FTA:
Each of the orbiting planets will carry a number, like the serial numbers on notes, giving the disc a unique code thus allowing currency to be tracked and helping to prevent counterfeits. So.. who's going to start a website for tracking those Quids, like Where's George? or EuroBillTracker? Might be fun..
As you might expect, the consumption varies quite a lot depending on what kind of car you're driving.. A recent article states that an average car in Finland (using gasoline) consumes about 6.5 litres / 100 km, which is about 36 MPG. Another source gives 6 litres / 100 km for highway driving (39MPG) and 10 litres / 100 km for driving within cities (lower speed, higher consumption per km, 23.5MPG). The averange consumption rates for diesel vehicles in that article are 5.5 litres / 100 km (highway, 42.7MPG) and 8.6 litres / 100 km (cities, 27MPG).
This is indeed a creative way to enhance the search results. Some of the pictures could be a little bit larger though.. Or some kind of a mouse-over which shows a larger picture.
This is probably rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but projects like Postcrossing wouldn't exist if people weren't able to send post cards via snail mail, so at least in this case Internet has increased snailmail usage. Check out that site if you're interested in sending postcards to random people all over the world. It's rather weird, but I'm told it's an interesting hobby.
Er, are you absolutely sure of those numbers? The stats for EBT show similar numbers, but with MSIE still in the lead instead of Firefox. More specifically, MSIE has 58% and Firefox 22%; Netscape, Opera, Safari and the various web crawling bots share the remaining 20%.
I consider EBT's browser stats quite representative for an average user -- we have users from all over Europe, both from work and home, from all age groups, each with different levels of tech savviness.
Product : Fedora Core 2
Name : gtk2
Version : 2.4.7
Release : 2.4
Summary : The GIMP ToolKit (GTK+), a library for creating GUIs for
X.
Description:
GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user
interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for
projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application
suites.
Update Information:
During testing of a previously fixed flaw in Qt (CAN-2004-0691), a flaw
was
discovered in the BMP image processor of gtk2. An attacker could create
a
carefully crafted BMP file which would cause an application to enter an
infinite loop and not respond to user input when the file was opened by
a
victim. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org)
has assigned the name CAN-2004-0753 to this issue.
During a security audit Chris Evans discovered a stack and a heap
overflow
in the XPM image decoder. An attacker could create a carefully crafted
XPM
file which could cause an application linked with gtk2 to crash or
possibly
execute arbitrary code when the file was opened by a victim.
(CAN-2004-0782, CAN-2004-0783)
Chris Evans also discovered an integer overflow in the ICO image
decoder.
An attacker could create a carefully crafted ICO file which could cause
an
application linked with gtk2 to crash when the file was opened by a
victim.
(CAN-2004-0788)
-- cut here --
So.. Blaming MS for writing insecure image decoders is a bit hypocritical, don't you think?
We use WAP for tracking Euro banknotes while travelling. Most of the notes are entered via the web form, but when you're travelling you may not have an internet connection available all the time and that's where WAP comes handy. I just spent a weekend in Brussels in our annual EuroBillTracker meeting, my life would have been miserable if I didn't have my phone with me;) Unfortunately there are some bugs and limitations in phones that need to be worked around somehow.
A few years ago I was also on a summer camp, I was one of the people looking after the kids that were on that camp. I was perfectly happy for spending some time without internet access, but some of those kids (about age 12) genuinely missed their home PC. I'm used to kids feeling homesick, but back then it was the first time I heard someone miss their computer at home.
Oh yes, this happened in Finland. Perhaps some of those children are now those net addicted persons.
what if there is actually 'someone' who owns someone@somewhere.com ? You know what? It just might be true.
No doubt about that, Sherlock. Some years ago I registered a similar generic domain name, miuku.net. This is basically the name of the @ character translated to Finnish. After a while spam started to pour in and when I googled for those miuku.net email addresses I found tons of usenet postings and web pages etc. Obviously some people don't want to give out their email addresses and use some "random" address instead. Hey people, if you don't want to give out your real email address, at least use the standard.invalid suffix after the random email address you've picked.
I'm using a catch-all type email system for my domain, but whenever I spot someone using a fake miuku.net address I can easily redirect those emails to a special spam folder, so the domain name abuse doesn't matter that much. So far I have about 60 such redirects in place and over 58 thousand spam emails in that spam folder. I'm using those spam emails to teach my spam filter to better distinguish between spam and real emails.
Slightly offtopic, but I'd like to know if there are Linux distributions that install the latest fixes automatically without user intervention? If not, why not? Considering a typical Linux desktop user, his/her primary interest isn't in keeping the system up to date so it'd make sense if the system updated itself automatically for him/her. Those people who use Linux as a server might want to turn off the automatic updates so they can apply the fixes at a convenient time for them.
Yes, there are ways to keep the system updated automatically, but I haven't run into a Linux distribution that would have that option enabled out of the box. RH/FC etc. do have up2date, but using it requires some action from the user.
