September, 1, 2003 archives

michael hiltzik of the los angeles times writes about proposition 53 and the continued efforts to budget via state initiative in california. the ballot initiative, which will be on the october ballot along with the recall meshugas, would require that 3% of the state budget be used to finance the construction and upkeep of infrastructure projects (bridges, roads, parks, school buildings and hospitals).

he called for regulation to treat the gasoline industry like a public utility.

the amount of garbage being flung at lists.mysql.com seems rather impressive to me, and i can only imagine what a mess high-profile providers are facing these days. there's such a storm of what i've dubbed strange quit that i wonder if it isn't a ddos directed at the server. (i explained the behavior on the qpsmtpd mailing list. the server is now rejecting hundreds of connections per minute from hosts that have previously displayed this behavior, and picking up a new host or two per minute.)

and then there's the hundred connections per minute or so from hosts found on blacklists or that are trying to send bounce messages to addresses that do not accept them because they never send mail.

luckily, the server is holding up fine. i've only been putting in a little effort to tighten things up and get better logging.

(i've also lowered the spamassassin threshold at which my personal server simply rejects incoming mail.)