefits, then go for it! For more information about MetaARPA, type 'meta' at the shell. [2] SDF LAPTOP Raffle Winners! We raised $820 in the recent laptop raffle. The funds were used to help purchase memory for four of our CS20s (2048mb each) which will be going online this month. The laptop winner was user 'jahklar' who joined the SDF ARPA membership in Jun of 2002. After the ticket was drawn for the laptop, we drew 15 other tickets for extra bonus items which included SDF shirts, CDs, vinyl (new) records and DVDs. Those are to be shipped out this week. Thank you to all you participated in the raffle! [3] VERISIGN wildcard thwarted locally. On September 15th, VERISIGN violated public trust by implementing 'wildcarding' for the COM and NET top level domains. What this means is that suddenly any domain name that did not previously exist, now exists. For instance, alskdfjlasdfj.com is now a valid domain. By doing this, VERISIGN gave a green light to UCE spammers who use valid and invalid domains to send spam. This broke anti-spam rules for hundreds of thousands of sendmail implementations all over the world which by default, REJECT email from invalid domains. Because of this many of us saw an onslaught of spam, not only because sdf's NXDOMAIN reject filter was broken, but because of the flood gates opened by others. ISC.ORG immediately responded with a patch for BIND9 which authorised delegation-only for definable zones (namely 'com' & 'net') and SDF quickly implemented this patch. The ISC has provided the internet community with free software such as BIND, INN (news server) and others for years. As a thank you, SDF has donated to ISC.ORG. [4] Reinstating the SDF DIALUP?? Dump your commercial ISP? SDF always had dialup numbers from 1987 to 2000. Because donations were so low during that period, I covered the bills myself. The decision to terminate dialup service in 2000 was made when their usage was at an all time low. Since 1994, we have had an increasing number of members coming in over the internet rather than dialing into SDF. We have a couple of options now. In order to establish a national dialup presence (US + Canada) we would need to create a DIALUP membership. The minimum to start would be 40 members. There would be no setup fee and you would just need to pay the membership dues of about $15/mo. If you are interested in this membership, please answer the survey by typing 'survey'. An NPA/NXX list (area code and exchange) will be provided in a few days. The good news is that about 93% of the US is covered with v.92! I need to stress to you that there is a great setup fee associated with this. Although its one time, it is considerable. We're looking at anywhere between $1000 to $4995 .. Also, while it will be 'unlimited' usage, we have a 40/hr a month cap per dialup member (aggregated), after that we're charged a per hour fee .. *however* the membership dues would remain flat-rate .. so when taking the 'survey' please be considerate when you state that 'yes' you would join the DIALUP membership. Some benefits offered from the DIALUP membership: * national US dialup access (including Hawaii & Alaska) * UNIX friendly (PPP/SLIP) * V.92 at over 90% of the POPs, all pops are at least V.90 * ALL membership dues (not just DIALUP) would be payable online as well, you can setup for 'autopay' * 24/7 technical support number * long distance service of 3.5 cents a minute with no connect fee [5] SDF at the Vintage Computer Festival this year! October 11th-12th, 2003 at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View CA The AT&T 3b2/500 machine (along with its TTY5620 DMD terminal) will be running and on display at the VCF this year in Mountain View, CA! The TTY5620 will be running the 'layers' system which was the precursor to X11. It will also be running the very cool graphical DEMOs that are only available to the JERQ/BLIT/DMD family of TELETYPES. For more information about the VCF, see http://vintage.org/2003/main If you are in the area, I urge you to attend! All SDF user logins from 1991-1997 are still on the machine (the home directories were moved). Stop by to login (if you can remember your password! or use the 'visitor' account) and play some of the old games including local user jcg's 'mdg' (Multi Dungeon Game), 'mazewar', 'com' and 'bboard'. You can either access the old SDF via a hardwire terminal, or an 802.11g wireless LAN (which we're bringing along ;-) I don't believe it will be accessible VIA the internet, however .. but its possible. An SDF photo album, documents, brochures, stickers, tshirts and possibly a *free* raffle will be available. So come stop by and see all the great computers some of us grew up with and if you're too young, you might be very surprised what we had. [6] Other means of continual sponsorship. If you are looking at ways to help SDF but you don't really feel like you need memberships such as DNS, VPM, VHOST, DBA, MLIST or TWEAK, give 'pledge' a try. 'pledge' allows you to make a monthly or annual contribution to SDF of $1 or more. Like with membership levels, you will receive a friendly reminder that will tell you when your pledge is due. You are welcome to use pledge without actually pledging if you are just curious at how it works .. pledging to SDF is entirely voluntary! I also encourage you to read the FAQ regarding other memberships, or even try typing 'tweak', 'vpm' or 'vhost' at the command line and seeing if you would like to sponsor SDF at those levels. Thank you to all who have supported SDF and stuck around through out the years. Be sure to be friendly and welcoming to all newbies, no matter how 'gooby' they might seem. What we need to realise is that the majority of newbies have been brainwashed by the media and their schools. The old work ethic of self-learning has been plagued by step by step howtos, dummy books and incessant hand holding which doesn't teach problem solving skills. As frustrating as it might seem, keep your cool. Its our mission to show them the light (learning by experience). Stephen Jones