Nice phone. I’ve had it a few weeks since my Treo 600 gave up the ghost. There’s no way in hell I was going to spring for the derivative rip-off that is the IPhone (more on that), and another Treo would just be overkill for me.

So this $99, feature-packed number caught my eye.

• FM transmitter,
• MicroSD, up to 4GB according to the docs,
• Plays WMA, mp3 and a couple other formats,
• Includes a stereo headphone adapter,
• Built-in camera / camcorder,
• Java,
• GPS,
• External ipod-like controls,
• Speakerphone

And a slew of other crap that you can find out about at the end of a google search.

The good

• The FM transmitter is quite nice,
• Music sounds great. I’ve got a bunch of MP3/ogg players and this sounds as good as any of them on quality headphones,
• The phone feels solid and looks great,
• The external controls are quite handy,
• The included mini-stereo headphone adapters are a nice touch,
• Flexibility for transferring music and photos – you can pop the microSD card into your computer with an adapter or use the supplied USB cable. With the cable, the phone was recognized on my Debian Etch system with a vfat filesystem and transfers worked perfectly.
• Cheap.

The bad

• It comes with an insultingly small 64 meg microSD card – money grubbing bastards. What is this, 1998?
• No ogg support.

It’s probably hard to beat this phone as far as the features/value ratio and, most importantly, it’s a damn good phone.

So we provide really, really good MX-proxy based spamfiltering services at work via exim , clamav , spamassassin and a slew of other open-source tools and DNSRBLs.

• Requires no training,
• Has no black holes for messages to fall into,
• Notifies the rare false positive when we don’t accept a message,
• Sends no “backscatter”,
• and is stupidly accurate.

One of the most basic tests is to confirm whether or not a recipient is valid before filtering email for them – after all, why scan email that’ll never get delivered? This test involves a mini-SMTP transaction from our spamfilters to the target server, asking “does this email address exist?”

Here’s where Exchange’s lameness comes in – it accepts email for all recipients, valid or not by default, bouncing them later on if they don’t exist. That makes it impossible to reject emails to invalid recipients at SMTP time from the spamfilters. And it means your stupid Exchange server is left vulnerable to backscatter should a spammer chooses to spoof sending from your domain.

No wonder Exchange message stores get piggishly large so quickly.

Fortunately, you can disable this by turning on “recipient filtering” in Exchange 2003. Please do. Why accept email you’re never going to deliver?

Feeling like your basement isn’t creepy enough? Looking for a place to stash your victims? Build a catacombs under your basement.

The best part about this article are the questions it leaves unanswered… such as “Where do I find the minions to populate my catacombs?” and “Should I coat the punji sticks with feces or not?”

This is an easy, quick and spicy entree I devised when the fridge was looking sparse.

• 1 can undrained black beans,
• 1 medium onion diced,
• 4 cloves garlic,
• 1 tsp oregano,
• 1/2 tsp basil,
• 1 bay leaf,
• 1/2 tsp cumin,
• 1/4 to 1/3 of a 7 oz. can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce,
• 1 bullion cube – I prefer chicken,
• Smidge of tomato paste,
• Olive Oil,
• Pepper to taste.

Saute the onion in the olive oil until translucent. Throw in the garlic for a couple minutes, then follow with the undrained beans and everything else.

Simmer over medium heat for around 30 minutes or to desired consistency, stirring frequently. Serve over rice.

Notes

This is relatively spicy – increase or decrease the chipotle peppers to taste. It doesn’t really matter how large of a can of beans you use (not a #10 can, obviously) – the other stuff will stretch out pretty well.

An oldie but goodie. . .

If you’ve ever watched Norton SpeedDisk while it’s defragmenting a drive: this is for you. Imagine satisfying “blocks go by and change color in patterns” animations combined with one of the world’s best classical pieces- and you’ve got this.