Key of your story: use as many AV tools as you can find, the more you use the more chance at least one of them will find out something is wrong with your system.
Just curious: you said you found a removal tool from Kaspersky. Didn't their scanner find the specific malware?
How do you know beforehand that you're visiting a dodgy site? Keeping in mind that it is frequently the ads that serve the malware, and you never know where the ads are going to come from (this assuming you don't have ABP).
And if you know beforehand a site is dodgy, why would you want to visit it to begin with?
They provide the boat with leaky hull, and then they provide tools to help you plug the holes. Instead they should focus on not having holes in the hull to begin with.
It's the binaries that have to be dropped. But then many of those newzbin type sites will lose most of their audience I suppose.
And what it has over a web forum: no single point of failure. No need for someone to maintain that one site, that one interface. No need to use a web browser, there are other ways to access it. Easy local archiving if you like.
So not only can the RIAA not see what you attach to your e-mails, it is private distribution to a single recipient (or at least a highly limited list of recipients) which is a quite different ballgame than public distribution.
Back in the day I've used Usenet on and off, it was entertaining, sometimes useful. Heaps of forums on all kinds of topics.
Yet the binaries part that's what I never really got - most of it can be found on various torrent and file sharing sites as well, and the binaries are also seemingly the undoing of Usenet. This search engine is being targeted by the DMCA, that must be primarily for files posted in binaries groups, like your example. Other ISPs stopped hosting Usenet because of DMCA take down notices, and to a greater extent the sheer volume of traffic in the binaries groups. It's a pity.
You miss the point. Central IT will dictate the configuration and interface; the choice is not given to the end users. At lesat they have a choice beyond Metro.
They're talking about craters at the poles, where the sun never reaches the bottom. Always cold in there, and no atmosphere to convey heat from one part to another.
My information: from using a netbook with a stock Win7 Starter installation (installed by the shop). Never asked me for setting up a user account; never asked me for a password.
And yes, I'm pretty ignorant on Windows. I'm a plain user. I got the system, I use it, that's it. If I'm running as "administrator" by default, that's Windows fault to allow that to begin with and not asking me to set up a user. It's my experience as a user - who hasn't used Windows in a really really long time.
I have installed drivers on the system (for my printer and "USB mass storage" drivers for my phone), without the need for a password, just clicking "allow" when the prompt came. Oh sorry, not even that, it was just done by the system for the USB drivers, I plugged it in and it started to do stuff. I wouldn't know whether they are "kernel mode" drivers or otherwise, nor would I truly care - it just has to work.
There used to be this expression "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM". Buy IBM, and you're safe; if it still breaks you can always say "well I went with what everybody does, what is generally considered a good choice, so I did the best I could". By buying some no-name brand, or brandless hardware, you don't have this excuse. Then it's instantly your responsibility.
Same for Microsoft vs Linux. Linux is "that hacker platform" while Windows is "what all businesses use". It's the safe choice - from a job security pov. We know Linux is statistically more stable and secure than Windows, but if it goes wrong, it's the fault of the guy going for the alternative, off the beaten track, and insisting of going against what the rest of the world does.
Or for the obligatory car analogy: Linux is the self-driving car that reacts faster, is more alert, won't speed, stops for red lights, and has a perfect accident record, while Windows is the human driven car. When one of the human drivers has yet another accident, that's too bad, humans aren't perfect. When the self-driving car has an accident, that's a disaster, totally unacceptable and why isn't there a human at the wheel paying attention to correct those mistakes.
Windows' mess of not keeping system files and user files strictly separate is partly to blame.
Even in Win7 you all the time get warnings like "this program wants to make changes to your hard disk, allow/deny?". All you have to do is click "allow" and the program runs. What it is changing, I don't know. It appears to give unfettered access to system files - which is totally unnecessary, unless you're running an installer.
While having access to user files only can still give very nasty results (deleting important stuff, for example), trojans have a much harder time to get to a higher level, and to hide themselves while running. Cleaning up is a lot easier, too.
If it is really to prevent Iran getting their hands on such a technology, what is preventing Iran to host the contest by themselves? The prize money is a mere US$ 2 mln, nothing a country like Iran can't afford. Heck, many bigger companies would have no problem with that.
The most remarkable part to me is that so many companies were willing to invest in such a contest, which likely will require real-life demonstration of their tech, for so small a reward.
Water is another, of course, but that may be available in the form of ice at the poles.
Now sure you have a lot of sunlight available on the moon, but we don't have any machines that run on sunlight. This light has to be harvested and converted into electricity: currently done though methods like solar panels or via steam driving generators.
