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sounds like a stereotypical trojan/adware/malware infection. at least all you're getting are pop-ups. the last one i had to deal with at work also used DNS-hijacking to redirect any webpage request to their spam (porn) site, preventing any web surfing. to make things worse, it wouldn't even allow the user to run certain programs, like notepad, Hijack This!, Internet Explorer (this malware targeted Firefox).

a fresh install is probably the easiest/quickest way to fix it, but it's not the only solution. with a little sleuthing (Windows Task Manager & Hijack This!) you can usually identify the file & process name(s) of the malware. all the times i've had to deal with that sort of thing, i found the solution in forum discussions on tech support sites (found by googling the file/process name of the trojan). if you're lucky, someone will have made a cleaner program for that particular malware program.

one of the more frequently encountered malware/adware programs is SmitFraud. that's one i've encountered several times. it cannot be removed by AV programs or spyware/malware removers (though it'll try to get you to purchase and install rogue AV/Anti-Spyware programs). if you do have SmitFraud, then your best shot is SmitFraudFix.

If you're using PuTTY, you should check out PuTTY Connection Manager, it's free, it's PuTTY, and it's got tabs, connection profiles, etc. As soon as it supports PuTTYCyg connections I plan on switching to it for all my terminal needs on Windows.

http://futurepast.free.fr/OLD/opensiebel/

Pat doesn't like PAM, which is why it isn't in Slackware.

What doesn't he like about it?

From the Slackware 9.1 ChangeLog as quoted in the alt.os.linux.slackware FAQ:

If you see a security problem reported which depends on PAM,
you can be glad you run Slackware. I think a better name for PAM
might be SCAM, for Swiss Cheese Authentication Modules, and have
never felt that the small amount of convenience it provides is
worth the great loss of system security. We miss out on half a
dozen security problems a year by not using PAM, but you can always
install it yourself if you feel that you're missing out on the fun.
(No, don't do that)

I don't know if this criticism is still valid or not, since this is old, but it's still true that nothing stops you from installing it yourself.

I'd prefer a PDF reader for homebrew. ComicBookDS is quite a cool little application that will let you read CBR files, you'll need to convert them first but its essentially just scaling & rar'ing them in a particular way.

finish my port of XEmacs to BeOS and Haiku, and update the define of B_MAX_CPU_COUNT from 8 to 256 :)

ClamWin is an open source antivirus for Windows that can not scan files in real time, unfortunately. With Winpooch, just associate ClamWin and it will be possible to detect virus in a program before it runs.

http://winpooch.free.fr/page/home.php?lang=en&page=home

I just don't get what the big deal is. Bad? Yes. New? NO!

I write network applications for a living. This type of coordination with a large number of hosts is precisely the kind of thing that I write professionally. While it takes some work to get this kind of coordination in place, it's probably a man-week with standard tools and commonly available information for somebody who understands how to write network applications.

Years ago (2002?) I saw similar behavior in what I called a "spam attack". I was the sysadmin for a small-mid sized ISP. (about 10,000 clients) I witnessed behavior exactly like this delivering SPAM. It would come in waves, over a 4-6 hour period, clearly targeting addresses on our mail server cluster. I logged thousands of IP addresses over this 4-6 hour period. And then, after a half day or so, it would just... stop.

With this many IP addresses, it's pretty obvious that the 3 Mb dual-bonded T1 bandwidth that the mail cluster was on could be DDOS'd trivially. Yet other than an occasional perl-based IRC client bot uploaded by some client's vulnerable script, DDOS attacks of any kind were pretty rare.

BTW: Greylisting killed these spam attacks deader than dead. Blocked virtually everything in a spam attack so effectively that the load on the mail cluster didn't rise even noticeably. Our mail cluster ran Qmail-LDAP, so to get greylisting to work we had two sendmail/greylisting relays as the primary MX, which then relayed in to the mail cluster. (which had no MX published for it) Although the greylisting relays were just cheap hardware, we had to bump up the RAM since the Greylisting database (kept in RAM) grew to be pretty large.

