The Hot Spot Bot

Alarm Systems & Automobile Tires?

What do alarm systems and automobile tires have in common? This may sound like a strange question to the untrained ear, but lend me yours and I will make sense of it.

The reason I mention car tires is that they are a necessity that most all of us have some experience purchasing, at least once in a while.

Even though we need good tires to keep our cars firmly on the road, when they are wearing out we often put the purchase off for a few weeks. If we are patient, a Saturday will eventually come along that we have no plans for, and we force ourselves to go to our local tire store.

Maybe it’s the one with the big giant marshmallow looking thing on the roof, or the shop down the road who seems to be giving away free franks, and has a racing car crew serving them, that gets us to stop.

If you are jumping the gun and think I’m correlating putting off the purchase of a necessity such as car tires with a necessity such as an alarm system you would be wrong. The first reason you would be wrong is because most people don’t see an alarm as a necessity, but as a luxury. Only after they have been burglarized, do they see an addition of an alarm system as something they need instead of want.

Do you know why they realize after the fact that they need one? Not just because they are upset that someone took the electronics. Not just because the gun that they considered the only alarm system they would ever need is missing, and god only knows whose hands it will end up in. Not even because they are freaked out knowing that some stranger was rifling through the underwear drawer. It is because this is the first time most people start to think about how this unfortunate event could have effected the lives of their loved ones and themselves, if they had been home or walked in on a burglary in progress.

What if my wife came home for lunch and walked in on them?

What if I came home from work and had my own gun pointed at me when I came in?

What if we were asleep while they entered, and how would that traumatize the family?

After asking ourselves these types of questions is when an alarm system becomes a necessity.

Assuming you do know that you need and want a system as part of your preventative security plan, and you do have researching one on your to do list, let’s consider how else an alarm system might have something in common with automobile tires.

When we go to buy our tires we often tell the salesman what size tire we need or what make and model our car is. They go to the computer screen and tell you “we have the Big Brand XTC 10’s for $45.00 each plus mounting and balancing” or ” The Joe Blows are really made by the same company and they are $5.00 less each” (Sound familiar?)

How often does the salesperson, take the time to explain things that are so important to your decision such as Load Range, Tread Wear, Rubber Composites, Tread Patterns and the Elements, Sidewall Strength, Speed Ratings, etc. If they did, you would not only know much more than you already do about tires, but you would most likely justify your choices and the expense with life- safety, as you should. You will also most likely buy your tires at that store the next time you need them, no matter what they are giving away down the street.

Would you believe that alarm systems are often sold the same way tires are.” We have, this one or that one, which do you prefer?” When making an important decision such as how a security system will fit into your lifestyle, please take the time to understand all of your options. The available differences in quality of all the devices you are considering for purchase is astounding, and will make a big difference in how happy you are with your choices. If you can’t find someone to explain all of these things to you, then you have not found the proverbial “perfect tire store”

Matthew is a 22-year veteran of the alarm system industry. He now works as a consumer advocate, teaching consumers how to buy or get systems for free (without being taken). He is committed to being unbiased. His web site is http://www.expertsknow.com

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Tricks to Purchasing the Perfect Motorcycle Helmet

You cannot choose a helmet based on its size or the material it’s made from alone. There are many things that need to be considered when purchasing motorcycle helmets. Sure, it’s probably possible to locate a helmet that is the right color or that is made from the type of material that will satisfy your safety concerns, but when it comes to “proper fit” it opens up a whole new can of worms. It is so important to consider the “safety factor.” Some motorcycle helmets are just not as safe as others and you should be aware of this.

Some of the more popular motorcycle helmet manufacturers are Icon, Arai, Shoei, Suomy, Erex, Bell, HJC and Nolan. The majority of their helmets are approved by DOT or Snell. There are many other makers, but these are some of the better known companies.

When it comes to safety there are two major concerns. One, how is your visibility? How is your peripheral vision? Can you see enough of the surrounding area to be safe? If your visibility is poor your chances of being in an accident can increase dramatically. And two, if you are involved in an accident will your head be protected as well as you’d like? Will the material that the helmet is made from stand up to the test, to the punishment?

Many motorcyclists or bikers look solely at the aesthetic qualities of a helmet and disregard safety when looking to purchase a helmet. But in reality it should be viewed oppositely. Safety should always come first.

The main options you have when searching for the perfect motorcycle helmet are color, shape, visibility and liners. Color is the easiest decision to make, right? Wrong. As far as the safety factor goes you should be able to be seen well by other drivers. Bright colors stand out and are very noticeable, even at night, while dull dark colors are not seen easily. It’s very important to choose a bright color that can be seen easily by other drivers, even at night.

