amir's old homepage

amir's old homepage (→ go to my new site)

not much to say here... you can take a look at my public pgp key if you want (below). this is pretty much a pathetic, old-school webpage that belongs back in the early nineties. don't let that discourage you, though, i'm sure you'll find this a valuable resource (i've got software, text, and an occasional picture, too). if you'd like more information, or want to ask me a question, feel free to send me a mail (see address on the bottom of the page).

stable projects

Botanica

QwikChat

fs2web: pretty directory listings script

QwikMail SMTP Server

ubkp

μidentd (IPv6+IPv4)

documents

every now and then, i write documents, faqs, howtos, and what-nots, some of which are available here. if you need technical documentation written, feel free to contact me.

Use DB2 native XML with PHP (2005-10-27)

Aug  3  2002 ShellBox Mini-HOWTO
somtime 2001 ELS HOWTO (N/A)

other projects, software & hacks

mediadb

video and digital media stuff

xml broker interface client/server (xbi)

dnsd (currently offline): a DNS server written in Perl. experimented with MySQL storage for records.

pocketsrv: offline

WinTheater: cinema-style projection application for movies. use arrow keys to move video window.

ip2geo

some RRDtool/grapher.cgi mods to produce 95th percentile graphs that produce graphs like this

qmail+friends install script

my sites

Virus Experts

so what's the difference between projects and software you ask? projects are on-going, and todo-list stuff, whereas software includes the former, as well as ancient software that i have written.

publicité

although i don't agree 100% with this page, i think its worthwhile reading. this is what i think:

domains were (somewhat) meant to group together hosts. why do we use www.domain.com instead of domain.com? well domain.com might not exist. www.domain.com might be a cluster of http servers. for ftp service, why do we use ftp.domain.com? for news servers, why is the convention to give names like news.domain.com? or for your smtp or imap server, why just mail.domain.com? does that mean we will receive email at user@mail.domain.com? no. it means that each host/subdomain is meant to serve a particular purpose. sure, they may be located on the same physical machine, but that is not the point. it's tough to get mainstream adaption of things like SRV records (just like it's true for any other Internet standard of "good practice" policy).
on another note, it's great that AOL has adopted use of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), by adding the appropriate TXT records to the aol.com domain records. even Google/Gmail has adopted. when many of the free email providers start doing this, and when SPF is enabled by default on fresh installs of SMTP servers, we should expect to see a decrease in the amount of spam. of course this does not solve the problem of open proxies, spam relays, etc. nor does it solve any problems that ingress or egress filtering would solve if competent isp's would use them to their advantage. what advantage is there in allowing incoming connections to dialup users port 25? netbios ports? let them run ftp/web/whatever servers, just place an ingress filter on ports/protocols that can be used to spread havoc on the net (smtp/25, netbios family, nfs family, etc.). one could also argue that this should be done for broadband (cable and dsl) connections. true, but the filters on these connections should not be as strict. one would want to allow a user to host an smtp server on their dsl line. then again, it would not be 100% wise to allow incoming netbios connections.
of course, many of these problems would be solved if vendors produced nearly bug-free code, if most operating systems had non-executable stacks, isp's understood the value of network security, dumb users would not click Yes on every button, firewalls would be enabled by default (the default ingress or egress policy could be debatable), etc.

pgp key

~~My public key can be found here. Its fingerprint:~~

4296 EE70 8F7C 1D1A D3C9  D885 95A9 6F83 73E7 589E

As embarrassing as it may sound, I forgot my passphrase to the above key, as it's due to expire sometime around 2015, I'm keeping it around just in case I remember the passphrase.

contact info

You can contact me via email at (if you can't see my email address, your browser doesn't support JavaScript; view the source of this page to find out my email address). You can also find me on Jabber, my JID is amir@jabber.unoc.net (that's not an email address!). If you don't know what Jabber is, find out!

All content and ideas © 1990-2006 Amir Malik. All Rights Reserved. All software available on this website is © 1999-2006 Amir Malik. Each particular software package has specific requirements in its license, please see the included files for more information. It is against the law to redistribute my software without my permission.