This fall, Elon University will be adding five more fraternity houses to its Greek court. Like the last batch, my dad Irv Pearce is the architect. Dad is an honorary initiated member of the Lambda Chi Alpha (Delta-Pi) chapter, which will be moving into one of these houses. This weekend, he gave me an inside tour.
I recently (12 Nov 2008) learned that a friend of mine, C.A.M. Wagner, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer called plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm. Perhaps only 100 people have received this diagnosis.
C.A.M. and I, along with about 10 others, worked for our fraternity headquarters right out of school. Though we traveled independently to more than 200 universities a semester, we each grew rather close and still keep in touch.
C.A.M., I hope the talented team of doctors and scientist do all they can to make you better.
This weekend I’m heading back to my alma mater Elon University to see two of my college roommates, one of whom is serving as the university’s 2008 commencement speaker.
Pictured here is me, Doug Finberg, and Brad Phillips. The three of use lived in a three-bedroom apartment just a few blocks off campus for two years. We were all founding members of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and made the most of our undergraduate years (both academically and socially).
In the 14 years that have passed, I’ve spent most of my time working for non-profits or small companies doing information technology and web development work. Brad has spent most of his career as a skilled video editor and post production guru. While Doug has steadily climbed the marketing ladder in the big business of movie production.
Here’s an excerpt of what Elon has to say about him.
Douglas Finberg, senior vice president of international marketing for Paramount Pictures and a 1994 Elon alumnus, will deliver Elon’s 2008 commencement address. Finberg was named senior vice president of Paramount in 2006. He acts as a liaison for filmmakers, studio executives and producers in Los Angeles, in addition to producing marketing campaigns for international theatrical releases. Before arriving at Paramount, Finberg spent 10 years as a creative executive in international marketing and advertising for DreamWorks SKG. He received the 2001 Hollywood Reporter Key Art Award for best international comedy trailer for “Meet the Parents.”
Commencement is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Saturday, May 24, Under the Oaks in front of West Residence Hall. It’s been nearly 10 years since I’ve seen either Doug or Brad, so I’m looking forward to catching up with them this weekend.
Today was an unwanted day of tinkering with and explaining spam defenses. Spam comes in many formats. The two that affect me the most are email spam and comment spam.
At the office, I have many layers of spam defenses. One of those layers are DNSBLs. DNS Stuff maintains a list of roughly 275 block lists that are used to publish lists of IP addresses linked to spamming.
When a message is sent to a @lambdachi.org address, our server first asks 10 of these 275 DNSBLs if they consider the sending computer is recently a source of spam. If so, the message gets blocked before ever reaching the next level of spam filtering.
Up until the last few weeks, the DNSBLs Lambda Chi Alpha uses have done wonders in keeping the bad guys at bay. But recently, our IT department has received an increase of staff and members reporting their frustrations of being blocked (called false positives).
Educating our members and our staff about why they might get blocked has led to this posting earlier this week, along with taking the time to respond to each user’s concerns.
My concern is that as spammers increase their use of botnets (a collection of compromised computers spewing out spam), DNSBLs will lose their effectiveness because they will end up blocking legitimate users.
The consumer Internet service providers like Comcast, Bellsouth, and Earthlink provide services for thousands of computers they have little control over. When just one of their customer’s computers becomes infected by a botnet and starts spewing out spam, the DNSBLs block the ISPs IP address, which ends up blocking the rest of their clients from accessing our mail server.
The more DNSBLs block legitimate users, the less reliable they become. Sure, they keep the spammers at bay but at the cost of blocking good guys too. If the consumer ISPs did a better job of cleaning up their own networks and blocking their customers who appear to be infected by a botnet, then we’d all be better off.
Last week, “whoo” of village-idiot.org released a WordPress plugin called wp-spamhaus. Comment spam is just as big of a problem as email spam. In the past 12 months, I’ve removed more than 15,000 unwanted comments from this site alone.
Whoo’s plugin first checks Spamhaus, a leading DNSBL provider, if the IP address of the computer requesting access to a website is listed as a source of spam. Instead of blocking email spam, her plugin migrates the block to website access. If the spammer can’t view your website, they can’t leave behind comment spam.
It’s another nice layer to add to comment spam defenses, but may also fall plague to the botnets and false positives.
Users don’t like it when their email gets blocked or if they can’t access a website. It doesn’t matter if their own computer is compromised and infected with a botnet, or if their neighbor’s computer is, they don’t understand and may even take it personal.
The saddest thing about botnets and DNSBLs is that the machines spammers use to attack your network are the very same machines your users use to access your network. By blocking the bad guys, you also keep out the good.
When the Cross & Crescent magazine switched to an online-only format 15 months ago, I also decided to release its content monthly instead of quarterly. Doing so has given my editorial team the ability to publish more timely content.
This month, we included a feature story on Jim O’Brien (Cincinnati 1970). O’Brien was the Colt’s game-winning kicker for Super Bowl V in 1971. The story was published just two days before today’s Super Bowl game, which also features the (now Indianapolis) Colts.
What I like about the ability to produce timely content, is that we receive reader feedback like this:
Interesting to find out that man who broke my heart as an eight year old Dallas Cowboy fan is a Fraternity Brother. More interesting to find this out 36 years later on Super Bowl Sunday!(Feb 5,2007). As a piece of trivia I have never forgotten Jim O’Briens name as the kicker who defeated the Cowboys in the closing seconds of the game. Some things you just can’t forget! Thanks Jim!
The other feature story for the February issue was also about an early 1970s football story, best told in the recently released movie “We are Marshall.” A personal friend of mine, David “Muddy” Waters (Elon 1993) worked on this film, which made it more exciting to write about his success.
