Slashdot Mirror
The Case of the Missing Rocket Belt
Anonymous Coward writes "ABC News is running a very interesting article about the story behind those rocket belts you've seen in some movies. Apparently there are only three known to exist but one of them has gone missing leaving a trail of death and intrigue in its wake. From the article: 'One of its developers was found beaten to death in his Houston home, another is a suspect in the killing, and a third faces a possible life sentence for kidnapping the second and holding him hostage for seven days with a hood over his head.'"
That would explain the sudden death of /. for the past couple of hours...
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
there has been another story posted and this one doesn't yet appear to have a first post.
Speaking of RIAA and governments getting involved and private businesses leveraging the law to make money...
WARNING FLASH FXP IS A TROJAN
I implore every use of this software to be weary and on guard! I would have a good firewall with a drop all, allow exception rule set, ethereal, windump/[tcpdump on *nix], and a pcap lib, or use sniffer, and get ready to watch this thing with hawk eyes. Given the author's tradition of reporting usage, selling information to marketing companies, and revoking registrations without cause, we must be prepared for his latest Trojan horse. The program is delightful, irresistible, for it is feature laden, stable. But its target is warez users, and I strongly feel this warez-centric program serves to report to the government the biggest abuses. Remember, that the information he claims is benign is encrypted, so you will never see the payload of this machinations and undesired packets. He also uses port 80 to send information out on, so please be using an application firewall such as Kerio. I would not trust Charles unless he releases source code. We are already help hostage by a closed source MSCVRT, and other runtime libraries, any of which could perform undocumented tasks with encrypted packets, you might see packets but the nature of the payload is occluded. I strongly recommend that nobody trusts outgoing packets they cannot decrypt. Anyways, for the technically savvy, one should peruse through the packets this thing produces, and ask yourself, do you really trust some man who will not end these perpetual and consistent accusations by revealing some of the source code to allay the growing fears he is part of a dragnet cabal to capture people determined to be felon software pirates. He is a party to your own demise, the "Robin Hood" loopholes are closed, and Charles could make money off you and put you in jail. He makes money off of FlashFXP, he targets the warez community, the program sends packets that are extraneous to file transfers that are encrypted, he has revoked registrations without cause, he sells your information to marketers I have confirmed this through SpamCop, and he is in cahoots with federal authorities to help Trojan and compromise your computer.
Everything free?
You're lucky if it works at all!
Not to be outdone by K5's fuck-up^H^H^H^H^H^H^Houtage, SlashDuh had to go off line for a while as well. Don't you all have redundant servers? Glad I am not paying for this crap. Will those who were suckered into paying be getting any sort of a refund?
There go 1/2 of the dupe stories.
Sorry, this has nothing to do with the story whatsoever, but where else can I put this?
Does anyone else notice this happening sometimes when visiting Slashdot? It keeps dumping you on the homepage, not logged in, with the OSDN bar at the top and everything, and nothing seems to work, it keeps bringing you back to the homepage when you try and read or post comments.
What's going on? Is their user database crashing or something? Seems to be happening more frequently recently. It's extremely aggravating.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I suspect that it's a software change (perhaps when the database is down?). I first noticed it a few weeks ago -- when it came back up after that incident it contained some new links on the preferences page for friends, foes, etc.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
The top 3 stories on Slashdot, one of which is several hours old, have NO comments listed for them on the front page.... and I get modded down for bringing it up? Nice.
Maybe Slashdot needs a general, day to day message board type thing where people can start their own topics? They could have different sections, like General Discussion, Site Problems, Suggestions, etc.
It just seems ridiculous that we can't have a discussion ABOUT Slashdot on Slashdot anywhere without being labelled "Offtopic".
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I think they were all drunk and stoned at a going away party.
The thing is though, one day, when someone's looking for rocket belt info and uses the slashdot search thing at the bottom of the page, they'll uncover more stuff about the server being screwed up than anything about the story.
slashdot star???? yea right, if being an annoying jackass makes you a star, i guess it's right.
And no, 4. is not "????" and 5. is not "Profit!!"
Hopefully this will prevent more of that annoying joke....
There's been a raging discussion over in the Cringley area about moderation lately. Feel free to join in and post as an AC about moderation stinking these days.
This is when they take down the DB to search it for valid email adresses and sell them to the highest bidder ;)
[/humor]
this has nothing to do with the story whatsoever, but where else can I put this?
In your journal.
What's really funny (to me) is that some people actually read this. I got some AC flames on my only two journal entries. Took me by suprise that anyone cared to look.
Why don't you people just collectively eat me.
The funny thing is, your post about stuff being modded offtopic got modded offtopic!
I'm joining the experiment. Hey! I just noticed your post where you mention that a post about stuff getting modded offtopic that got modded offtopic just got modded offtopic!
When you get thrown back to the front page it's usaually a database error. Instead of showing an error page you are thrown back to the front page...strange way for doing it I guess.
damn, thats aloota karma per post in this thread.
Thank you, thank you. QED.
I guess that's how the whole darn human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself, down through the ages, westward in the wagons, until...aw shoosh, look at me, I'm ramblin' again.
Maybe Slashdot needs a general, day to day message board type thing where people can start their own topics? They could have different sections, like General Discussion, Site Problems, Suggestions, etc.
That already exists (although it's totally fscked right now because of whatever's going on here). It's just not well advertised.