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Slashback: Gaping, Wristwear, Screenies
Too bad there isn't a lot of good Free software. aka-ed writes: "A small update on the "Drink Or Die" busts: Apparently, the feds' move has borne preventative fruit. According to this post from one of the major commercial Usnet services, binaries traffic on Usenet has taken a noticeable hit since the bust, for reasons speculated upon in the post itself."
Open wide, and say "mmmmghrfgghfgr." atreus42 writes: "Microsoft has released a patch to fix the Gaping Security Hole(TM) in Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0. This security bulletin details the file extension/content header spoofing bug that would allow bad people to disguise a downloadable executable file as text. The internet isn't doomed after all..."
How to make my Visor look slow and lowly.
Sindre Lia writes "Sharp's new Zaurus SL5500 is the first PDA device from a major manufacturer in a long time that uses a new operating system and a new user interface.
According to preliminary reports from infoSync staffers Larry Garfield and Janice Karin that attended the launch of the SL-5500 and got hands-on experience with the new device, the GUI still needs polishing and to some degree also the hardware, but the device has according to them a lot of potential if some first-generation problems can be fixed.
See all the pictures of the new OS here!"
At least this letter is not in binary ...
Dog and Pony writes with a lengthy letter (informative, if you have odd taste in watches). "Slashdot recently ran a story about a pretty silly binary watch. Well, anyways, being a silly person, I thought one would be cool to have, even though I normally don't wear watches.
Problem was, they only shipped inside Norway... so I sent them a polite mail, asking them to notify me if they would start shipping internationally. And today I got an answer.
Too bad it seems a really cumbersome process to get that watch... have these guys never heard of PayPal? And offering payment via the www in 2003? 'Course, you gotta have goals...
Here is a copy of the mail:
> Dear Customer
> Please note the binary watch is released World-Wide Sale
> To be able to expedite your orders please follow instructions below
> 1.0
> Order Your watch by using or online home page:rsi-digital.com
> 2.0
> US$ 35 must be transfer from your local bank to
> ATT
> NORDEA BANK NORWAY
> Middelthuns Gt 17
> Postboks 1166.Centrum
> 0107 OSLO
> ACCOUNT NUMBER: 6527 05 04641
> Research & Supplier International A/S
> Postboks 236
> 4201 Sauda
> Norway
> 3.0
> Original receipt must be faxed to +47 52 78 88 01 or send scanned and send by mail to arramsta@online.no
> 4.0
> Your order will than be expedite from our sales office
> Delivery time is estimated to be 10 to 14 days after received confirmed payment by fax or mail as stated above
> 5.0
> Note: RSI will from 2003 offer payment by using WWW.
> 6.0
> Payment 35USD cover cost of watch 28 USD handling and postage 7 USD
> Total:
> =35 USD
> Best Regards
> Tone Yven
> Sales engineer
I am still thinking that black one....
On a side note, to us non-native English speakers, that has spent too much time in Dilbert-land, "Sales engineer" really sounds like an oxymoron."
...Is only available to IE 5.5SP1 and 6. I have 5.5 and a 56k modem. It will take me about 5 hours and a version upgrade to fix a small security hole. I've already tried once and inital crapplet that is required to start the download of IE5.5SP1 failed to complete its 400k-ish download. I'm seriously considering swapping to another browser.
Drop in usenet traffic? Howzabout a drop in mail traffic?
And wasn't the microsoft "gaping security hole" patch covered a few days ago?
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
On a side note, to us non-native English speakers, that has spent too much time in Dilbert-land, "Sales engineer" really sounds like an oxymoron."
Leave it to a Nordic to apologize for their English, and then use a word that 1/2 the high school students in the USA couldn't define, all in the same sentence.
When I see a link on the internet for massive bust I don't usually expect to get a page of text...
You're going to have just as many problems downloading another browser as you are downloading the patch. Instead, why don't you order the IE6 CD? It costs $10. There's also another one that includes Windows Media Player for $10.
Also, I believe that the free 30-day trial CDs of Earthlink and such have the latest IE on them. You should be able to get this from an office supply store or computer store.
Finally, if you have a friend with broadband, or you have a fast work connection, you can use the advanced option in IE's install to save the files to a disk instead of just installing it directly. Burn to a CD and you're all set.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
There is a thread on BugTraq which explores this issue in depth:
http-equiv@excite.com is quoted:
Clearly what this so-called "patch" does is convert all embedded file types in MHTML documents viewed in patched Internet Explorer 6 into *.TMP files. Previously all file types and file names were retained and if accepted would run.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Aaaarrrrrgh! Senior moments are nothing to Microsoft Moments.
Guess I'll be using Netscape exclusively from now on.
Would YOU have been thrilled to see your watch roll over with the UNIX clock a few months back?
"What time is it?"
"Hmmm.... it says 1008722379... I'm not sure if that's AM or PM though."