If you are curious: http://hcpnet.free.fr/milter-greylist/ I use it to this day, because it's virtually zero administration and it works very, very well.

The ultimate algorithm is called Warnsdorf's heuristic:
http://www.delphiforfun.org/programs/knights_tour.htm
It solves all possible orders (>100x100) in less than a second.

The algorithm cited in the article is really shitty, because it requires recursion.

Hint: I implemented an algorithm to enumerate all magic knight tours (magic, like in magic squares):
http://magictour.free.fr/

Maybe because at the moment there are very few applications of an Internet connection for which you'd notice the difference between 1mbit and 10mbit.

Unless you are a habitual downloader, you won't notice any difference to your web and email by moving above 1mbit

With 1mbps you cannot get a proper TV signal through your ADSL connection. With 7mbps+ you can watch one SD channel. And I'm not talking about YouTube but about 100+ real national TV channels on 24h/7. With 10mbps+ you can watch HD TV. With 14mpbs+ you start can watch two SD channels at once which is actually nice if you have a few teenage kids. With 20mbps+ you can do the same with HD channels.

No I'm not talking about science fiction here but triple-play. Stuff that has been around for years in France, is taken for granted by many non-geeks and can save you on the order of $50/month (by dropping your redundant cable subscription).

Of course there's countries where one cannot even dream of getting a TV signal through the ADSL (USA, UK, etc). But that's not a good reason for putting in snide comments about 10mbps+ only being useful to 'habitual downloaders'.

While partimage is excellent software for cloning/backing partitions at a high level, it does have its drawbacks. Specifically, it can't restore to a larger partition directly - you'd first have to restore to the same size partition and resize it (while not a big problem, it is still a hindrance for me at least). This makes it a little tricky for when your old disk fails and you want to upgrade capacity when you restore.

Take a look at DAR for your purposes.

You should take a look at gmusicbrowser, the GUI is VERY customizable. It has a lot of interesting features, but they are sometimes a bit hidden away, I think that's why it's still a hidden gem in linux audio players.

gmusicbrowser offers an interesting solution for theming the app : you can create layouts, with a few text lines, that describe what widgets you want and how they are arranged. That way you can have a simple small player window, or a huge window that take advantage of a widescreen.
Very interesting player, lots of uniques ideas :)

http://dar.linux.free.fr/ try dar. It's like tar but for disks. it also generates PAR files (FEC data) which can help rebuild damaged media.

but the linux driver won't compile against modern kernels.

The original driver doesn't compile.

But, there's a lot of effort from more recent package from other project like Max Haard's GSPCA, which has moved beyond its initial support for SPCA50# only sensors, and started incorporating support for other modern JPEG-based sensors like Zoran, OV5##, etc.

You might want to give it a try.
- gspca is also provided in the standard kernel package on openSUSE
- and I think I remember having spotted a package in synaptic for Ubuntu.

London and Paris need to learn of this idea of free WiFi.

WIFI in Paris has boomed because of the proliferation of ADSL services like Free, Orange, N9uf/SFR, Darty, Alice, etc that all include a box that does ADSL, WIFI, telephone & TV. It is now rare to find someone who has ADSL without having an associated WIFI hotspot even when they do not use the WIFI. As all these boxes come configured with WPA PSK, finding open hotspots has gotten extremely rare as it takes someone who knows what they are doing & is willing to share their ADSL line.

London also needs to understand the idea of running their subway all night.

Paris needs the same lesson, but it won't come until they have automated the train drivers out of existance due to the labor unions blocking any progress on this point. Maybe my kids will be able to go out to a nightclub & get home before 6AM, but I've tired of running around Paris in the middle of the night looking for a taxi or walking home...

