Ever since Netflix started streaming movies on demand over the Internet I’ve been skeptical. Sure, it might occasionally be nice to watch a movie on a laptop and yes, it’s technically possible to hook a PC up to a television and watch a movie that way. But let’s face it — watching movies on your typical computer screen isn’t an optimal experience, and hooking your PC up to a television usually isn’t the most practical solution. So I basically ignored the streaming part of Netflix’s service while I continued to enjoy new DVD’s showing up in my mailbox as fast as I could watch them.

However, the one drawback to a service like Netflix is the lack of immediacy. There are nights when I feel like watching a movie. A dumb movie. Something with round-house kicks and fart jokes. And then I realize the only DVD’s from Netflix currently in the house are Bergman and Fellini flicks. What to do? For awhile I’ve tried running out to the grocery store where they have DVD rental vending machines that let you rent any of the (mostly new release) movies in the machine for $1 per night. Not a bad deal, but ultimately there were two problems with it. First, the stupid machines are broken more often than not, typically when trying to return the movie. Which means you have to call the rental company and complain about it being broken so they don’t continue to charge you for the movie while you wait for the machine to start working again. Second, running out to the grocery store to rent a movie kinda defeats the whole purpose of subscribing to a DVD delivery service in the first place.

So, imagine my delight when I noticed that Roku, makers of my beloved Soundbridge, had introduced a “Netflix Player.” Intrigued, I spent some time Googling the appliance and was surprised to see overwhelmingly postive reviews for it. Even better, the player cost only $99 which made ordering one an easy decision. I spent the next few days anxiously hopping from foot to foot waiting for FedEx to drop off my Netflix Player. And yesterday they finally did. The player arrives in a box about the size of a typical hardcover book. In the box is a “Quick Start Guide,” the player, composite cables, a small remote, and a small power supply. The player itself is surprisingly small — about the size of a paperback book. Nevertheless, Roku manages to cram in HDMI, component, composite, and digital outputs, along with wired or wireless internet connectivity. Setup could not have been simpler. I removed all the items from the shipping box and scampered downstairs to install it into my home theater. I plugged in the power supply, and connected the player up to my TV using the included composite cables. Next I turned on the TV and switched to the video input into which I had plugged the Netflix player. Immediately I saw a screen prompting me to go through a setup wizard. First I had to choose whether to use a wired or wireless connection. After choosing to go wireless, I selected my wireless network. The player immediately connected to the network and tested the internet connection. Finally, it displayed a code on the screen with instructions to visit my Netflix page on a PC and enter the code. I did so, and upon returning to the room I saw that my movie queue was already displayed on the screen. Giddy, I selected “Breaker! Breaker!” (Roundhouse kicks, yes. Fart jokes, none.) The screen went blank and I watched as the movie buffered, which took about 30 seconds. After that, I watched the movie as if it were a DVD sitting in my local player. So was setup easy? I’d say that going from opening the package to watching a movie in under 5 minutes qualifies as pretty easy.

Is it perfect? No, not quite. Currently there is no HD video available, though that is supposed to come by the end of the year. Apparently the lack of HD is a Netflix thing, not a limitation of the hardware. You can’t browse through all of Netflix’s movies through the player — it only shows movies in your queue, which means you do have to move things you want to watch into your queue using a computer before sitting down with the player. Also, the player seems unable to work with multiple queues. Still, those are minor quibbles and if Roku continues to upgrade the software for the Netflix player like they’ve done for the Soundbridge I’d imagine those quibbles will be dealt with sooner rather than later. All-in-all I’m so impressed with it I plan on ordering a second for another room in the house.

Once a popular and effective way of fighting spam, DNS blacklists are no longer effective or reliable tools in the war against spam. The reasons are many, but a few key problems:

• Spammers are, if nothing else, a resourceful bunch. Whatever barrier you erect to prevent their spam from reaching your mailbox they always seem to find a way to circumvent. And DNS blacklists are no different. Once spammers figured out they could no longer keep spamming from the same IP’s, they went to look for a way to send from constantly varying IP’s. They’ve achieved that goal by using self-propagating viruses, trojan horses, and worms to take control of millions of unsuspecting PC’s. They use such “zombied” PC’s to send out their spam now as well. And when one of the millions is blacklisted, they simply move on to the next. They have a neverending pool of IP’s to send from, and as a result they’re always one step ahead of the DNS blacklists. What that means is that for the most part, IP’s listed on the blacklists are old news — it’s unlikely there is much spam still originating from that vast majority of the IP’s.

