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Slashback: Mutuality, Transport, Spyware
Well, while we were switching things around here at the ad agency ... An anonymous reader writes "While looking around on Microsoft's site checking out the new Tablet PCs I noticed something very out of Place. In one of their Flash Demos for the Tablet PC there is an Apple Powerbook 1400! To see it for yourself, the flash is located here (then "Tablet PC Overview Demo," then "Tablet PC," then "Powerful") The first computer is really that Powerbook! Pic here."
What about to the legal brothels? Sacarino writes "Back in April, Slashdot ran a story about the Monorail project Las Vegas was embarking upon. It would appear that things are progressing nicely. "It's ugly" critics will be put to shame, the designers did a great job of making it non-obtrusive. (if that's possible in Vegas) Soon you too will pile off the airplane, trudge onto the monorail, then run into the casino to spend that money....ahh, Vegas."
Out of court, out of mind. Enry writes "SONICblue and TiVo have dropped the patent infringement lawsuits they filed against each other. The press release reads: "We believe our energies are better spent expanding the market for Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) rather than fighting each other. Both sides believe in the merits of their respective positions, but the overall success of the DVR category is what is most important to the companies at this time." Take that, AdAge!"
Sounds like a nice way to watch movies. For those intrigued by a 640x480, QWERTY-keyboard color, clamshell-case PDA as embodied by the Zaurus 5600, patrickoehlinger writes "Just found news and pictures about the new Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 released in Japan. With a 640 x 480 pixel display, a small design and a great keyboard! Golem.de has a article with pictures, but it's in German."
Would the BBC spy on you? An anonymous reader writes "The previous discussion on RedSheriff on slashdot was extremely confusing as well as mostly off-topic. The fact is, the BBC is downloading spyware to your machine when you surf their site. Very disappointing and surprising. I suggest e-mailing them to let them know what you think. The problem and remedies are covered in Google groups: "
"The fact is, the BBC is downloading spyware to your machine when you surf their site."
Last I checked, the BBC would be UPLOADING software to your machine. You would be the one downloading it. God I'm sick of people misusing that word.
The previous discussion on RedSheriff on slashdot was extremely confusing as well as mostly off-topic. The fact is, the BBC is downloading spyware to your machine when you surf their site. Very disappointing and surprising. I suggest e-mailing them to let them know what you think.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't trust technical "facts" from people that don't know the difference between downloading and uploading. That's like hiring a plumber that asks you what room the bathroom sink is in.
What bothers me most about spyware and insecure windooze programs(outlook etc) is that you can secure your PC by tweaking the right knobs, but then the time comes for that 1/2 year re-install and you have to start all over and remember what to turn off where etc.
:)
Installing a Windooze pc and connecting it to the internet requires so much work before you can say it's secure. And then there is all the spyware that comes with "great" shareware programs, so you really need a seperate partition to test the programs on first before installing them on your primary installation. Then you need programs like Ad-Aware and a personal firewall to keep track of programs that likes to phone home(have even seen programs with no network functionality all of the sudden wants to contact a server on the net).
Oh, and let's not forget antivirus software etc etc.
So I installed a Linux dist, not because I think that it's impossible to infiltrate it, but because the focus on all that Crap-ware has not yet turned too bad there and I feel more in control over what's going on under the hood. Now if only they would make the fonts look right, they are getting better, but not 100% yet.
I thinking about those 90% of the people with a connection to the internet, who does not have any clue to what's going on. And the great concept with Windooze was that they shouldn't need to know everything about computers to use them. These days they don't, but they do get their pc 0wned in a mild way.
We are beginning to see ISPs offer secure/firewalled connections to the internet. So that might be a new feature(income) for them, firewalling,spam blocking, blocking "bad" ip's. I have seen advertising for it, but I haven't looked into it.
my sig
Thanks. The spyware is called RedSheriff. It's a Java applet and its the first spyware that I've identified as running as Java.
Step one: Unclick "Java" in Preferences
Step two: There is no step two! There is no step two!
sulli
RTFJ.
Ok, I guess I'll probably lose a load of karma for this cos it sounds like I'm sticking up for spyware but what the hell... having looked at RedSherriff's website all this java applet really does is allow them to get around the problems that proxies and caches cause for people that want to find out how many page hits they got - is that really spyware?
PS - sorry for not jumping on the bandwagon.
I don't understand what this java applet is supposed to do. Is is supposed to stay in memory and watch you as you surf other sites? I don't see how it can. Java applets embedded in web pages only run while you are at the page. There are java applications that can do more stuff, but they have to be signed and I think you need to click Yes on a security dialog. What is it that this java applet actually does?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Okay.. if this spyware is a java applet.... can someone explain what the problem is? It's an applet; it should be gone when you close your browser, and not come back until you visit a site that uses it.
The java security model should prevent an applet from spying on you.. or am I mistaken?
If I walk into someone's store, the store is permitted to have someone follow me -- either in person, or by video camera. I'm on private property, and the property owner is entitled to watch what I am doing.
...move right along, please.
When you surf on a site, you are accessing someone elses server. They are the property owner, and they have the right to a report to see what you are doing.
There is nothing that I can see that RedSherriff becomes resident on your machine and watches you elsewhere. It just uses cookies to provide enhanced site stats to, in this case, the beeb.
Nothing to see here...
Maybe not exactly on the same lines, but on my linux server I use RPMs, and I find it extremely convenient to run 2 scripts I wrote that back up certain files:
/etc).
/etc, /usr/local, and /var) and for any file found that doesn't belong to an rpm, it tars up.
/etc somewhere, then referring to it on a new system. Sure you can see which files are different, but are they different because you changed them or because the newer rpm changed them?
Script 1 runs "rpm -Va" and checks the output for any files that have a different MD5 sum. It tars up all of these. (Most are in
Script 2 looks at each file under given directories (I run it under
The result is this: if I had to reinstall things how I have them now on a new system, I can easily see which rpm files I changed (and have the changes right there), and also which files I added (also tar'd up).
This is much easier than copying
And of course, I keep a list of installed rpms. (rpm -qa > rpm.list).
-Serp