There is ghdl. It is simulation only (IIRC). If you are going to run on an FPGA, you need to buy the FPGA. Most FPGA vendors have a free version of their tools...

eabrek
(Posted anonymously because I moderated earlier...)

"hack the registry" :)

basically you have to run this command

%systemroot%\system32\reg.exe add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\autorun.inf" /ve /d "@SYS:DoesNotExist" /f

It tells windows to read a registry key called "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DoesNotExist" instead of autorun.inf file (when such a file exists). Since the key does not exist, windows thinks that the autorun.inf file is empty...

more info here: http://nick.brown.free.fr/blog/2007/10/memory-stick-worms

Not to mention Windowmaker, Afterstep. Maybe not decades, but certainly @1999.

Yes, and what operating system (hint: it was released in 1988) were Windowmaker and Afterstep trying to clone, and what happened to that operating system?

As a matter of fact, contrary to what Wikipedia says, the source code *is* available. The Ministério PÃblico (something like the public prosecutor in US), the OAB - Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, an organ that congregates all lawyers in the country and any of the political parties can have access not only to the source code but to the compilation, digital signing and installation process.

It does not matter that you can audit the published source code. When you get to the polling station you have no way to verify that it is running the code that you audited.

They also can run simulations and test the system for security and fraud

The code running on the machine will only rig the results if more than 700 ballots have been cast, or if the election lasted for more than 10 hours, or if it's election day. Any tests you conduct are very unlikely to catch anything suspicious.

and request any ballot to be audited.

You still seem to be under the illusion that there is any ballot to be audited. The voting computer may well be only keeping a running total for each candidate so that there is no ballot at all. Even if there is one, it will be nothing more than a tiny electric charge in memory, one that was created by the very same software that's rigging the vote in the first place. There is nothing to audit.

The whole software and data is also available for 2 years after the election.

Three words: self erasing code.

Besides, even in the best case, what are you going to do twelve months later when you detect the fraud. Undo every law passed by the government in that interval? Undo any war started by said government? (don't say this cannot happen, look to your 'neighbor way north').

During the election days, representatives of any party can stay at any polling station to be sure that the election is not being rigged in this point.

Are they allowed to hook up a hardware debugger to the voting computer? No? How are they going to verify anything then? You cannot detect a rigged voting computer just by looking at it!

But please, experiment for yourself, go play with this voting machine (yeah, it's in French, sorry): http://fgouget.free.fr/evote/evote.html.

Personally, I think our system is quite secure and would require a major conspiracy involving basically everyone.

Quite the opposite. To rig a paper election you need one or more accomplices in each and every polling station otherwise you won't have any global effect. To rig an electronic election you need exactly one accomplice with access to the binary image being installed on the voting machines.

My first reference for python is:
    http://rgruet.free.fr/PQR25/PQR2.5.html

I wish there was something as complete and helpful for AS3... please let me know if you come across one.

I prefer something I can actually get. Most of the aps on my Wing are open source, and nothing else is filling the OS gap for me on any device I can currently afford.

I'm not opposed to an open source mobile OS, if I could get a slim, functional Ubuntu on my Wing I would be all over it. It appears that some inroads are being made, but nothing is 'ready for the palmtop' yet.

Big ISP don't pay for backbone transit, they have peering agreements. And content providers pay for the transit, in cash and service, it's spelled A.K.A.M.A.I.
You've fallen prey to the corporate american bullshitocracy. They are trying to lobby and lawyer their way out of a technical problem instead of investing in network and equipment.
My ISP did that, they have zero caps whatsoever, they make shitloads of money. It's not in the US, obviously.

There doesn't seem to be any restrictions around here. It's never been verboten to run servers, or download/upload as much as you can.
That's because my ISP has heavily invested in its infrastructure, and the results are ... positive (pdf).
If US ISPs spent half as much on lawyers and lobbyists, maybe they could afford bigger series of pipes.

2d DS version

28Mbps, all you can get for €29.90

That also includes TV, unlimited international phone calls, and so on.

