Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Spambots, Retroism, VoIPhooey
Let's find the spamsters and turn them over to Hormel. Neil Gunton writes: "Further to my previous article about stopping Spambots with Apache, Perl, MySQL and ipchains, it appears that the spambots have evolved somewhat. They seem to come in using a search engine to find promising pages, and then spoof the User-Agent field and generally try to behave as much like a real person as possible. Here is an update to my original article. This is something that anyone who runs a website and dislikes spambots should be aware of..."
If I ever have children I might let it go at that. jamie writes: "'If I ever have children,' says Rich Dreher, 'I would want them to see and touch one of the very first 'real' personal computers, not some simulation of an Apple in a window on a Pentium VIII running Windows 2012.' Over the last few months he's put together a CompactFlash/IDE adapter card for the Apple //e and IIgs, and now he's taking orders. The largest hard drive that ProDOS supports, as flash RAM, costs $14! Seeing the card really brought back memories..."
We mentioned this a while ago, before the pressing need of Apple ][ owners was quite so evident.
What's a little $80 million mistake among friends? Sinjun writes: "In what is believed to be one of the first prison sentences given to the creator of a virus, David L. Smith of the infamous Melissa plague recieves 20 months in federal lockup. I would have thought he would recieve more, seeing the massive amount of money lost by corporate America resulting from Melissa. Oh well, this is the precedent that has been set."
Smith should be grateful that his victims weren't allowed to each pluck one hair from his body per Melissa message received.
But what about the GBA? bobbydigitales writes: "A while back someone suggested porting linux to Samsungs GP32 handheld games console. As I own one, I did a bit of 'googling' and found a post from a guy at Samsung about a problem he was having with his linux port to the s3c2400x chip (this constitutes most of the GP32's hardware). It seems he finished his port as he sent me all the patches and instructions needed to compile the kernal for the s3c2400x.
As I dont have any experience porting linux i thought I'd share this information with the world and see if anyone could offer help and/or suggestions on how to proceed. Here are the files and info.
Samsung have completed the following drivers:
- LCD
- Serial
- USB Host (with mouse driver),
- Sound
- Keyboard
- Network (not actually on the GP32 chip)
Things that are missing:
- bootloader,
- SmartMedia Card driver"
I knew I should have ordered a few. Alex Law writes "Only days after Slashdot's article about Creative Labs great deal on VoIP Blasters, it appears that they are no longer in production or available from Creative's web site. Shame; mine arrived yesterday, and we were all quite impressed."
From the Mozilla front: Lots of good reports and an oops.
The good stuff -- reaper20 writes "With 1.0 around the corner, it seems like the folks over at Mozilla.org have their hands full. Between interviews and last minute security bug fixes, it seems like the Mozilla is poised for the big push to 1.0.
David Hyatt brings up the IE Advantage, and the death of user-experince based browsers. Mozilla.org itself has stood firm on some of these marketing driven issues - yet some changes have caused some interesting developments in the Mozilla community. The recent context menu revisions and personal toolbar recommendations by Netscape have caused a bit of controversy. (Bugzilla entries ommitted for obvious reasons)
Recently, the mozilla/browser and Chimera projects have been started to address certain usability problems and the desire for OS X native widgets. With Galeon and other Mozilla derivatives getting better and better, it seems that Mozilla 'proper' will serve as a platform for derivative browsers customized for the target platform.
Lots of standards-compliant clients each tailored to user needs, sounds like what web was originally designed for."
And the oops -- An Anonymous Coward writes: "An Israeli software firm has discovered a flaw in Netscape and Mozilla software that allows code hidden in a Web page to read files from the user's PC. The bug is a more serious variant of one patched in Microsoft's Internet Explorer in February."
Silly boy, haven't you learnt yet that Microsoft software never contain bugs, only "undocumented features".
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
So what does that make bugs in open source software, "documented features" since the source is open?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The flaw doesn't affect Mozilla 1.0 release candidate 1 because XMLHttpRequest appears to be broken in that release
;)
Hehe, I find that kinda funny
Could someone summarize what the story is here? About the only thing that annoys me about the current crop of fresh Mozilla installs is that it keeps changing my default search engine away from Google and back to Netscape.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
The VoIP Blaster had huge potential, IMHO, because it was easy for non-internet-telephony-experts to plug in their POTS telephones and place a call. I was preparing to buy more when I discovered there were no more available.
