Scott Dunbar's web log

The utter hypocrasy of Comcast

I've recently moved (again) to a new dedicated server. Every time I do this I often have to contact the big ISP's (Yahoo, HotMail, etc.) to let them know that no, my machine is not a spam source, and to please remove any blocks they have. So this server move was not really any different. I implemented DKIM as part of this server move and both Yahoo! and HotMail seem to like it better. HotMail still gives an error message:

Apr 13 21:27:51 habanero postfix/smtp[27966]: 82AEA10128A7: to=, relay=mx3.hotmail.com[65.54.244.72]:25, delay=0.89, delays=0.39/0/0.26/0.24, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 mail from IP 64.85.172.185 soft failed sender ID check. Please ensure this IP is authorized to send mail on behalf of [xigole.com])

but the mail still gets through. Yahoo! and GMail are fine with it too. But then there is Comcast...

Apr 13 21:04:52 habanero postfix/smtp[27910]: 7978E10128A5: to=, relay=mx1.comcast.net[76.96.62.116]:25, delay=93129, delays=93129/0.01/0.41/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host mx1.comcast.net[76.96.62.116] refused to talk to me: 554 IMTA09.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast 64.85.172.185 found on one or more DNSBLs, see http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/BL001000)

If you go to that site you'll see that really it is Trend Micro having purchased mail-abuse.org. Apparently the company with machines listed on Spamhaus and hundreds of customer machines sending spam:

Apr 13 17:48:44 habanero postfix/smtpd[27371]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from c-68-40-28-136.hsd1.mi.comcast.net[68.40.28.136]: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [68.40.28.136] blocked using sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org; http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=68.40.28.136; from= to= proto=ESMTP helo=

(one of hundreds I have in my mail logs) wants to block legitimate mail from legitimate sites. And if you try to contact the idiots at Trend Micro about the problem - nope, not your fix, you don't own the netblock. What idiots. My IP isn't listed on any RBL on the net but the dopes at Comcast and Trend Micro don't care about that - they have the "I'm a little boy with a big router and I like to pretend I know what I'm doing" mentality. So I cancelled my subscription to the Trend Micro AV product and I will be damn sure to never switch my home ISP to Comcast. I can only hope you decide to do the same.

Posted at 09:39PM Apr 13, 2009 by Scott Dunbar in General  |  Comments[0]

Computer generated news pages are so much fun

I was reading Yahoo! news most popular articles and came across a great juxtaposition of headlines. The screen shot below is directly from the page:

I just love these!

Posted at 12:32PM Dec 15, 2008 by Scott Dunbar in General  |  Comments[0]

Yahoo mail just continues to impress

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise based on my other issues with them but Yahoo! has started to spam me because they can't configure a mail server. Apparently I've been joe job'd and my hotjoe.com domain is being used as the "From" or "Return-Path" address in spam to hotjobs.com. But Yahoo! is apparently not aware of best practices when responding to email:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mx-in1.hj.scd.yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<zerosolo@hotjobs.yahoo.com>:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)

--- Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path: <webmaster@hotjoe.com>
Received: (qmail 10126 invoked by uid 8004); 30 Apr 2008 04:29:28 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO homeuser148-76.ccl.perm.ru) (195.222.148.76)
  by mx-in1.hj.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 30 Apr 2008 04:29:28 -0000
Content-Return: allowed
X-Mailer: CME-V6.5.4.3; MSN
Message-Id: <20080430112924.6436.qmail@homeuser148-76.ccl.perm.ru>
To: <zerosolo@hotjobs.yahoo.com>
Subject: Dear zerosolo@hotjobs.yahoo.com April 80% 0FF
From: VIAGRA ® Official Site <zerosolo@hotjobs.yahoo.com>

These folks just shouldn't be in the email business as they are utterly clueless. Now that the sale to Microsoft has fallen through I'm not guessing that they'll get any better.