Well, run some tests then ;)

I haven't run tests to compare approaches, but I have messed around with it a bit. I do research on Boolean satisfiability (SAT), so I wrote a script to convert sudoku puzzles to SAT problems and ran a fast SAT solver (MiniSAT) on them. The actual solution for any 9x9 grids I gave it took on the order of milliseconds. I don't know how that compares to other techniques, but it was fast enough that I didn't see much point in looking into it more.

There is a very detailed explanation of this approach written by someone else who tried this approach here. It's actually a great read on several related topics, including SAT solving/solvers in general, P vs NP, BDDs, and more. It's full of interesting links, too.

Still trying to get it going under Cygwin. You'll need a libcap, WinPcap seems to be the ticket. This is a wiki describing the install Download WinPcap here.

Well... These days I mostly play old adventure games via Scummvm. I've even refurbished my old Amiga 1200 so that I can play old favorites without an emulator. =)
Some strategy games are good too.
Did play World of warcraft for a while, but it got really boring quite quickly.

I do own a PS2, but I tend to get bored with most games after 10 - 20 minutes of play.
Best PS2 games I've played recently is Okami and a PS2 port of Flashback

I'm simply not the target audience of most games released. =(

• The canonical portal Notice the links in the LH column.
• The Highly Graphical and Fun One. Free Software.
• The One for Children. Free Software.
• The Super Fast One Available for unsupported use gratis, but not Free Software.
• The Big Commercial One. Commercial software, but gratis for personal and non-commercial use.
• Free Online Books

If he gets a reasonable grasp of the principles of these, I assure you he can look forward to a very profitable and rewarding life.

Because it is just about the only phone you can get with Wi-Fi and a touch screen.

The Nintendo DS ($130, plus $40 for the homebrew expansion card) has Wi-Fi and a touch screen, and it can make and receive VoIP phone calls.

You must be talking about this guy, and that's a pretty nice piece of software. And btw, it has been (kinda) ported to OS X, and the result is here.

A class action to sue themselves, is in a word, the definition of a government.

I guess I don't understand. You are arguing that the free market would solve the problem of CO2 pollution, but then your proposed mechanism is "in a word, the definition of a government". In other words, I think we agree that you need government to solve a problem like this?

I think the RIAA is acting unfairly; but as an example of "suing a large and diffuse class" It has provided an example.

They've filed thousands of individual lawsuits against a class of millions. Frankly, their action is insignificant - and the effect on filesharing is pretty minimal. I mean, all this effort and yet I found this page! A web page, found with a Google search, containing the entire Metallica Black album!

Also, even if the RIAA were successful, I don't think that it would be a good example. There would be no "free market" for IP if it weren't for the government. It's an artificial commodity. Oil would be valuable with or without a government.

You're arguing particulars which I think means you've conceded the premise.

But then by definition you are also arguing particulars - does that mean that you've conceded the premise?

Free provides 28Mb/s ADSL2+ with free international VoIP, free basic TV over IP for 29 euro a month. No capping whatsoever, awesome network quality, they also are the first to provide IPv6 to all their customers, and they make record profits. That's because they invested heavily in infrastructure and logistics, developed their own hardware (both set top box and DSLAMs), and managed to take advantage of significant economies of scale.

In most if not all cases, you will find applications that are as good as if not better than the PalmOS version.

Ah, but can I get the source? It's not essential, but it's a definite important feature for me.

TomTom - Exists for PalmOS and WM. In my opinion the WM version seems to work MUCH better and is far easier to set up.

I haven't tried this, but I was not aware that the GPS was usable by apps on Treo 650.

TCPMP media player - Exists for both platforms, has somewhat extended codec support compared to PalmOS on a Windows Mobile device

Yeah, I prefer TCPMP over RealPlayer, as TCPMP will play OGGs (which is what I rip to by default).