In a desperate effort to find out how to buy more VoIP Blasters, I called Creative Labs. Yes, it's official, they have discontinued sales of this product. That explains why they were blowing them out at $10 a pop. But, it goes deeper than this.
I discovered that Creative Labs didn't manufacturer the VoIP Blaster. They were value added resellers of the InnoMedia InfoAccel USB. I decided to send a message to InnoMedia to find out who else resold their units.
My Question to InnoMedia, made through their "contact us" page:
"Creative Labs has now officially discontinued the VoIP Blaster (the repackaged InfoAccel USB). Are there other OEM partners who are repackaging the InfoAccel USB I can purchase from? Is InnoMedia considering releasing a consumer version of the InfoAccel USB?"
Short yet concise response from Kelly Zhang, Director of Sales, InnoMedia:
"We do not intend to release any more version of InfoAccel USB."
Now that the VoIP Blaster party is officially over, what other inexpensive hardware platforms look promising to allow Grandma to pick up a phone and place a call without a Ph.D in Internet Telephony?
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
One of the complaints about spambots was that they either ignored, or read and then flouted, robots.txt. But, Google is well behaved - so won't the new generation of spambots implicitly obey robots.txt?
Seems you could use robots.txt to keep Google out of your email address pages, and still keep your other spambot defenses.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
I have a 1GB hard drive hooked up to my IIGS right now...and all the space can be used. ProDOS 8 only allows 32MB partitions, but RamFAST and Apple rev. D SCSI cards provide various methods for mapping more than two drives to a physical slot. (ProDOS 8 itself allows for four drives if the controller is in particular slots.) The number of slot/drive combinations limits you to somewhere around 300-350MB maximum online storage with ProDOS 8 (the RamFAST will let you mark partitions active or inactive). If you're using a IIGS and its GS/OS, though, you just create a couple of 32MB ProDOS partitions (to boot and to run your 8-bit apps) and one big HFS partition to use up the entire drive. (The only downside to HFS is that you'll need a Mac to fix the partition if it's corrupted.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
That web page linked to has a demo of their security flaw. It appears to be targeted at Windows users, trying to read from c:\.. but if you try to read this file under the Linux build, it crashes Mozilla.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Interestingly enough, one of my former roommates went to college with David Smith, when he was at UNC. She said he was a quiet, but rather odd man. She was very adamant about her impression that he wasn't really a bad guy.
On a related note, how many people actually picked apart one of their copies of Melissa? The really nasty bit of code was only maybe 10 lines long. Doesn't seem like he had to go through all that much trouble to write the thing. For years I've been thinking that Microsoft should really be held accountable for building that capability into Outlook in the first place. Then just a couple weeks ago someone said that is like holding gun makers accountable for murders. Now I'm not so sure that MS is to blame - they had their reasons for building it in, dubious as they may be, and I'm sure people besides the virus writers have made use of this feature. Would calling for Microsoft to remove it be the same as calling for file sharing networks to be torn down just because people use them illegally?
It's funny that I didn't notice how much of a hypocrite I was until it was pointed out to me.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
Internet Explorer.
Search first, ask questions later.
I could well be wrong about this - it's been many years since I've used a ][... I seem to remember that very little of the early Apple software would work with ProDOS. All the little BASIC games were no problem, but most of the commercial titles would boot directly from the floppy (not the System Master disk with DOS 3.3 or whatever it was). I don't recall having a way to save them to my hard disk.
So anyway, if I get this card and put ProDos on the drive, is there some way I can just load all my floppies onto there as images, and run them after booting into ProDos?
By the way, why not jail the programmers at microsoft for writing an e-mail client that allows "billions and billions of damage"
Ooh! Let's jail Linus Torvalds for writing an OS that allows people to hack! And Bill Gates for creating an OS that allows viruses to be spread. And CmdrTaco for creating slashdot, because people can post flames and trolls, and links to illegal material.
Let's not be stupid, okay, buddy? The rest of your post is quite excellent, but stupid remarks like that one invalidate the whole thing.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Further proof that Slashdot is the root of all evil. Well, maybe not the root, but at least a subfolder. :P
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Opera and Omniweb are funded by smaller companies, companies that don't have deep pockets like AOL or Microsoft, so in some small way they can be forgiven for the steps that they take to make money to support themselves. These browsers at least offset their nagging with the ability to block popups and images.