MadCow
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Actually, about 3 days after that letter went out, they sent one saying that you would be able to use a credit card online within 10 days, and also gave simplified payment instructions.
I would venture to guess that the amount of money lost to the resources used and stolen by spammers is probably close to or soon will top revenue lost to pirated software
;)
Its not just pipe, cpu, and diskspace, but think about all the productivity lost
especially when people spend an extra five minutes around the water cooler bitching about the spam they get
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
File Name Spoofing Vulnerability:
* The determination on choosing to accept a file download from an Internet site should always be based on the trustworthiness of the source and not on the file type. File downloads should never be accepted from an untrusted source, no matter how harmless the type may appear to be.
No, it was a stupid design that allowed quiet execution due to the combination of content-type and file extension checking. When I download a PDF, I should be confident that unless I try running it in some fashion, it should be perfectly safe to download it to my machine.
Or just to make an extreme case, if I download an HTML usenet post, I don't want the browser trying to automatically convert the BASE64 to an executable and running that.
Some common sense on MS' part would've been appreciated.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
...to try to buy anything if you don't live in the US!
Perhaps 25% of sites that offer online purchasing are so USA-centric it's crazy. I guess that's part of living in New Zealand, but come on US$35 to ship a paper back book!? I can send one to my sister in NYC for NZ$12 (US$5 ish)
gadgetophile.com
Not really OT.
/. posted the Uplink article, the introversion server went down. But now the server came back up yesterday (Monday), so you may now place your orders.
After
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
One quality alternative to Netscape and IE is Opera . It is on the larger side, as it is trying to compete with IE, but it is fast and secure. The gestures are especially useful; they make me feel like I'm a kid again painting with my hands. Opera is also available for a number of platforms, including your favourite forms of free Unix (i.e. Linux) and Windows. Could help to make your workspaces consistent, if you work on multiple platforms.
Apart from the well known ones, the only other types of alternatives I can think of are the stripped down Gecko systems (Gecko being the HTML renderer built out of the Mozilla project.) They repackage the core technology, without the rest of the stuff would typically gives Mozilla its reputation for being slow, bloated or inefficient. Gecko, by itself, is a very small, fast and efficient core, comparable to the IE renderer. Most of the ones I've seen are for Linux-type systems, though, like Galeon . And don't forget that Gecko, Mozilla, Netscape 4.7 and Netscape 6 are differnet beasts, but all closely related.
Note! If a moderator would care to help me along in the karma department... I don't know what I did (I don't post often), but every time I post I get can automatic -1. Please see the value of my comments for whatever they are worth! Thank you!
Pete
The one thing that has kept me loyal to the Palm derivatives is Grafitti. It is a really excellent way to enter text quickly and accurately (for the most part). What are people's opinions of the Zaurus keyboard. It looks too small to be useful, so I was curious to know what people who have tried one think.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Anyway, the details. He had around 10 machines just sitting underneath a table in the server room, with a combined storage of 2 terabytes. Apparantly, he was eating up 8-20 megabits of MIT's bandwidth a day. Needless to say, he is no longer employed by the institute...
I dont have a
We don't really want to catch the guys that started the anthrax scare, but those warez kidz, now, they are a top priority. I understand Osama Bin Laden himself was able to plan the Sept 11th attacks using cracked software.
It's time to crack down. Let's jam bamboo under their fingernails and put electrodes on their testicles and make them scream so that we can all feel safe again.
At least this letter is not in binary ...
Well, since it was emailed, technically it WAS in binary...
Your comment reminds me of something I read in "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense for Business Success" by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. Whew, better catch my breath! It's been a while since I read it, so I don't remember word for word how she covered the topic. The gist of it is this: People and organizations will attempt to hijack both the denotative and conotative meanings of words for personal, political, or organizational gain. Content producers labeling copyright infringement (which is a rather technical and non-emotionaly loaded term) as piracy (a word that has readily identifiable conotations and denotions) is a prime example of this type of vocabulary manipulation.
Everytime I hear the word 'piracy', I am
reminded of the example Dr. Elgin sites in her Gental Art book, with the Army Press Corps use of Sweep and Clear to replace Search and Destroy. This example was also used in a scene in the Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket. Rather than arguing or debating the merits of their ideas, those who change keywords and concepts are attempting to exchange the opinions and ideas you already have with those they desire you to have, pro or con. If people are ignorant of the original or more apt description or word for an idea, ('copyright infringement' vs 'piracy')then all the better for the manipulator seeking to affect public opinion and sentiment. This is commonly refered to as 'spin' and it is a supremely effective tactic.
(in truth it was hard not to feel at least some affection for something capable of providing such unexpected pleasures as "bacon" and "murder"), --Mr Gray; Stephen King, Dreamcatcher
NPL'd software is free software. There are many free software licenses besides the GPL.
From a list of free software licenses at the GNU website:
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
But this does not reflect onto the user interface, and it is here that the lingering impression of "Bad Software" is created.