Web browser - The PalmOS web browser Just Plain Sucks in every way possible. Even Pocket IE is better and it isn't that hot (there are other options for WM)

Yes, which is why I've switched to Opera. I'm not happy that I can't get source to Opera, but I can't get source to any of the others and Opera seems to work better.

Java - The Java environment for PalmOS is utter and total crap and when I tried it on my Treo 650 not a single app I tried would work.

I managed to get ahold of the IMB java kit for PalmOS so I could run Opera. Seems to work pretty well, but then I don't use it for anything besides Opera; I'm not a big fan of Java myself.

GMail's Java app works great on my Tilt.

I run my own mail/web server, which seems to work fine with Opera and the mail client that comes with PalmOS. My only gripe there is that the PalmOS mail client doesn't support aliases.

Google Maps - Don't think there's a PalmOS client that can come anywhere close to Google's Windows Mobile native app

Don't know; haven't use the windows mobile version, but the PalmOS version of Google Maps seems to work fine for me.

Instant Messaging - Half of the PalmOS IM app vendors seem to have gone out of business or stopped supporting the app. I've found FAR more choices for WM.

IM isn't a priority for me (I hardly use it). I'm pretty sure there are open source IM clients for PalmOS however.

You don't exactly provide details of what apps you're using.

Here's a list:

• Little John - Console emulator for playing classic games.
• pFuel - Keeps track of gas mileage.
• FreeCoins - Accounting software.
• Keyring - Keeps track of passwords.
• pssh - SSH client.
• Plucker - EBook reader.
• LispMe - Scheme interpreter.
• Eat Watch - Weight tracking.

The thing is, PalmOS works very well for me, and is entirely compatible with Linux (or any other platform I choose to move to). If I were going to move to a new mobile platform, the last place I would look is to Microsoft (or Apple for that matter). Not only would I need to have the apps I use above (which I have source to, so I could port given a decent development environment that runs on my desktop of choice), but I would prefer to move to something more open, not less. Something more hackable, not something that gets in my way when I try to do something the big corps don't like.

If I really need visio, I run it inside a vmware session but that is a bit overkill.

It all depends on what you use visio for anyway. Most generic diagramming can be done with something like yEd http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html - it's not open source but it's free and very nice. And it's java so you can also use it on your XP box :)

For UML sequence diagrams, look at SD-edit http://sdedit.sourceforge.net/. Also java, open source and very quick to use. Trust me, you'll never want to use visio again for sequence diagrams.

For generic UML modelling and reverse engineering, maybe you could take a look at BOUML http://bouml.free.fr/

And there's allways Gliffy http://www.gliffy.com/ which is completely server-side. Be careful though, the free version stores your documents for all the world to see. If you don't mind your drawings being stored on somebody else's server, the $5 a month for the paid version (that also does private documents and unlimited number of drawings) seems reasonable.

Openoffice Draw also isn't too bad as a final alternative perhaps.

As for dia, it seems to have a lot of potential but for now text placement for instance is very un-intuitive (try adding some text to an arrow, you have to connect it manually and the positioning of the text is very awkward). These guys really need to step it up, right now it compares to a really old version of Visio and even then it isn't half as easy to use..

One implementation here, another, more recent, there. I remember there is an Haskell version somewhere, but I can't remember its name.

One implementation here, another, more recent, there. I remember there is an Haskell version somewhere, but I can't remember its name.

Yes, it's just a plist file, but I don't think editing it is any easier than running the command. The command just writes the setting to that file and restarts the dock. If you don't know enough to run the command, there are a couple different apps that can do it for you.

IMHO, it's better than how this sort of thing works in Windows. In Windows, it's usually in the registry, which is a big ugly file that's dangerous to screw around in. OSX has individual files for each program, and if you mess something up, you can usually just delete the file and it will write a new one next time you run the app.

