Category: Geekery

Targetted spam or a referral from somebody who knows me?

Normally, spammers hit millions of email addresses in hopes of finding one match. But today I got one that was so precisely targetted I can only think it was directed specifically at me.

Our client designs and manfactures various products which are used in
navigation and security applications. Much of their technology’s purpose
is to turn visual information (such as vehicle and people positions and
landscape features) into usably displayed visuals in a real time
process.

As they build their advanced, next generation platform that integrates
moving map and sensor functions, an opportunity has opened up for a
high-energy, self-motivated senior software engineer to join their
growing team in Falls Church Virginia.

This is a technology leadership position for a software professional who
has developed complex applications. Experience in intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance would be a major plus, but are not
required.

Required skills include:

Strong database background
C
open GL
at least some exposure to Python scripting
Oracle
The individual must have a strong knowledge of display technology.
GIS (geographical information systems) expertise would be a big plus.
Vector engine Technology
Attention to details and documentation.
Strong communications skills in both spoken and written English.
Proven success in a developmental environment.

Education:
University degree in Electrical, Software or Systems Engineering, or
comparable, is required. An advanced degree is preferred.
All successful applicants must be eligible to meet requirements for U.S.
government security clearance and substance screening.

MPEG4, JPEG2000 experience would be a big plus.

US Citizens only.

Qualified candidates will please submit their MS Word resume, and cover
letter (which includes salary and citizenship details) for immediate and
confidential consideration.

Company offers an excellent salary and superior benefits.

Well, aside from the fact that I can’t move to Falls Church VA and I’m not a US citizen, this job would be perfect for me. Some of the best job satisfaction I ever had was working at GeoVision, a GIS company working in C and Oracle. From the location and the security requirements, it’s definitely government, and probably either military or NRO.

If I were free to move and a US citizen, I’d be on this job like speeding tickets on a JRH.

The comment spam scourge

A while back I was revelling in the fact that the comment spammers appeared to still be targetting my blog through the old Moveable Type comment URLS (which don’t work) instead of the new WordPress comment URLs. Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed that I’d get a spate of 7 or 8 comment spams over a weekend, and then nothing for weeks or months at a time. But then they found me, and I’ve been cleaning stuff out of my SpamKarma 2 interface daily. But the volume is going up and up and up – last night I cleaned out all the spam before bed-time, and woke up this morning to find 217 new comment spams to clean up.

Because of this volume, I’ve activated the “auto cleanup” function on SpamKarma 2, and I will no longer be examing the comments that it flags as spam to see if they were mis-characterized. So if your comment got flagged as spam, and you failed the capcha check, I’m sorry, but it’s gone. I hate to take this step, but by the same token I haven’t seen any false positives in a while.

Bummer

When you or I advertise a piece of used equipment for sale, it means “I have a piece of used equipment, and I want to sell it”. On the other hand, when Aircraft Spruce and Specialty advertises a piece of used equipment for sale, it means “I might get some used equipment some day, and when I do, I’ll sell it to you”. They sent me an email today to say that they don’t have the advertised unit, and don’t know when they’re going to get it, but if I want I can cancel my order.

What’s the point?

Oh well, back to eBay.

It’s the worst day since yesterday

(Apologies to Flogging Molly)

Spent the whole frigging day dealing with the problems I was having with my computer at work. I tried reinstalling the OS (CentOS 4.2) again. I tried replacing the hard drive that was giving errors. I tried installing it on a Dell 700 I had on my desk for testing purposes. Every time I got the same problem – I’d set up a Thunderbird or Evolution account, exit the program and come back in, and the program couldn’t find the Inbox file any more. Rob suggested the problem might be due to me having SELinux enabled, so I installed it without it enabled. Mike suggested that CentOS 4.3 just came out this weekend, so I tried that. Still no luck.

After a few attempts, I was looking for the Evolution configuration, but I got a weird error when I tried a “find . -type f -print” on my home directory. I didn’t get these errors on a local file system, or when doing it on my home directory on the NFS server. After a bit of messing around, we realized that the problem might be that CentOS is now using NFS v4, and might have obsoleted NFS v2. The server that has our home directories on them is an old SGI running IRIX 6.4 – it’s possible that it only does NFS v2. Tomorrow, Rob is going to look at moving our home directories to a machine running Solaris 9. Hopefully that will fix it.

Morning Rant #2: Spam Frustrations

I have a Wiki that I set up to try to stimulate some discussion about some sort of replacement to the DAFIF data that is going away in October. So far, it’s been pretty much a bust – nobody has contributed anything in months, nobody has done any of the grunt work like figuring out a database schema or XML schema or even the user interface, and so I’m thinking of forgetting the whole idea. I don’t have the time to do all the work myself, and if nobody else is going to do any, it isn’t going to get done. But that’s not what this rant is about.

This morning, I get a notification from the Wiki software that somebody has edited nearly every single page in the whole damn Wiki. Needless to say, it was all spam. It took me nearly two hours of messing around in RCS to get rid of every instance of the spam. But even worse, is that it turns out that somebody had already inserted the same spam into the navigation bars of the wiki months ago, and I hadn’t noticed. So my Wiki is actually showing up quite high in Google searches for certain drugs. ARGGGH!

Also, a while ago I mentioned that this blog tends to get spam in brief spurts of a few dozen spams over the course of a weekend, and then nothing for weeks at a time. Well, that seems to have ended – I’m getting spam every day now. I knew it was too good to be true. Fortunately SpamKarma2 is doing a great job of finding it and quarantining it so I don’t have to continually check. And it’s pretty good about not having false positives either – comments that it thinks are borderline spam are given a chance to fill out a captcha and then that comment gets through, and subsequent comments from the same user are given a few positive points. So I’m actually relieved that the expected has happened, and it hasn’t inconvenienced me much.