Posted at 03:02PM May 06, 2008 by Scott Dunbar in General  |  Comments[0]

Update on the Yahoo! and HotMail email problems

I've been in contact with both Yahoo! and HotMail regarding the issues I've been having sending mail to both providers. Yahoo! was a total pain to deal with. I got canned responses and incredibly poor help. Apparently though it worked as I can now send email to Yahoo! addresses.

Microsoft HotMail on the other hand was the total opposite. I got an email back that, while it could have been a form email, looked like a human had actually read the support request. This was within an hour of contacting them. I was told that "SmartScreen" had blocked me:

We have identified that messages from your IP 66.197.158.69 are being filtered based on the recommendations of the SmartScreen filter. SmartScreen is the spam filtering technology developed and operated by Microsoft. SmartScreen is built around the technology of machine learning. SmartScreen's filters are trained to recognize what is spam and what isn't spam. In short, we filter incoming emails that look like spam. I am not able to go into any specific details about what these filters specifically entail, as this would render them useless.

Less than 12 hours later I got another email indicating the the problem had been taken care of. I'm guessing that they added my IP to a white list of some sort. I can send emails to HotMail accounts with no problem now.

I've got to say that Microsoft really impressed me with this. I'm not exactly a big ISP but they responded professionally and quickly. I'm still a bit frustrated that their mail system accepts my mail with a 250 response and then sends it to the bit bucket but at least there is a reasonable remedy.

So as to my previous post - it turns out that Yahoo! mail would benefit greatly by being purchased by Microsoft. They could learn alot about being a good netizen.

Posted at 09:04AM Apr 29, 2008 by Scott Dunbar in General  |  Comments[0]

Yahoo! embraces Microsoft HotMail practices in preparation to be bought

I run a small Java programming forum that sends mail on registration and, if the user chooses, when a forum topic gets updated. Recently whenever my system tries to send an email to Yahoo! it is deferred with the message:

Apr 10 11:11:34 habanero postfix/smtp[22430]: 940D11027FE: host b.mx.mail.yahoo.com[66.196.97.250] refused to talk to me: 421 Message from (66.197.158.69) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html

Sometimes it goes through, sometimes it waits for a few days. I guess this is slightly better than HotMail though. HotMail claims to accept the mail and then it just disappears - it isn't in the inbox nor the spam folder.

I presume that this new behaviour is Yahoo! preparing to be more like Microsoft so that the merger will go smoother.

Interestingly enough, if you contact Yahoo! "support" about this you get a very helpful email:

This is an automated message regarding your recent request for Yahoo! Postmaster Customer Care Support. We have received your message but due to a temporary problem we wanted to let you know it could take up to a week until you receive a response. We apologize for this inconvenience.

A week, huh? Very useful. Once again, they are preparing to become part of HotMail.

An interesting blog post from Yahoo! seems to indicate that this is self feeding. They changed the spam filters which caused more sites like my own to be blocked. This in turn increased the number of issues they received requesting that the block be lifted for a particular IP. Um, is it just me or wouldn't it be simpler to remove the new blocking? Whatever - the solution is to stop using Yahoo! mail.

Posted at 11:36AM Apr 10, 2008 by Scott Dunbar in General  |  Comments[0]

Denver International and Free Wi-Fi

I fly out of Denver International Airport reasonably often. Recently I've had a chance to use their free Wi-Fi. It does work. But it is all relative. If you have a system like me where Flash doesn't run (64 bit Linux) you have to just sit for 30 seconds to get on. Turns out this Wi-Fi is supported by advertisements. It is not actually provided by the airport. There are a ton of cookies that you have to accept to get it to work.

I guess that you get what you pay for but DIA - I give this service a C-. It passes but just barely. There are some sites that I can't get use like my own Java forums. I can get there but apparently I didn't accept the correct advertising cookie as I can't log into to it.

So DIA - thanks for the connection but maybe the rates you get for a bottle of Dr. Pepper would be able to pay for this. That way you don't have to eliminate my privacy when I use your system.