Speaking of help keys, there was a computer made by Nokia in the 80s, the MikroMikko2. That computer was used at least in some Finnish pharmacies at the time. It had quite a lot of nonstandard features, such as an Intel 80186 (!) processor and a strange keyboard. The keyboard had a help button located at the top, in the middle of the function keys row. The help button was labelled AIDS, ie. plural of the word "aid". Obviously Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome wasn't as recognized back then as it is now, otherwise the Nokia engineers might have chosen to name the button something else.
Uh, what exactly makes coins harder to counterfeit? There are no useful security features on coins, unlike notes which have the hologram, watermark, magnetic stripes, special printing process, special ink, special material which behaves interestingly in UV light etc. The only reason why coins haven't been counterfeited that much is that it just isn't worth the effort, which I think you really meant. If the coins were worth >=50 EUR, people might get interested in creating counterfeit coins.
Besides, there are counterfeit coins. I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but if I extrapolate the numbers from some known countries, I can estimate that there have been about 100-150 thousand counterfeit coins found from circulation in Europe in 2003.
Yes I agree, the banknote detection code is just an annoyance, it doesn't really stop the forgeries.
As for forgery rates, there were 551 286 found counterfeit Euro banknotes in 2003, most of them were 50 EUR notes. This can be seen from the annual report of the European Central Bank, see chapter 3.2.
The more valuable Euro banknotes are indeed physically larger than less valuable notes. Here's a link for you.
As for braille, the notes do not have any braille codes on them, but the banknotes are printed in relief, using a special printing method known as intaglio. The EUR 200 and EUR 500 banknotes have tactile marks printed in intaglio and positioned along their edges. This should help blind people to recognize the notes.
No. See page 7, section ii - "Placement of the Mark in the Subject Line" of this PDF which is linked from the FTC page. The mark has to be in the beginning of the subject line.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I'm aware of our high tax level for fuel, in this case it's 64.557%
Well, at least the money collected with that tax lets us have lower taxes elsewhere, such as lower income tax.. Oh wait..
As you might expect, the consumption varies quite a lot depending on what kind of car you're driving.. A recent article states that an average car in Finland (using gasoline) consumes about 6.5 litres / 100 km, which is about 36 MPG. Another source gives 6 litres / 100 km for highway driving (39MPG) and 10 litres / 100 km for driving within cities (lower speed, higher consumption per km, 23.5MPG). The averange consumption rates for diesel vehicles in that article are 5.5 litres / 100 km (highway, 42.7MPG) and 8.6 litres / 100 km (cities, 27MPG).
Wikipedia has some examples as well.
The average price for a gallon of gas in that article was about $2.90, give or take a few cents.
Here in Finland a litre of 95 octane gas costs about 1.263e (1.295 for 98 octane and 1.008 for diesel).
1.263e / litre = 4.7809751e / gallon = $6.04697 / gallon
And you are complaining that gas prices are high? Well, at least these prices are a good incentive for me to use public transport..
This is indeed a creative way to enhance the search results. Some of the pictures could be a little bit larger though.. Or some kind of a mouse-over which shows a larger picture.
This is probably rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but projects like Postcrossing wouldn't exist if people weren't able to send post cards via snail mail, so at least in this case Internet has increased snailmail usage. Check out that site if you're interested in sending postcards to random people all over the world. It's rather weird, but I'm told it's an interesting hobby.
The young hacker, who has agreed to be interviewed only if he isn't identified by name or home town,...
... I'm sorta surprised they haven't caught me yet," he says.
From the attached photo: LOCATION: Roland, OK
"To tell the truth
Oops.
Er, are you absolutely sure of those numbers? The stats for EBT show similar numbers, but with MSIE still in the lead instead of Firefox. More specifically, MSIE has 58% and Firefox 22%; Netscape, Opera, Safari and the various web crawling bots share the remaining 20%.
I consider EBT's browser stats quite representative for an average user -- we have users from all over Europe, both from work and home, from all age groups, each with different levels of tech savviness.
How about a link to the new list? Yes, it can be found from the TOP500 website, but that link was missing as well.. clicky clicky.
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows saved my ass a few days ago, perhaps that project might be of interest to you as well.
A Chinese and an American man were having a conversation.
The American said, "In the States we have elections every fourth year. How about you?"
The Chisese man replied, "That's awful! I have an election almost evely molning!"
Just got this in my email:
:
-- cut here --
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 12:28:53 -0400
From: Matthias Clasen
Reply-To: fedora-list@redhat.com
To: fedora-announce-list@redhat.com
Subject: [SECURITY] Fedora Core 2 Update: gtk2-2.4.7-2.4
Fedora Update Notification
FEDORA-2004-289
2004-09-15
Product : Fedora Core 2
Name : gtk2
Version : 2.4.7
Release : 2.4
Summary : The GIMP ToolKit (GTK+), a library for creating GUIs for X.
Description
GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites.