Now, how about saving sets of opened page to continue browsing them anytime. I have several of them, one for each subject I commonly browse for. And continue to browse the last opened pages if your browser/operating system crashes. Import and Export bookmarks and email contacts. Browse offline content, delete every personal info left on your computer by your browser with two clicks (for the privacy freaks), multiple languages supported, pre defined texts to fills forms, 13 search engines available in a tab. Skins, layout customization, modify settings of html text and link tags, load your own css, zoom, block frames, load only cached images, report Javascript errors. Identify the browser as being another (right, "you must use IE to view this page" crap). Full control over cache and cookies. And password protection. Not to mention fully functionals email and newsgroup clients, low comsumption of computer resources, all in 3.2 megas.
And if everything here didn't catch your attention, two words:
"Mouse gestures".
That alone is worth a thousand dollars. Hover a link, right click and up+down with mouse. Page loads at the background. Open 25 links this way, hold mouse button, down+right, close current window. Do it for every page you have found. Hold mouse button and press another, back to pages you previously visited. Another way of buttons, forward the pages.
Opera was worth every cent I paid for. With it, my productivity raised so much I can't live without anymore. I do programming for living, and if having +20 windows opened at the same time, searching for information with Google, discussing at newsgroups, and reading mailing lists, weren't delivered so fast and nice over the last years that I am using Opera, I know a lot of work would not have been done.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Please note, this is intended as a joke. It has been done before, but it is intended as a joke.
:
:), after reporting the spam numerous times to abuse@domain. This was the only one to elicit a response, which followed the lines of "What are you trying to do? Get me killed?"
If you get a spam from China, reply with a message (in Chinese if possible) stating
Thank you for your continued support of the Falun Gong movement. It's great to see that people even in China understand the horrible oppression under which members of Falun Gong live. I look forward to your future e-mails on this issue.
A friend of a friend did this (and now if you tell the story, you can say it was a friend of a friend of an anonymous guy posting on a weblog
The spammer had to call his local government agency as soon as he received the e-mail to let them know that it did *not* reflect his opinion.
What I do is include on every web page I produce an invisible 1x1 gif with a mailto: to a special e-mail address. My goal is not to prevent SPAMBOTS or even try to confuse them. I want them to scarf up the special e-mail address. When SPAM is sent to this address, I have scripts on my Mac OS X system that downloads the e-mail and scans it for headers, subject and body message. Once it collects this information, it sends a copy to SpamCop and then it sends the info to my postfix e-mail server to scan other accounts for the same message and then updates my postfix configuration to block further e-mails. I give my "special e-mail address" a name that will alphabetically sort before any other e-mail addresses in my domain. I have noticed SPAMMERS tend to send SPAMs out in alphabetical order to my domain so this works fairly well. I have never had a false positive with this method.
The great thing about this system is that 90% of the time I report SPAM to SpamCop, it says its a fresh SPAM. So not only am I helping to prevent SPAM to my users, I am hopefully helping others that are using SpamCop's RBL.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Nope, sorry I tried that one it sucked. All I got was this: chdir /root/.wine : No such file or directory
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
This does not just set the precedent that virus writers can be put in prison for their code, this sets precedent that writing software can land you in prison. This is a very bad thing no matter how you slice it. This precedent flies in the face of the "Software as Free Speech" argument favored by most slashdotters. I, as a long-time slashdot reader, am appalled at the support for this judgement. A man has been imprisoned for writing software. Not killing, raping, or even dealing drugs. No, just writing software. What will it come to next? Will I be imprisoned for describing a virus in public where anyone could put my ideas to code? Will they be imprisoned for putting my ideas to code?
SOFTWARE IS FREE SPEECH!!!
And what of a writer whose essay starts riots? Will we as slashdotters stand behind the writer voicing his opinion or will we say that his speech caused riots in which people died? Don't we, as slashdotters, support free speech in all its forms regardless of the harm it may cause? DeCSS could cause as much damage to the MPAA as Melissa did to the rest of the corporate world. Why do we stand behind DeCSS and its authors and not the poor MPAA victims? Because DeCSS is protected speech, that's why!
I'm not arguing that what the guy did was right or wrong. That's a matter of opinion. I am arguing that Melissa was free speech. It was exploit code demonstrating a security hole in Microsoft Outlook. Was it irresponsible of someone to spread it in the wild? Hell yes. But it was just plain old exploit code nonetheless.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
ends at my nose.
it roughly means that your right to free speech is allowed until it hurts someone else.
Photos.