Another factor to consider is the shape of the helmet. Some people have tall slim oblong heads (egg shaped) while others have round or oval-shaped heads. Trying on helmets for a good fit is the only sure way to tell if it will fit your head properly and comfortably. Plus, you want the weight of the helmet to be distributed properly so that the head can support the helmet easily.

As far as safety is concerned the number one thing to consider is your peripheral vision. Some helmets simply do not allow a biker to see to their periphery well enough to be safe. With good visibility it’s a lot easier to see when an accident might happen and have time to react to the circumstances and maneuver out of harms way.

Liners are the last item on the agenda. The purpose of a liner is for comfort, but it also is there to help you with a correct fit. If the liner is not a good fit for your head you will notice specific spots on your head that are receiving more pressure than others. Avoid these liners. Possibly the most comfortable liner is the skull cap. You will usually have less pressure in specific areas when using this type of liner.

Last, but not least, it is not wise to buy motorcycle helmets online unless you have tried that specific helmet on previously in a retail store. In most cases you will be better off trying one on in a store first. Then, once you know the brand, size, color and type of liner that you prefer it’s an easy job to browse online for the best deals.

The biggest mistake most consumers make is locating a flashy cool-looking helmet online and then buy it solely because of its looks and for no other reason. Spend a little time shopping and you will likely end up with a product that you can be happy with for many years to come.

This article is brought to you by My Motorcycle Helmet, an online source for finding a quality motorcycle helmet. Learn how to find the perfect Shoei, Suomy, Nolan, Bell or Arai motorcycle helmet at My Motorcycle Helmet.

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How Spammers Fool Whitelists - And How to Stop Them

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of spam tools coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just don’t work anymore.

Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be.

One method used to combat spam is whitelisting. Whitelists are databases of trusted email sources. The list may contain specific email addresses, IP addresses or trusted domains. Emails received from a whitelisted source are allowed to pass through the system to the user’s email box. The list is built when users and email administrators manually add trusted sources to the whitelist. Once built, the catch-rate for spam can be close to 100%, however, whitelists produce an inordinate number of false positives.

It is virtually impossible to produce an exhaustive list of all possible legitimate email senders because legitimate email can come from any number of sources. To get around this difficulty, some organizations have instituted a challenge-response methodology. When an unknown sender sends an email to a user’s account, the system automatically sends a challenge back to the sender. Some challenge-response systems require the sender to read and decipher an image containing letters and numbers. The image is designed to be unreadable by a machine, but easily recognizable by a human. Spammers would not spend the time required to go through a large number of challenge-response emails, so they drop the address and move on to those users who don’t use such a system.

Whitelists are only partially successful and impractical for many users. For example, problems can arise when users register for online newsletters, order products online or register for online services. If the user does not remember to add the new email source to their whitelist, or if the domain or IP address is entered incorrectly, the communication will fail. Additionally, whitelists impose barriers to legitimate email communication and are viewed by some as just plain rude.

Whitelists are not widely used by email users and administrators as a primary tool to fight spam because of the high number of false positives, and the difficulties in creating a comprehensive list of email sources. Because whitelists are not widely used, spammers typically do not develop countermeasures. As with other spam fighting techniques, whitelists are most effective when used in conjunction with other anti-spam tools.

The Solution

When used individually, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same anti-spam method in order to be effective. You can learn more about the fight against spam by visiting our website at www.ciphertrust.com and downloading our whitepapers.

Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry’s largest provider of enterprise email security. The company’s flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting http://www.ciphertrust.com/products/spam_and_fraud_protection today.

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Spam Filters Explained

What do they do? How do they work? Which one is right for me?
By Alan Hearnshaw

Spam is a very real problem that many people have to deal with on a daily basis. For those that have decided to do something about it and start to investigate the options available in spam filtering, this article provides a brief introduction to your options and the types of spam filters available.

Despite the bewildering array of spam filters available today, all claiming to the best one “of its kind” there are really just five filtering methodologies in general use today and all products rely on one, or a combination of these:

Content-Based Filters

“In the beginning, there were content-based filters.”

These filters scan the contents of the and look for tell-tale signs that the message is spam. In the early days of spamming it was quite simple to look out for “Kill Words” such as
“Lose Weight” and mark a message as spam if it was found.

Very soon though, spammers got wise to this and started resorting to all kinds of tricks to get their message past the filters. The days of “obfuscation” had begun.
We started getting messages containing the phrase “L0se Welght” (Notice the zero for “o” and “l” for “i”) and even more bizarre - and sometimes quite ingenious - variations.

This rendered basic content-based filters somewhat ineffective, although there are one or two on the market now that are clever enough to “see through” theses attempts and still provide good results.