• Most of the DNS blacklists operating today are nonprofit ventures staffed by a loose confederation of volunteers. They do not charge for their services, and thus are accountable to no one. That lack of accountability means there are no standards for quality of service. No standards or guarantees of accuracy or timeliness. That may be fine for hobbyists, but for anyone who conducts business via email and thus can’t afford to lose emails to false-positives that fact alone should make your hair stand on end. Also keep in mind what this means for you as a user of these blacklists. The blacklist administrators do not have your best interests at heart. Many of these are people so filled with rage over spam that they are willing to spend significant portions of their time fighting it. Their goal is to stamp out spam wherever it is found, and do not concern themselves who gets trampled in the process. They are essentially email vigilantes who owe allegiance to no one but themselves.

• Not all DNS blacklists even publish their listing and delisting policies. (Would you trust your spam filtering to a service that won’t even tell you how they make their decisions??) Those that do often seem to treat their policies more as general guidelines. Too often I’ve seen overzealous list administrators break their own policies again and again to pursue a personal vendetta. Lack of professionalism such as this alone this should make such lists unpalatable to the average business mail administrator.

• As I mentioned, most blacklists are run by volunteers who spend hours a day without compensation doing their part in the war against spam. Their intentions are always for the best, but the results are often anything but. Putting so much of yourself into what is ultimately a losing battle would take its toll on anyone. Unfortunately for anyone using these lists, this often manifests itself by list administrators taking out their frustrations by misusing their lists. This is usually in the form of “collateral damage” where list administrators start blocking large swaths of IP’s in an attempt to get an Internet provider to take notice. Some lists even have a stated policy of doing so. I see two problems with using collateral damage as part of a spam filtering solution. First, most of the blacklists that use collateral damage as a weapon state that they slowly increase the size of the block in the face of continued unresponsiveness from the ISP in question. That policy sounds ok at first, until you consider that many of the lists with such policies also have a policy of not contacting the ISP’s in question to notify them of the listing. As a result, the blocks can get quite large before the ISP takes notice, through no fault of their own. The unresponsiveness is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, the lists are then listing thousands upon thousands of IP’s which they know are not spammers. Which means if you are using that list, there are thousands of potential customers who cannot reach you.

It’s a frustrating problem. No one wants to have their inbox filled with spam, but at the same time you can’t afford to miss a potentially important email because of rampant vigilantism. Are there fair, responsibly run DNS blacklists? There are few, but I won’t mention them here, because they are always subject to change. What is a professionally run blacklist today could go off the deep-end tomorrow. And besides, they’re only marginally effective anyway.

So how *do* you stop spam? Use content filtering, rather than DNS blacklists. It’s more effective and reliable and isn’t subject to the whims of antispam zealots. And you’re in control. Or, for those who don’t have the time or technical chops to roll their own filtering, subscribe to an outsourced spam filtering service such as Postini. Yes it costs money but that money buys you accountability. You’re paying for having someone to complain to if the service isn’t meeting your expectations. That helps guarantee your filtering service won’t start pulling any of the shenanigans mentioned above. And if they do, you can cancel and subscribe to a different service.

DNSbl administrators’ response to any complaints or suggestions about their policies is invariably something along the lines of, “If you don’t like what we’re doing or how we’re doing it, don’t use it.” I recommend you take their advice.

Judging by the number of Google hits for that particular error, I’d say I’m far from the only one that runs into it. It’s actually an easy thing to fix, but good luck finding coherent information on how to do it by searching Google. But, if you’ve stumbled onto this post and are running most any flavor of Linux, you’re in luck.

So, you’ve just compiled and installed the latest whiz-bang gew-gaw onto your system, but when you try to run it, you get an error like, “raideng: error while loading shared libraries: libraidutil.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory.” No worries. Provided everything compiled ok, all you need to do to fix it is this:

1. Check and make sure that your system actually has the referenced file. In this specific example, you would do:

find / -name libraidutil.so.0

2. Note the directory that the file is located in, and add it to /etc/lib.so.conf

3. Run ldconfig without any options.

4. Try running your application again.

And it’s that easy.