Posted at 01:44PM Mar 30, 2008 by Scott Dunbar in Travel  |  Comments[0]

Updated blog to newest Java and Roller

I've upgraded this blog from Roller 3.1 to Roller 4.0. This is not a very clean process - I had to repost some stuff but it is done. As part of this I've also updated to Tomcat 6 and Java 6 - in 64 bits no less! Let me know if you run into any problems.

Posted at 01:15PM Mar 25, 2008 by Scott Dunbar in Java  |  Comments[1]

Our trip to Dreams Tulum in Mexico

My wife and I just got back from a trip to Dreams Tulum Resort and I wanted to post a bit of a review of it for future travelers. We were there from June 16 through June 23 inclusive. What follows are my impressions of the resort and the Tulum area in general.

But first a little background. Almost every time I read resort reviews I wonder if the people are the same as me or if they want different things. So... this trip was for my wife and I only. We have 4 kids but they stayed with family at home. We're 40'ish and reasonably active. We enjoy good food and drink. We're pretty generic in most other aspects.

 

The Reservation
We booked our reservation through a local Apple Vacations agent. I personally find these types of people easier to deal with as they pretty much take care of everything. The advantage of Apple is that they have everything very well organized for your transportation down and back. They seem to be pretty cost competitive when you put everything together.

 

The Resort
Dreams is an all inclusive resort. If you don't want anything optional such as a spa treatment you will never need your wallet the entire time you're there. We find this to be a fantastic setup as you don't care nearly as much if the waiter brings you the wrong type of beer or if you don't like a particular drink that you ordered. It allows you to experiment with food and beverages that you might not otherwise experience if you were directly paying for it. We did tip some servers who seemed to go above the call of duty - like the guy who was sweating visibly as he delivered us our third round of drinks on the beach.

Having said that, Dreams Tulum is still very family friendly. There seemed to be lots of things for kids to do and there were many, many families there.

The resort is in the town of Tulum Mexico and nearthe Tulum Mayan ruins. But when I say near I mean pretty close, not next door. Some of the promotional materials we read lead us to think that they were a lot closer. They are about a 10 minute cab ride or a half hour bike ride. The ruins themselves are pretty impressive and can easily be explored in a half day trip.

The buildings and decorations made the resort feel like an old style Mexican building. The wood floors creaked a bit which added to the charm. The two pools (a "quiet" pool and a "play" pool with a swim up bar), coupled with the beach, allowed you to pick a location based on your mood at the time.

We stayed in what I have seen other reviews refer to as the "old" section - building 7. We were on the top floor of a three story building with an ocean view - a very beautiful ocean view at that. The room itself was great - I heard some people complain that their air conditioning wasn't great but we had no problems at all. Our particular building would not have been suitable for handicapped people (at least past the first floor) as it didn't have an elevator. It looks like the newer buildings do have elevators.

The resort is laid out in a long strip. We were lucky to be staying towards the beach side as that is where the majority of stuff is located. The end furthest from the beach has a theater, health club, and the bicycles for the Tulum bicycle ride. If you are staying on the end away from the beach you will be walking a good amount.

I would estimate that at least 90% of the clientèl were from the US. I have stayed in a Mexican resort along Playa Del Carmen before and it was a lower percentage there. What that means for those of us who like to, uh, people watch (yeah, that's the phrase) is that those bathing suit tops stay on the entire time. I convinced my wife that is was ok to remove it for an afternoon but that was the first day. After that it was glued on unless we walked a long way from the resort. I will say that the drink server on the beach circled around much more often once she decided to go topless though.

 

Restaurants and service
There are several restaurants at the resort and while they all have a different "flavor" they are all excellent. We love sushi and the sushi restaurant did not disappoint. The French restaurant was a bit surprising because the portions were fairly small but the presentation was great and the food tasted great. Please don't be the ugly American seated a few tables from us and order two entrees at once though. The Italian restaurant has a spicy tomato sauce that made my eyes water (and I love very spicy food) but I finished it off. At lunch time only two of the restaurants are open but they were still good.