To get significant amounts of power, you need rather big solar panels. IR+visible spectrum gets you about 1,000 W/m2, most of which is not usable for modern solar panels, so you have maybe 100 W/m2 effective power. To get a 1 MW power source (a bare minimum to do any significant mining/construction/life support/etc) you'd need 10,000 m2 of solar panels installed. And still have half the time no power at all, and other times limited power due to not facing the sun directly. So make that 20,000 m2 of solar panels, and the equivalent in batteries (or other storage) to get through the dark times.
All, or at least a large part of this has to be taken to the moon. You can make your own solar panels, but you'll still have to bring in the machines and raw materials. You can start mining, you'll still need mining equipment and a power source before you can start making more mining equipment, and you first have to find the relevant mineral deposits.
I recall a few years ago now on Slashdot a discussion on the topic "MS doesn't matter any more" - doesn't matter, as in you don't need to use any MS software to run your business and communicate with the outside world. They are of course still a major player in the software arena, but far from as all powerful as they were. There are plenty of alternatives, they are viable, and indeed a key reason for companies to stick to MS is because they are already with MS. New businesses that still have the choice, have an alternative.
That was basically the argument, and mostly I agreed at the time. But it was ahead of time, it was before Android and the iPhone even.
Now it seems to me that MS is really risking becoming just "one of the options". And probably MS feels the same. They took nearly a decade to come with a viable successor to WinXP, and in the meantime both OS-X and various Linux distros made great strides in UI design, general usability, and indeed market share.
They completely lost control over the www - partly thanks to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and the others on the desktop, partly thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices which are pretty much all non-Microsoft devices (Windows Phone is really small compared to Android and iOS).
They will lose control over their Word lock-in, again partly thanks to mobile devices: people do want to view and edit their documents on their tablets, which means some application running on iOS or Android. MS doesn't have such an offering yet. OpenOffice in it's various incarnations is gaining significant ground at least in Europe, and Google Docs is also a major competitor sucking people away from MS Office.
And surely people will start thinking. "Why is my iPad working so much nicer than my desktop? Aren't there alternatives to Windows?" They see Apple's offerings in the stores. "That's nice but out of my budget, any cheaper alternatives?" They may have heard about Linux, about Ubuntu or Red Hat. "Hey, geek friend, how about that Ubuntu thing that I recently heard about? Can I still watch videos on YouTube, and edit some Word documents? Can I try it out a bit?"
Not many people at first, sure, but there are always people curious about what's out there, and nowadays you can see there is more out there than Windows.
MS is definitely feeling the heat of the competition. First they finally picked up development of their web browser, and made great progress there. Then after the debacle of Vista they quickly came with Win7 and now Win8. And now planning a new major release every year, that's going to be interesting. They'll have to start offering intersting features to keep people on their platform, and give people a reason to use Windows and not one of the alternatives. I'm looking forward to it.
Enter the numerous Chinese online retailers. End consumers cannot shop at alibaba.com, but anyone can buy those large minimum orders and resell on ebay.
Alibaba is not a shopping site. It's a business to business trade site, that's very different. You don't place orders over Alibaba, you search for suitable suppliers there, then contact them directly, and negotiate a deal with them. After the first contact, Alibaba is usually out of the equation. They make their money with listing fees, not by sales commission like ebay does.
If you are looking for a Chinese alternative to ebay, try taobao. You will have to be able to read Chinese of course, but that's where the Chinese go for online shopping, and where Chinese individual retailers put their goods up for sale.
Also, he's the prez, meaning he probably didn't pay jack squat at the local bookstore he graced with the honor of visiting and bringing free publicity to in the first place.
That would be worrying, as it's corruption. Or at least may be taken as such. As a president he can not leave any doubt about such things, no matter how minor the amount. He's not a celebrity like a pop singer or actor or whatever, who do promotions for a living, he's the president and as such different rules apply.
Grab a copy from a reliable source (The Pirate Bay for example - no kidding - check the comments - enough people to check on it to make sure it's OK), then activate it with your official, paid for key.
You don't have to use the package manager to install software, crapware likely will use their own installer and be pretty hard to remove (though should be trivial to disable if you know where to look). It's just convenient to stick to your package manager.
Cards have a built-in expiry date; usually the date you're supposed to leave the hotel. When extending your stay, they will update your card. So while you may be able to copy them, it's not exactly useful.
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Key of your story: use as many AV tools as you can find, the more you use the more chance at least one of them will find out something is wrong with your system.
Just curious: you said you found a removal tool from Kaspersky. Didn't their scanner find the specific malware?
How do you know beforehand that you're visiting a dodgy site? Keeping in mind that it is frequently the ads that serve the malware, and you never know where the ads are going to come from (this assuming you don't have ABP).
