[Year 12 IPM] Spam block lists

Fri Oct 13 11:21:26 EST 2006

Hi Folks,

   All of which goes back to the level of "autonomy" schools have or should have with respect to their IT Infrastructure.

  If the DNS server and mail server (MX record) of an "innocent" school was locally managed, locally configured and not under the larger umbrella of the ISP it would not be caught up with the spam black list ( IP address based ) caused by other schools or organisations under the ISP.

    I have argued for a long time that schools have local control of their web servers, DNS, Mail, proxy and all other services. This also works well when you unplug one ISP and plug into another. And while we are at it, that schools also control which IP addresses and ports are visible from the world without waiting days and weeks for their ISP to open certain ports ( eg. 3749 for Markbook updates remotely, 443 for https secure access, 80 for http, 22 for secure shell access, 8008 and 8009 for netware server web access  etc ) .

  Best Wishes

Kevork Krozian
IT Manager , Forest Hill College
k.krozian at fhc.vic.edu.au
http://www.fhc.vic.edu.au
Mobile: 0419 356 034

>>> kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au 10/12/06 03:22pm >>>
And for everyone's further information, no: McKinnon didn't do bad 
spammy things.

It was some other customer of schoolsnet / myinternet / editure (or 
whatever our ISP calls itself this week) who misconfigured something or 
other.

The Spamcop ban affected quite a few schools, apparently.

It's not until you get banned that you realise how much email means to you!

Kevork Krozian wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> 
>  Welcome back ...
> 
> For everyone on the lists , checkout www.dnsstuff.com for some valuable on line tools to see which services are linked to your domain name, which ones are blacklisted (by SpamCop or any other well known service ) as well as any health issues with your domain , hosting, spam loopholes and security holes left open etc.
> 
>  The case of Mckinnon was interesting as their Mail Server ( MX record ) was av1.vicdir.schools.net.au ( IP address 210.11.188.61  ) all of which was banned by SpamCop.
> 
>   Best Wishes
> 
> 
> 
> Kevork Krozian
> IT Manager , Forest Hill College
> k.krozian at fhc.vic.edu.au 
> http://www.fhc.vic.edu.au 
> Mobile: 0419 356 034
> 
>>>> kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au 10/12/06 12:39pm >>>
> [7th attempt - our whole school has been blacklisted by SpamCop - and we 
> hope we are now off the blacklist!]
> 
> Hi all.  Here's a frisky cat to throw among the pigeons.
> 
> I'm curious what database management software will people be using for
> ITA Unit 3 Outcome 1 next year?
> 
> At the VITTA presentation I did on ITA in August, I recommended that if
> we got organised and agreed on a standard tool we could be much more
> efficient when sharing tutorials, sample tasks, tips and hints, sample
> outcomes etc - all of which will be a big in 2007 as we adjust to the
> new course.
> 
> The main DBMS contenders I see are:
> 
> 
> --- MS Access
> - Access is not a standard part of the average MS Office suite (AFAIK),
> so many kids are unlikely to have it at home, so it would be hard to
> assign homework or practice tasks using it.
> - It costs big money if kids have to buy it for home.
> - It costs big money for non-government schools.
> - For most people, it's not as easy to learn as Filemaker is.
> 
> 
> --- Filemaker
> - Even fewer kids are likely to have Filemaker at home, so assigning
> home practice would be nearly impossible.
> - It's easy to learn (especially creating programming scripts) and easy
> to use.
> - It costs big money if kids had to buy it for home.
> - It costs big money for schools to buy.
> 
> (Having said that, it's the database I use for McKinnon's reporting
> package, and the database I'm most skilled with.)
> 
> 
> --- OpenOffice.org Base
> - It's FREE for students and schools.
> - It's compatible with MS Access (and can read Access database files)
> - It's pretty much as easy to use as Access.
> - There's some online support for it, but more is coming and we can work
> as a team to develop all we need!
> - Did I mention it's FREE?
> - It comes with other open source replacements for Word, Excel,
> Powerpoint, drawing software etc.
> - It even has its own equivalent of VBA for programming macros.
> - Oh yeah - and it's FREE!
> 
> 
> --- MySQL
> I only include this because I've heard of one school planning to use it.
>   I would not recommend it because it's far too complex for kids to
> learn from scratch in VCE: too much programming required to get the job
> done.  Way overkill, IMHO.
> 
> 
> 
> If you get some time as the year winds down, how about getting a copy of
> (http://openoffice.org) - it's about 50M to download, and is available
> via WWW and Bittorrent.
> 
> Have a play, see what you think.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Mark K
> 

-- 
Mark Kelly
Manager - Information Systems
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
Direct line / Voicemail: 8520 9085
School Phone +613 8520 9000  <<< NEW NUMBER
School Fax +613 95789253

Webmaster - http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au 
IPM Lecture notes: http://vceit.com 
Moderator: IPM Mailing List

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