At another all inclusive resort I stayed at there were limitations on how often you could visit the "good" restaurants. There were no such restrictions at Dreams Tulum. We had sushi and the outdoor Patio restaurant two nights each.

The overall service at the resort is superb. Whether we were on the beach, by the pool, or in a restaurant the service was always top notch. The servers seem to be genuinely concerned with making sure you were satisfied.

 

Extras
We had the beach side couples massage. It was at 9 in the morning and except for the construction at the dive shack it was very peaceful. The massage therapists were very good and very professional. It's not cheap at about USD $200 total for the both of us but it was well worth it.

We used our Apple representative to book a day at Xel Ha (pronounced shell-ha). It was pretty good - we saw a stingray foraging for food. It is a bit over-priced but we still enjoyed it. One thing though - if you think you want to go buy bio-degradable sunscreen before you leave home. Xel Ha charged 169 pesos for it - about USD $15.

My wife and I took a scuba lesson and trip to the ocean. Neither of us had ever been scuba diving before and it was incredible. The staff at the scuba shack was extremely friendly and professional. And the reefs are, for those of use who have never done it before, very impressive. Yes, I'm sure that there are more impressive reefs in Mexico but it was a great experience for us.

 

The downside
While Dreams Tulum is a nice resort there are a few things that I would caution you about before you go:

• Communication back home - given that we left kids at home we wanted to call them. While that was possible from the room with a credit card it was incredibly expensive. USD $40 for a 10 minute call and USD $9 for a failed call (we're still going to dispute that one). My T-Mobile cell phone was nearly USD $5 / minute so it would have been about as cheap. Internet access was extremely limited and expensive - don't bother bringing a laptop. While I do go on vacation to get away from it all I wanted to be able to communicate a little with back home.
• Salt Water - it takes a while to get used to taking salt water showers and brushing your teeth with bottled water. Add to that the salt water pools and you'll feel a bit overwhelmed with salt water by the time you leave.
• The ocean - if you're like me you like to wade out into the ocean. Not real swimming just stand up to your waist in the warm ocean water. Well don't count on doing that very easily at Dreams Tulum. There are rocks/reefs not two feet from shore (or on shore) along most of the beach. It gets a little bit better on the south side but not much. If you want an incredible beach walk south about a half mile outside of the resort. There you can wander out pretty deeply in only sand. Of course, you're off property so don't expect anything else down there.
• Construction - when we got the paperwork from Apple it stated that, while there was construction going on, it would be done by July of 2006. We thought "well if it is done then then they'll only be working inside by now". Bull. It looks like they are about doubling the size of the resort and they might be done by July 2007. While there was no apparent work being done on the weekend it occurred during the week for most of the day. On Friday, our last day, we took a walk along the beach at about 7:30AM. They were already working on the buildings. I did not stay directly next to the construction (other than the dive shack) so I can't speak for how much you could hear in the rooms. The construction on the dive shack was almost complete when we were there so if you're not going until, say, the middle of July 2006 and beyond it is likely to be done. We were told that the dive shack construction was because the old shack was destroyed in a hurricane. 

 
Summary
Overall I would recommend Dreams Tulum, subject to the caveats above. It really kind of frustrates me that, given the cost of the resort, the phone situation is the way it is. Everything else I could handle but that one still has me fuming. But if you're there with your entire family that may not apply to you.

Some more pictures

• Cenotes in front of the main building
• Construction site on the north side of the resort. This seems to have been abandoned and there was no work occurring during our stay.
• Construction on the south side of the resort. As you can see it is still very active and very much not done.
• The "fun" pool.
• Another view of the fun pool.
• A different view from our room
• Yet another view from our room

I'd encourage you to post any questions or comments you have - thanks for your time and have a great vacation wherever you decide to go!

Posted at 11:35AM Apr 30, 2007 by Scott Dunbar in Travel  |  Comments[0]