And if you know beforehand a site is dodgy, why would you want to visit it to begin with?
In case of anti-virus it's even worse so.
They provide the boat with leaky hull, and then they provide tools to help you plug the holes. Instead they should focus on not having holes in the hull to begin with.
May be nice if that site works with the latest Firefox, too... been a while since I had an issue with a site just not working.
It's the binaries that have to be dropped. But then many of those newzbin type sites will lose most of their audience I suppose.
And what it has over a web forum: no single point of failure. No need for someone to maintain that one site, that one interface. No need to use a web browser, there are other ways to access it. Easy local archiving if you like.
Spam is an issue, can't deny that.
Your gmail is not public, or is it?
So not only can the RIAA not see what you attach to your e-mails, it is private distribution to a single recipient (or at least a highly limited list of recipients) which is a quite different ballgame than public distribution.
Back in the day I've used Usenet on and off, it was entertaining, sometimes useful. Heaps of forums on all kinds of topics.
Yet the binaries part that's what I never really got - most of it can be found on various torrent and file sharing sites as well, and the binaries are also seemingly the undoing of Usenet. This search engine is being targeted by the DMCA, that must be primarily for files posted in binaries groups, like your example. Other ISPs stopped hosting Usenet because of DMCA take down notices, and to a greater extent the sheer volume of traffic in the binaries groups. It's a pity.
You miss the point. Central IT will dictate the configuration and interface; the choice is not given to the end users. At lesat they have a choice beyond Metro.
They're talking about craters at the poles, where the sun never reaches the bottom. Always cold in there, and no atmosphere to convey heat from one part to another.
My information: from using a netbook with a stock Win7 Starter installation (installed by the shop). Never asked me for setting up a user account; never asked me for a password.
And yes, I'm pretty ignorant on Windows. I'm a plain user. I got the system, I use it, that's it. If I'm running as "administrator" by default, that's Windows fault to allow that to begin with and not asking me to set up a user. It's my experience as a user - who hasn't used Windows in a really really long time.
I have installed drivers on the system (for my printer and "USB mass storage" drivers for my phone), without the need for a password, just clicking "allow" when the prompt came. Oh sorry, not even that, it was just done by the system for the USB drivers, I plugged it in and it started to do stuff. I wouldn't know whether they are "kernel mode" drivers or otherwise, nor would I truly care - it just has to work.
There used to be this expression "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM". Buy IBM, and you're safe; if it still breaks you can always say "well I went with what everybody does, what is generally considered a good choice, so I did the best I could". By buying some no-name brand, or brandless hardware, you don't have this excuse. Then it's instantly your responsibility.
Same for Microsoft vs Linux. Linux is "that hacker platform" while Windows is "what all businesses use". It's the safe choice - from a job security pov. We know Linux is statistically more stable and secure than Windows, but if it goes wrong, it's the fault of the guy going for the alternative, off the beaten track, and insisting of going against what the rest of the world does.
Or for the obligatory car analogy: Linux is the self-driving car that reacts faster, is more alert, won't speed, stops for red lights, and has a perfect accident record, while Windows is the human driven car. When one of the human drivers has yet another accident, that's too bad, humans aren't perfect. When the self-driving car has an accident, that's a disaster, totally unacceptable and why isn't there a human at the wheel paying attention to correct those mistakes.
Windows' mess of not keeping system files and user files strictly separate is partly to blame.
Even in Win7 you all the time get warnings like "this program wants to make changes to your hard disk, allow/deny?". All you have to do is click "allow" and the program runs. What it is changing, I don't know. It appears to give unfettered access to system files - which is totally unnecessary, unless you're running an installer.
While having access to user files only can still give very nasty results (deleting important stuff, for example), trojans have a much harder time to get to a higher level, and to hide themselves while running. Cleaning up is a lot easier, too.
From the way the summary is written ("temporary IT staff members") I make up they have a permanent IT staff of more than one already.
If it is really to prevent Iran getting their hands on such a technology, what is preventing Iran to host the contest by themselves? The prize money is a mere US$ 2 mln, nothing a country like Iran can't afford. Heck, many bigger companies would have no problem with that.
The most remarkable part to me is that so many companies were willing to invest in such a contest, which likely will require real-life demonstration of their tech, for so small a reward.
Energy will be a big issue.
Water is another, of course, but that may be available in the form of ice at the poles.
Now sure you have a lot of sunlight available on the moon, but we don't have any machines that run on sunlight. This light has to be harvested and converted into electricity: currently done though methods like solar panels or via steam driving generators.
