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§ Actiontec M1000 DSL modem security

I used to use an Actiontec GT701 DSL modem.  Since my entire livelihood depends on my internet access, I got a little nervous when some odd things started happening.  As it happened, a friend was having trials with the phone company getting her DSL to work, and was advised to try the Actiontec M1000.  Still no go, so I tested her modem here and it worked nicely.  (That was all the phone company's fault, and after getting escalated a few times, I believe they were a bit embarrassed.)  So I looked around and found a slightly used M1000 (with wireless) for about $30!  (I don't want the wireless - I use Airport.  Being an Apple product, it's actually comprehensible to mere mortals like myself.)  But after a few days, weird things started happening with the M1000...

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§ Software that leaves a mess

The other day, my WinXP machine kept bringing up the "let's clean up your hard drive" wizard, which I kept closing.  I finally realized that Explorer claimed that I had 0 bytes available on my system drive!  "Impossible," I thought, "what's wrong now?!  A virus?"  Not quite...

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§ Validating email addresses (it's impossible) (Rant Alert!)

Search google for "validate email address" and you'll get about 303,000 results.  I bet all of them are wrong...

Short version:

Why bother?  I'm probably going to enter "example@example.com" anyway.

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His idea managed to be both horribly unformed and far too complex - in itself quite an accomplishment, he supposed.
Martinez, The Sundering, Walter Jon Williams