Bayesian Based Filters

“The Reverend Bayes comes to the rescue”

Born in London 1702, the son of a minister, Thomas Bayes developed a formula which allowed him to determine the probability of an event occurring based on the probabilities of two or more independent evidentiary events.

Bayesian filters “learn” from studying known good and bad messages. Each message is split into single “word bytes”, or tokens and these tokens are placed into a database along with how often they are found in each kind of message.

When a new message arrives to be tested by the filter, the new message is also split into tokens and each token is looked up in the database. Extrapolating results from the database and applying a form of the good reverend’s formula, know as the a “Naive Bayesian” formula, the message is given a “spamicity” rating and can be dealt with accordingly.

Bayesian filters typically are capable of achieving very good accuracy rates (>97% is not uncommon), and require very little on-going maintenance.

Whitelist/Blacklist Filters

“Who goes there, friend or foe?”

This very basic form of filtering is seldom used on its own nowadays, but can be useful as part of a larger filtering strategy.

A “whitelist” is nothing more than a list of e-mail addresses from which you wish to accept communications. A whitelist filter would only accept messages from these people and all others would be rejected

A “blacklist”, conversely, is a list of e-mail addresses - and sometimes IP Addresses (computer identification addresses) - from which communications will not be accepted.

While this may seem like a good idea from the outset, a whitelist methodology is too restrictive for most people and, as virtually all spam e-mails carry a forged “from” address, there is little point in collecting this address to ban it in future as it is very unlikely to be the same next time.

There are bodies on the internet that maintain a list of known “bad” sources of e-mail. Many filters today have the ability to query these servers to see if the message they are looking at comes from a source identified by this Internet-based blacklist, or RBL. While being quite effective, they do tend to suffer from “false positives” where good messages are incorrectly identified as spam. This happens often with newsletters.

Challenge/Response Filters

“Open sesame!”

Challenge/Response filters are characterised by their ability to automatically send a response to a previously unknown sender asking them to take some further action before their message will be delivered. This is often referred to as a “Turing Test” - named after a test devised by British mathematician Alan Turing to determine if machines could “think”.

Recent years have seen the appearance of some internet services which automatically perform this Challenge/Response function for the user and require the sender of an e-mail to visit their web site to facilitate the receipt of their message.

Critics of this system claim it to be too drastic a measure and that it sends a message that “my time is more important than yours” to the people trying to communicate with you.

For some low traffic e-mail users though, this system alone may be a perfectly acceptable method of completely eliminating spam from their inbox - one step above the “Whitelist” system outlined above.

Community Filters

“A united front”

These types of filters work on the principal of “communal knowledge” of spam. When a user receives a spam message, they simply mark it as such in their filter. This information is sent to a central server where a “fingerprint” of the message is stored.

After enough people have “voted” this message to be spam, then it is stopped from reaching all the other people in the community.

This type of filtering can prove to be quite effective, although it stands to reason that it can never be 100% effective as a few people have to receive the spam for it to be “flagged” in the first place. Just like its similar cousin the Internet black list (RBL), this system also can suffer from “false positives”, or messages incorrectly identified as spam.

Hopefully you are now armed with a little more information to be able to make an informed decision on the best spam filter for you.

For further information, consider reading the reviews and articles found at http://www.whichspamfilter.com

Alan Hearnshaw is a computer programmer and the owner of http://www.whichspamfilter.com, a web site which conducts weekly in-depth reviews of current spam filters, provides help and guidance in the fight against spam and provides a useful community forum.
alan@whichspamfilter.com

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A Beginners Guide To Getting The Right Netbooks

With loads of improvements occurring in technology daily, only a small number of have proved more convenient and useful than the launch of the netbook computer. The actual size of netbooks is the main reason that makes them so valuable to the usual consumer or company. Where notebook computers are some what large to fit properly on most people’s laps, netbook computers provides the ideal size and portability. Possibly the best situation to illustrate this would be on a train, or passenger jet whilst going to, or from your destination. In these instances, a netbook is undoubtedly the more appropriate hardware, regularly being practically half the size of a standard laptop computer.

The actual size of these netbook computers raises numerous worries with regards to their display resolution. With such a very small size, comes a small display, so you may well want to ensure you purchase a netbook computer that has a high contrast ratio, & high resolution. This will save you from many head pains when trying to look at a presentation or a motion picture. Making sure you get the highest contrast ratio for your budget is particularly straightforward, and there are a handful of websites that assess each netbook brands to their competition. This can provide you valuable guidance when looking for a netbook. Find a large assortment of technology products such as; netbooks, televisions and led tvs from leading brands online.