To get significant amounts of power, you need rather big solar panels. IR+visible spectrum gets you about 1,000 W/m2, most of which is not usable for modern solar panels, so you have maybe 100 W/m2 effective power. To get a 1 MW power source (a bare minimum to do any significant mining/construction/life support/etc) you'd need 10,000 m2 of solar panels installed. And still have half the time no power at all, and other times limited power due to not facing the sun directly. So make that 20,000 m2 of solar panels, and the equivalent in batteries (or other storage) to get through the dark times.
All, or at least a large part of this has to be taken to the moon. You can make your own solar panels, but you'll still have to bring in the machines and raw materials. You can start mining, you'll still need mining equipment and a power source before you can start making more mining equipment, and you first have to find the relevant mineral deposits.
I recall a few years ago now on Slashdot a discussion on the topic "MS doesn't matter any more" - doesn't matter, as in you don't need to use any MS software to run your business and communicate with the outside world. They are of course still a major player in the software arena, but far from as all powerful as they were. There are plenty of alternatives, they are viable, and indeed a key reason for companies to stick to MS is because they are already with MS. New businesses that still have the choice, have an alternative.
That was basically the argument, and mostly I agreed at the time. But it was ahead of time, it was before Android and the iPhone even.
Now it seems to me that MS is really risking becoming just "one of the options". And probably MS feels the same. They took nearly a decade to come with a viable successor to WinXP, and in the meantime both OS-X and various Linux distros made great strides in UI design, general usability, and indeed market share.
They completely lost control over the www - partly thanks to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and the others on the desktop, partly thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices which are pretty much all non-Microsoft devices (Windows Phone is really small compared to Android and iOS).
They will lose control over their Word lock-in, again partly thanks to mobile devices: people do want to view and edit their documents on their tablets, which means some application running on iOS or Android. MS doesn't have such an offering yet. OpenOffice in it's various incarnations is gaining significant ground at least in Europe, and Google Docs is also a major competitor sucking people away from MS Office.
And surely people will start thinking. "Why is my iPad working so much nicer than my desktop? Aren't there alternatives to Windows?" They see Apple's offerings in the stores. "That's nice but out of my budget, any cheaper alternatives?" They may have heard about Linux, about Ubuntu or Red Hat. "Hey, geek friend, how about that Ubuntu thing that I recently heard about? Can I still watch videos on YouTube, and edit some Word documents? Can I try it out a bit?"
Not many people at first, sure, but there are always people curious about what's out there, and nowadays you can see there is more out there than Windows.
MS is definitely feeling the heat of the competition. First they finally picked up development of their web browser, and made great progress there. Then after the debacle of Vista they quickly came with Win7 and now Win8. And now planning a new major release every year, that's going to be interesting. They'll have to start offering intersting features to keep people on their platform, and give people a reason to use Windows and not one of the alternatives. I'm looking forward to it.
"To watch this video you must install MS Silverlight".
Enter the numerous Chinese online retailers. End consumers cannot shop at alibaba.com, but anyone can buy those large minimum orders and resell on ebay.
Alibaba is not a shopping site. It's a business to business trade site, that's very different. You don't place orders over Alibaba, you search for suitable suppliers there, then contact them directly, and negotiate a deal with them. After the first contact, Alibaba is usually out of the equation. They make their money with listing fees, not by sales commission like ebay does.
If you are looking for a Chinese alternative to ebay, try taobao. You will have to be able to read Chinese of course, but that's where the Chinese go for online shopping, and where Chinese individual retailers put their goods up for sale.
I didn't say they are, I just said they should be. And the higher up, the more important that gets.
Also, he's the prez, meaning he probably didn't pay jack squat at the local bookstore he graced with the honor of visiting and bringing free publicity to in the first place.
That would be worrying, as it's corruption. Or at least may be taken as such. As a president he can not leave any doubt about such things, no matter how minor the amount. He's not a celebrity like a pop singer or actor or whatever, who do promotions for a living, he's the president and as such different rules apply.
Well, his salary is paid out of your taxes...
Indeed behaviour is configurable, but pressing it for 3-5 seconds should always switch off a computer.
Grab a copy from a reliable source (The Pirate Bay for example - no kidding - check the comments - enough people to check on it to make sure it's OK), then activate it with your official, paid for key.
One key, one installation.
Any problem there?
You don't have to use the package manager to install software, crapware likely will use their own installer and be pretty hard to remove (though should be trivial to disable if you know where to look). It's just convenient to stick to your package manager.
Cards have a built-in expiry date; usually the date you're supposed to leave the hotel. When extending your stay, they will update your card. So while you may be able to copy them, it's not exactly useful.