Today I was tasked with poking around various SMTP servers to see how they reacted to DSN requests (don’t ask why, because I can’t tell you, and the absurdity of the whole backstory is driving me nuts right now anyway).

Anyway, I noticed that alone of the free mail providers I fiddled with, only Microsoft threw out some warning text upon establishing the connection. I didn’t pay any initial attention to it, but when I did finally read it out of boredom while waiting for a command to be processed, I noticed it said:

cubelodyte$ telnet mx1.hotmail.com 25
Trying 65.54.244.8...
Connected to mx1.hotmail.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 bay0-mc1-f21.bay0.hotmail.com Sending unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail to Microsoft's computer network is prohibited. Other restrictions are found at http://privacy.msn.com/Anti-spam/. Violations will result in use of equipment located in California and other states. Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:42:23 -0700

So quake in fear, spammers! If you send your crap through Hotmail they’ll.. um… do, uh, something in California, and maybe elsewhere. You have been warned.

So Microsoft has hired Jerry Seinfeld as their pitchman. Some are surprised, but if you think about it, it follows the standard Microsoft business model: take something that was once cool and groundbreaking, but now past its prime, and use it to generate cash from folks who still think it’s relevant.

Webcomics are a dime a dozen these days, and basically exactly the same as print comics: static pictures, differing only in the method of distribution. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since there are some very talented artists and writers publishing through the Web, but what happens when a webcomic makes more use of available technology?

The answer might be Nawlz, a flash-based, cyberpunkish webcomic. I’ve only started reading the first issue; the plot seems obscure at this point, but the art seems decent, even if it looks like it might have tendencies to dip into the “this is ART so here are some random images” neo-surrealist pretense. Check it out, though; this might be where webcomics are headed, or at least the cusp of online delivery of comic books.

It’s easy enough to see machines that are on your segment of the network, and browse through any files they might be sharing. But these days machines do a lot more than simple file sharing. There’s no way, though, to tell at a glance if a machine is running ssh, sharing out its iPhoto library, or something similar.

If there are Macs on your network, you can use Flame to quickly suss out and display the services running on the machines in your VLAN. It’s still under development, but it still seems pretty handy. Enjoy.

If you haven’t already heard, Valve released an update to Team Fortress 2 that adds new fun to what was perhaps already my favorite class, the Pyro. But more immediately amusing (and impressive) is their latest introductory video, “Meet the Sniper”.

I think it’s their best machinima to date, and shows that as good as Valve’s efforts have been, they’re getting polished even further. These guys know how to tell a story. But don’t just take my word for it, watch it yourself.

I found some outrageously obsolete documentation for our distributed authentication service. One of the major topics was making sure users have a browser that supports SSL. High-tech stuff!

According to this document, this is our official list of supported browsers applications:

• Netscape Navigator (UNIX/Mac version 1.12 and later, Windows version 1.22 and later)
• IBM Internet Connection Secure WebExplorer (version 1.1) for OS/2
• Delrina Cyberjack Web (version 7.00)
• Prodigy Web Browser (version 1.4b)
• InternetMCI (version 1.0)
• Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
• America Online (version 3)
• Quarterdeck Mosaic 2.0

Prodigy and InternetMCI. Now there’s a blast from the past. And “Delrina Cyberjack Web”? I’ve never even heard of it. Whatever that was, even its name is comically dated, like the “MyE-CyberWebNetOnLine.com”-style domains that were all the rage in the late 90s. Good for a quick early-morning laugh, at least.