This comparing of netbook manufacturers can be worthwhile in maximizing the quality of the hardware in the machine, & the price that you are willing to pay. Internal hard drive space, wireless functionality & price are a number of the most important points that you ought to make sure you research when procuring a netbook computer. With such an assortment of different manufacturers releasing netbooks already in 2009, there are many different reductions around that you can discover just by doing ample research before purchasing. Making sure you get the best hardware currently available for your set budget is vital, especially in this hard economic condition. Why not take the first steps towards improving your mobile computing experience. Find a netbook & enter the wonderful world of convenience & portability that these machines can deliver.

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Internet Forum Psycho-Babble and Human Behavior; Case Study

For anyone who has spent time on an internet forum you know that you can have one person siding with your views at one point and then the next thing you know a new group has formed against your view and you can indeed win them back one by one and then the groups change again. It is a totally interesting phenomena indeed.

Recently studying this from an objective behavioral standpoint I noticed that occasionally someone uses trickery to get another person to state a view, only so the can attack that person. What is interesting is that when this is done, that person usually cannot get away with that tactic again with the same person for a while. One individual on a Blog forum and let’s just call her Jen stated; “Maybe I’m like the “girl who cried wolf” and you won’t believe me no matter what I say. If so, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

This after she tried the same tactic again with the same person to establish report to gain information. Yet that person upon hearing this admission of the girl who cried wolf stated; “I believe this to be the case. I believe you have tarnished your credibility in attempting to play psychological games and alienated yet another straight person, who actually was willing to assist [using the mightier pen] in seeing that equal rights for all in a country that claims to pride its self in such, made good on its promise. I bet I could have helped quite a bit. Of course, in the end of all the human furious sound, signifying not much, does it really matter which side you pick, in enjoying that aspect of the human endeavor? That is to say, should I join the other side and promote the status quo, using the same resources at my disposal?”

Rather than gaining an asset or friend to help in Jen’s cause she alienated a potentially strong player who might have been willing to assist her? Unfortunately Jen lost an opportunity and this shows that primate politics on Internet Blogs do indeed play at higher speeds than normal socialization. Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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Language as Identity

English is not just a national language it is a unique global passport.

The sameness of language can overcome any identity crisis, sometimes inconveniently. When I arrived in London, fresh from South Africa and desperate to immerse myself in a foreign culture, language became an issue. If I opened my mouth to speak and there was a South African nearby (and there usually was…) they would inevitably gravitate toward me and want to bond. This was not what I had in mind; I have nothing against my fellow citizens but I had spent a lot of money, and come a long way to have a ‘foreign’ experience. The concept of a bunch of us hanging out together in London was beyond me.

Just as there is safety in numbers, there is safety in a shared language. Our voice quality, accent, vocabulary, and particular idiom all denote who we are and where we come from. Language articulates our identity. Others recognise this identity and either there is a synchronicity (you’re part of the group) or there is not. Friends feel the same about things; have similar interests; and will often express themselves in a common language.

The British government’s Kingman report in 1988 on the teaching of English firmly endorsed the importance of language education as an instrument of personal development, and the promotion of a sense of personal identity: the ’shaping of personality and the exploration of self are inextricably bound up with language development.” But the report also recognised the role of language teaching to develop wider identities. “From childhood,” it says, “we learn to use language not only to identify with certain groups but also to exclude others.”

To belong to a particular ‘nation’ is a sense of identity. We reside in a certain geographical area and are as a result, a certain race. South Africa is a good example of people of many different races trying to develop a sense of patriotic identity in respect of the nation. This, of course is only happening now, and South Africa was a prime example of how certain groups who do not talk the same, look the same, or act the same are excluded from the ‘greater’ group. However, given the importance of communication in fostering links between people, it is not surprising that language is high on the list. South Africa has eleven official languages but English is the one you need in order to get a worthwhile job; in fact, there are few countries in the world where English is not used in the course of a day. English has become our global common ground.

Language helps to articulate cross-national identities that would otherwise be difficult to sustain. Therefore, the Kingman report emphasised the need for children to widen their horizons and prepare themselves to enter a ‘public world’ to which the passport is language. International conferences are usually held in English; our cross-national youth culture currently converse mostly over the Internet in English; popular music is often sung in English and so it goes. Language is seen as opening pathways not only to careers but also to fulfilment in identifying with the global community at large - and which you may seek to identify with as well.

The Bilinguagroup has an internationally renowned translation and interpreting team that are passionate and multilingual with 20 years experience in the language arena. Providing professional translation and interpreting services around the globe means more than just solid translation at competitive prices - understanding different cultures and the use of language is essential too.

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