Update Information:
During testing of a previously fixed flaw in Qt (CAN-2004-0691), a flaw was discovered in the BMP image processor of gtk2. An attacker could create a carefully crafted BMP file which would cause an application to enter an infinite loop and not respond to user input when the file was opened by a victim. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2004-0753 to this issue.
During a security audit Chris Evans discovered a stack and a heap overflow in the XPM image decoder. An attacker could create a carefully crafted XPM file which could cause an application linked with gtk2 to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code when the file was opened by a victim. (CAN-2004-0782, CAN-2004-0783)
Chris Evans also discovered an integer overflow in the ICO image decoder. An attacker could create a carefully crafted ICO file which could cause an application linked with gtk2 to crash when the file was opened by a victim. (CAN-2004-0788)
-- cut here --
So.. Blaming MS for writing insecure image decoders is a bit hypocritical, don't you think?
We use WAP for tracking Euro banknotes while travelling. Most of the notes are entered via the web form, but when you're travelling you may not have an internet connection available all the time and that's where WAP comes handy. I just spent a weekend in Brussels in our annual EuroBillTracker meeting, my life would have been miserable if I didn't have my phone with me ;) Unfortunately there are some bugs and limitations in phones that need to be worked around somehow.
A few years ago I was also on a summer camp, I was one of the people looking after the kids that were on that camp. I was perfectly happy for spending some time without internet access, but some of those kids (about age 12) genuinely missed their home PC. I'm used to kids feeling homesick, but back then it was the first time I heard someone miss their computer at home. Oh yes, this happened in Finland. Perhaps some of those children are now those net addicted persons.
what if there is actually 'someone' who owns someone@somewhere.com ? You know what? It just might be true.
.invalid suffix after the random email address you've picked.
No doubt about that, Sherlock. Some years ago I registered a similar generic domain name, miuku.net. This is basically the name of the @ character translated to Finnish. After a while spam started to pour in and when I googled for those miuku.net email addresses I found tons of usenet postings and web pages etc. Obviously some people don't want to give out their email addresses and use some "random" address instead. Hey people, if you don't want to give out your real email address, at least use the standard
I'm using a catch-all type email system for my domain, but whenever I spot someone using a fake miuku.net address I can easily redirect those emails to a special spam folder, so the domain name abuse doesn't matter that much. So far I have about 60 such redirects in place and over 58 thousand spam emails in that spam folder. I'm using those spam emails to teach my spam filter to better distinguish between spam and real emails.
Don't whine, at least they're being konsistent with their naming scheme.
Slightly offtopic, but I'd like to know if there are Linux distributions that install the latest fixes automatically without user intervention? If not, why not? Considering a typical Linux desktop user, his/her primary interest isn't in keeping the system up to date so it'd make sense if the system updated itself automatically for him/her. Those people who use Linux as a server might want to turn off the automatic updates so they can apply the fixes at a convenient time for them.
Yes, there are ways to keep the system updated automatically, but I haven't run into a Linux distribution that would have that option enabled out of the box. RH/FC etc. do have up2date, but using it requires some action from the user.
Of course, they use the Google API for searching the web and they just ran out of allowed queries per day when the site was /.ed. Isn't that obvious?
Speaking of help keys, there was a computer made by Nokia in the 80s, the MikroMikko2. That computer was used at least in some Finnish pharmacies at the time. It had quite a lot of nonstandard features, such as an Intel 80186 (!) processor and a strange keyboard. The keyboard had a help button located at the top, in the middle of the function keys row. The help button was labelled AIDS, ie. plural of the word "aid". Obviously Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome wasn't as recognized back then as it is now, otherwise the Nokia engineers might have chosen to name the button something else.
Uh, what exactly makes coins harder to counterfeit? There are no useful security features on coins, unlike notes which have the hologram, watermark, magnetic stripes, special printing process, special ink, special material which behaves interestingly in UV light etc. The only reason why coins haven't been counterfeited that much is that it just isn't worth the effort, which I think you really meant. If the coins were worth >=50 EUR, people might get interested in creating counterfeit coins.
Besides, there are counterfeit coins. I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but if I extrapolate the numbers from some known countries, I can estimate that there have been about 100-150 thousand counterfeit coins found from circulation in Europe in 2003.
Yes I agree, the banknote detection code is just an annoyance, it doesn't really stop the forgeries.
As for forgery rates, there were 551 286 found counterfeit Euro banknotes in 2003, most of them were 50 EUR notes. This can be seen from the annual report of the European Central Bank, see chapter 3.2.
The more valuable Euro banknotes are indeed physically larger than less valuable notes. Here's a link for you.
As for braille, the notes do not have any braille codes on them, but the banknotes are printed in relief, using a special printing method known as intaglio. The EUR 200 and EUR 500 banknotes have tactile marks printed in intaglio and positioned along their edges. This should help blind people to recognize the notes.
No. See page 7, section ii - "Placement of the Mark in the Subject Line" of this PDF which is linked from the FTC page. The mark has to be in the beginning of the subject line.
Those do not fulfill the letter of the law, the regulation was quite clear on this (ie. only ASCII is allowed etc). RTFA.
Dupe ...