You see, while you may be able to say this is good or bad, you may not know exactly what makes it good or bad.
The reality is that a good UI should present the user with a series of controls, and each control should do what it appears to do. If it is part of a larger environment, then it should conform to this.
This holds as much for command line utilities as it does for GUI apps. For example, you would get annoyed with a terminal program whose output you could not redirect or work with, or was unable to take redirected input.
Writing documentation and UI is about second-guessing the great variety of user tastes and needs. Things like the CUA simplifies some of this.
Apart from having buttons, the program must communicate what it does. For example, most cd burnig programs allow you to make an image of the file as a separate item in the menu. NERO does not do that. Instead, you select burn to a virtual burner, and do it like that. I spent three days fiddling around with this, until someone enlightened me.
The point is, that when there is more than one step involved, the order can be confusing and yield incorrect results. [Think of incorrect order in a pipe].
What we need is some sort of effort done similar to what Knuth did with TeX. Some sort of arbitary language of UI that one can put this interface or that, a la LaTeX style. There is already enough different interfaces around to be able to do it. What one needs to do is be able to is to be able to construct enough of the UI functionality to define it for programmers to implement.
The problem with free software is not that the code is poor, but there seems no way of making a good communication style, and this is, what UI means.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
What about K-Meleon? This is IMHO one of the best *browsers* (i.e. no mail client, no news client, no blot) out there. It uses the gecko (i.e. Mozilla's) rendering engine. It's open source (GPLed). It's almost completely bug less (and the bugs are all UI, not the "I can delete your hard drive" variety). It's multi-lingual. It's secure. It's easy. And to your question it's small (3.89 mb). It kicks butt.
----------
SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK.
WHEN YOU SLEEP THEY EAT YOUR TOES.
This is in reference to the link off of the message- the DoJ press release
No, it really doesn't make sense, but I guess this is the only way to have charges dropped from the Warez rings.
Remember the last moments of the Clinton Presidency? When he made a slew of laws? Well one of these was called the McDade Act(s), which specifically states that no agent undercover may lie. That was one of the dumbest laws passed, considering that it could have prevented 9-11, but it applies to this case. The DoJ prides itself on it's "year-long" undercover investigation, but they should have known that its a big no-no to lie. I'd bet that some of these people "undercover" were asked "are you w/ the feds" in which their answer would obviously be "NO." Thats a lie, and goes against whath the (retarded) McDade act states. Boom, thats it- they were found illegally.
Please don't flame this, because all I'm doing is bringing to light something that most people didn't know. This is like the old police searching a random student at a HS dance, then arresting him for Marijuana possession. THe kid gets off totally free afterwards because the police had no warrant (etc...). I guess that the McDade act is the only trump card that the Warez rings have. I personally believe that McDade is totally stupid, and it will be really sad if they are used to throw out the case.
hi,
there's a much better watch for europeans (i own one myself (since more than 5 years)) and it's really cool!
i admit: in the beginning it's difficult, but due to the design (using diagonal slashes instead of 0s and 1s) you find patterns quite rapidly and then the watch is great.
link: museumsmarket.de
I don't know about the binary watch, but I know here in Luxembourg it is next to impossible (and, sometimes, quite illegal) to pay remotely. If I want to pay my doctor, I have to go to my bank and sign a paper transferring money from one person to another.
I could do web banking, but there are two problems: One, it's Windows only (and not due to a limitation in the browser - you get a smart-card reader that only works with Windows. It is *really* secure, though), and two: it's *really* expensive.
So, it's not that odd that they don't take credit cards...
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
and Galeon is the lightest Gecko based browser that I can find.
Well, seems like you need to find SkipStone, then. It's the Gecko engine packaged up using only GTK+ widgets, no GNOME. It's pretty nice.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Of course, that also goes for the Linux distros that default install with everything enabled. All those helpless, rooted lusers would be giving the "I was cleaning it and didn't know it was loaded" line.
"The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws)." -- Doug Gwyn
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
"how to get the binary watch you've always wanted"
Hey Jed
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
On December 11, 2001, the longest-running of the undercover operations culminated with the execution of over 30 search warrants across the United States and Canada. This undercover operation, code-named 'Bandwidth,' was a two-year covert investigation established as a joint investigative effort to gather evidence to support identification and prosecution of entities and individuals involved with illegal access to computer systems and the piracy of proprietary software utilizing 'warez' storage sites on the Internet.
Bandwidth, through the joint efforts of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General (EPA-OIG), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), supervised by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada, created a 'warez' site, controlled and monitored by the undercover operation, as a means of attracting predicated targets involved with the distribution of pirated software. The undercover 'warez' site has been accessed to transfer over 100,000 files, including over 12,000 separate software programs, movies and games.
If it looks like entrapment, walks like entrapment, and quacks like entrapment....
Any lawyers want to comment?
-Legion