I'm getting a huge amount of SPAM. I have a lot of filters, but it looks like my system performance is actually now being impacted by the work my filters are doing.

This came to a head when I was debugging an email problem on another system. I sent email to myself from that system while watching my /var/log/maillog. I kept missing what I was looking for because of all of the darn SPAM hammering my system.

The thing that is annoying me right now is all of the spam send to accounts that don't exist on my system. Running this command shows me attempts to send mail to non-existent accounts:

sudo tail -f /var/log/maillog | grep reject

Using iptables to count bandwidth usage

This command will use iptables to log bandwidth of web traffic:
sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -j LOG
or this adds a label so you can see what is what

sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j LOG --log-prefix 'www' and then this shows that usage:

sudo /sbin/iptables -L OUTPUT -v

This works if I stop my default firewall rules...so I need to clean my default rules...

sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -j LOG --log-prefix 'mail'

This also works, to at catch the responses (ie. source port)

sudo /sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 25 -j LOG --log-prefix 'mail'

I wrote a program to look at reject'ed emails in my maillog

sudo tail -20000 /var/log/maillog | grep reject | ./maillog.pl

maillog.pl just groups by ip address.

So this is quasi interesting to show the current attempts:

watch 'sudo tail -20000 /var/log/maillog | grep reject | ./maillog.pl'
maillog.pl (this is of course ugly, code but you can see what it is doing)

So watching that gives me the most recent abusers, who I can add to my kill file with:

sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT --source 192.168.0.8 -j DROP

But I do have the default firewall rules running, so to log things with the firewall running:
sudo /sbin/iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -j LOG

The firewall config lives in /etc/sysconfig/iptables and can be edited by /usr/bin/system-config-securitylevel

This is quasi interesting:

watch 'sudo /sbin/iptables -L INPUT -v'

When I was in high school for a year in Minnesota in 78/79 I remember buying gas for 99 cents/gallon. It was a noteworthy amount, because it was near to a buck a gallon.

Today in California Gas is $2.25 plus or minus, it has been higher and lower recently, and is likely to get higher soon.

Basically a 2.25 increase in gas prices in 26 years. So 99 cents a gallon in 1979, but what is that worth today? Economic History Services has a 'What is its Relative Value' service. According to it:

In 2003, $0.99 from 1979 is worth:
$2.51 using the Consumer Price Index
$2.11 using the GDP deflator
$2.46 using the unskilled wage
$3.29 using the GDP per capita
$4.24 using the relative share of GDP

So it sort of looks like unskilled workers who paid a buck a gallon for gas in 1979 could pay $2.46 today.

But I'm sort of picking on 1979. Gas prices jumped a lot in there. They were about 60 cents a gallon from July 1975, up to about 66 cents in Dec 1978, and then at $1.02 in Dec 1979, then they were more stable for quite a while (well, 'stable' is an odd word to apply to gas prices, but bear with me...).

In 2003, $0.66 from 1978 is worth:
$1.86 using the Consumer Price Index
$1.52 using the GDP deflator
$1.78 using the unskilled wage
$2.42 using the GDP per capita
$3.16 using the relative share of GDP

So picking a slightly different base price provides a less optimistic view, but cars get better mileage today then in 1978, so that 1.78 equivelent in the unskilled wage can be bumped up a bit to account for higher mileage.

Here is my thesis: Gas prices are not nearly high enough to serve as a significant disincentive to driving.

Misc Poking at Statistics with little meaning... (you can probably stop reading here because I am thrashing through some numbers)

According to the 'Monthly Energy Review' at Energy Information Administration in the US Department of Energy the 'U.S. City Average Retail Price' varied between 64.4 and 85 cents per gallon. That is an all city average, and I suspect Minnesota prices could easily have been a tad higher then the national average.

Gas prices have varied quite a bit, the US City Average Price was 99.4 cents/gallon by November 1978. And it went up, and then was under a buck a gallon from March 1986-March 1989, and Nov and Dec 1989, and then a decade later from Jan 1999-Mar 1999. It was as low $1.13 in Jan 2002.

But that isn't my story :-) My story is that based on a hazily recollected price from a snowy St. Paul night in winter of 1979 that current gas prices, adjusted for inflation, are not out of line.

We pay more in California, but the nationwide average in Dec 2004 was $1.88

But is this just an example of picking optimal times? Yeah...probably. That 1.13 in Jan of 2002 maps to $1.20 today, so in today's terms gas was much cheaper, but it was $1.60 in June of 1999, so perhaps that 1.20 in Jan 2002 should be considered a discount on gas for a short period, I don't know. On the other hand, in 1976 gas was 60 cents a gallon, which in today's (well, 2003) dollars is 1.91, or about what gas cost at the end of the year in 2004 (yes, there is an extra year in there, but inflation has been low recently).

Which all speaks for a series comparing historic gas prices in today's dollars (however you want to define 'today'). But again, while the prices vary, the upshot is that they just are not enough to have a big impact on consumer behavior.

I've read sources who treat demand for gas as being inelastic in respect to price, but I just don't buy that. I think demand for gas is inelastic in respect to price while gas prices are within a comfort zone for consumers.

I don't know the true limits of that comfort zone, but I do know that I consider the cost of transportation to be a bargain!