I would like to call it "WHIP-320" now, however ;) It has an ARM9-core at 200 MHz, 32MB RAM and 32MB flash, 802.11b/g and runs a 2.6 kernel.
I did not have to do everything to get it running a terminal (with SSH) though, most of the work was done by some french dudes at http://www.freephonie.org/doku/white:dev (yes, that's two URL's, they are related).
It's an awfully small screen, and you probably need (magnifying) glasses to get work done, but... it *is* an SSH terminal and can help out a lot if you encounter (simple) trouble - see it as a fallback machine.

Hack it for homebrew, and you can have on and offline google maps with GPS Support, http://deniska.dcemu.co.uk/mapthis-0-5-20-with-holux-support-for-slim-psps-79825.html and PSP SSH http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/serendipity/index.php?/categories/34-SSH-Client with an IR Keyboard. Oh, and here is Doom II on the PSP http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/doompsp.shtml

PS. Infrared keyboards only work with the original PSP, the updated PSP has more ram and therefore the web browser likely works much better (I have to browse with images off less I run out of memory) So its a tradeoff.

Actually this was the EXACT thing I had in mind when I was saying about the odd file AV's can detect but just not bloody delete.
I found the easiest way to get rid of that one (Because all the 3rd party tools to do it simply didn't work) was to bite the bullet and install unlocker. This piece of software is without a doubt my favourite utility for windows and one of the first things I install (when I'm running 32bit, that is, no 64bit support yet :(). It does EXACTLY what you describe - it tells you what processes have locked a file and lets you FORCE a delete of it.
So when Vundo gets locked into your system, you can still delete it without much trouble (Explorer will crash, but a restart makes it as right as rain). Why AV's can't do this, I don't know...

As far as I know TrackMeNot just generates queries on search engines. Therefore, spyware vendors will just think that you're googling a lot, not sure that's enough to deceive them.
Besides, I'm developing another FF extension called SquiggleSR that (basically) uses the same idea than TrackMeNot and also simulates click on non-sponsored results.

With verry little performance hit; only on the host architecture upon a GNU/Linux environment must Wine x86 binaries be isolated to be interpreted by a process of qemu. A component accessible by QEMU within the same project, (kqemu) will nigh-directly allow the binary's emulated code to execute on the host architecture only if it was written for the same host architecture. This does not remedy a x86-transcode to the host architecture, but just a privilege greater than a hope of higher performance.

With verry little performance hit; only on the host architecture upon a GNU/Linux environment must Wine x86 binaries be isolated to be interpreted by a process of qemu. A component accessible by QEMU within the same project, (kqemu) will nigh-directly allow the binary's emulated code to execute on the host architecture only if it was written for the same host architecture. This does not remedy a x86-transcode to the host architecture, but just a privilege greater than a hope of higher performance.

I recommend using QDevelop with the free version of Qt, it's coming along quite nicely, and makes the whole experience quite nice to use with the mingw32 compiler. I've not kept up with the state of free/msvc integration, but yes, you won't get all the niceties of help file/designer/auto-moc'ing that vs integration gives you with devstudio express. The reason for that is because microsoft doesn't allow extensions to be loaded into it, which is how the vs integration stuff works.

Here's a video of one making a "single slight bounce" in 1972, that was photographed by dozens of people from Salt Lake to Edmonton: http://fireball.meteorite.free.fr/1972_08_11/Video/video_g-t.html

Two- and even three-skip meteors are not uncommon, although as you say they normally burn in. The OP does not contradict that, because he lost sight of it at the horizon; it very likely burned in after that.

The 1972 object was a one-skipper. It was very big, which means it got through the skip without losing enough velocity to bend its path down for another skip, so it went on its merry way back to space...a good thing, because if it had hit near a major city it would have been a Hiroshima-scale disaster.

rj

The bomb lift trucks used to load missiles are actually simple, stable, easy to use, and precise.

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=981

http://musee.1wing.free.fr/VHC/VHC%20023.htm

OTOH, changing truck tires sucks, as does changing track. Mechy strength would be useful there.