Stop being so silly. If Mossad was involved with this software then they wouldn't scream it from an about page. There wouldn't be an about page. There wouldn't be a product at all. If they wanted to infect PCs they would do so in a targeted way and they wouldn't shout about it.
It is more likely that this guy left their services and applied some of the tricks he learned to a commercial purpose - writing a library that allows various spyware / adware libraries to hijack clicks and traffic and inject their own affiliate ids / ads / search results into the response.
No one says it's a good or honourable thing but the primary motivation appears to be money and nothing else. It's still a security threat. It's still utterly reprehensible. But it seems to be the guy enriching his own pocket.
Besides, if it really was Mossad, they'd have done a much better job.
If it was really Mossad they'd be installing the code onto PCs used by their enemies for intelligence gathering. They wouldn't be installing it onto new PCs so they could popup ads for penis enlargement pills.
The article suggests that the earth's rotation would cause the dropped to hit the wall on the way down. So why can't the tunnel curve to account for this? Presumably it would curve the other way as it exits. It also suggests that going from North to South pole wouldn't work because of their relative altitudes, but is there an antipodal point where the altitudes are close enough feasibly go from one side to another - e.g. build a tunnel / raised platform to bring each side to the same altitude. I realise this is all completely hypothetical, bad movie remakes notwithstanding.
What about a $500 wooden volume knob which claims to dampen micro vibrations?
Audiophiles are clearly idiots. A rich seam of idiots with a lot of money that companies specialise in exploiting by selling expensive tat to.
As for this Sony thing, the impression appears to be it would offer absolutely no benefit whatsoever to playback though I guess it's conceivable that recording artists and the like would find a use for it if it reduces radio interference when they're trying to record something.
How can a contract be worth any value at all if the store didn't even bother to validate the identify of the person signing? How can my signature by valid if I scrawl "Mickey Mouse" or draw a dick because they're not looking.
Whatever tenuous reason they might have for a signature, it's not a very good one. If they cared for the strength of their contract they would do the minimum necessary to verify it was the person with authorisation to use the card.
As for the cashier, that's part of the reason for chip and pin. It takes the authentication and authorisation out of their hands. Either the transaction goes through or it doesn't but at least some security is applied.
My typical experience as a traveller - I walk up to checkout with an item, present my card, it's swiped, I scrawl a signature on a (usually broken) digital capture device but the cashier never bothers to authenticate the card, or look at the name on it, or ask for id, or match the signature to the card. In a restaurant, the card might even be taken away to be swiped and it doesn't occur to either the restaurant or customers why this might be a bad thing.
So it's hardly surprising if the US receives the highest amount of fraud. It's trivial to skim the details because it's all stored on the magstripe, stores hold the info in arcane systems, there is no authentication and there is no financial burden on the store if fraud occurs.
Chip and pin isn't perfect but it's FAR better than the US system. In Europe every business has a chip and pin device. Restaurants have a portable chip and pin device. Supermarkets and stores have one at the cashier. You pay by sticking the card in the device and authenticating with it. There is less scope for the card to be skimmed because the card never leaves the customer's hands. There is less scope for a malicious store because authenticating and authorisation is via a secure payment system.
Ideally cards wouldn't even have a mag stripe any more. Give businesses 5 years to replace their decrepit equipment and banks to upgrade their ATMs and then get rid of them. Chip and pin and NFC cover the same use cases and provide better security into the bargain.
I expect most people if asked, if they wanted their computer to book to desktop in 15 seconds instead of 30 seconds (for example) with would pick the former. So yes they desire what systemd gives them even if they have no idea what systemd is.
The best way to get Linux accepted by the mainstream is to deliver a modern, stable, user friendly, forgiving, slick desktop which doesn't require a PHD to operate, doesn't require a terminal to be opened (ever), and offers the functionality people bought their damned computer (or tablet) for in the first place - word processing, games, browsing, streaming video etc.
The problem with the Linux community is that never seems to sink in. I watched this same thing play over and over through the years. Criticize Linux or a part thereof and the wagons circle. Suggest that an app or desktop isn't usable and the RTFM brigade leaps out to justify the brokenness. Propose or implement change and watch the reactions become outright hostile. This is most obvious with recent changes to SysV to systemd and X11 to Wayland but it's nothing new.
The Linux community can be its own worst enemy sometimes. It's like some like Linux being a niche and have the siege mentality to go with it.
Redhat has a lot of control over the marketplace and the direction of software packages.
They have a lot of control over their own dist. What other dists do is entirely up to them. Which is why Red Hat uses yum / rpm and other dists do their own thing.
The fact that other dists have moved to systemd may be due to the fact that SysVInit has recognized issues, particularly when supporting modern desktop / server environments and by comparison to other operating systems (Windows, Solaris etc.) and so they've chosen to switch.
The Amiga's GPU was a blitter, able to copy chunks of memory with bitplane / step / overlap / mask info over from address A to address B. Enough for moving sprites around but not much else. It also had something called copper which was a way to video interupt sync certain actions (e.g. switching the palette) but hardly meaningful by today's standards.
The Amiga only really got a proper graphics card when 3rd parties like Picasso stepped in to provide one and even then "proper" only means analogous to Cirrus Logic style cards that appeared for Windows 3.1. Hardly GPU in the modern sense.
The Amiga's Agnes GPU was a glorified blitter and the Paula audio "acceleration" was just a sound chip that had DMA so it could be kicked off to play sound stored in a memory buffer. Neither would help decompress an MP3 - the CPU would still have to decode the next chunk of audio in memory and trigger the audio chip to begin playing it. I'm not sure why anybody would want to play MP3s on an Amiga though and I very much doubt it left much CPU to do anything else, even on a 68030 or 68040 CPU.
Preposterous. What Fedora does in its own dist doesn't mean other dists must do the same. Dists have chosen to go with systemd because it offers a solution to the well known issues with SysVInit when supporting a modern client or server.
WoW fixed a lot of things that were wrong with EQ and had slightly better (albeit still generic) lore to go with it. The grind in EQ was punishing - you might be sat healing for 90% of the time and a session might see you gain a few pixels on your EXP bar. A bad session might see you killed and performing a terrifying corpse drag to salvage your kit. You might be waiting 30 minutes for a boat to turn up and more than once I was thrown off the boat back onto the shore because of bugs. You couldn't alt+tab away from EQ in your multitasking OS during this downtime because the client wouldn't let you. Spawn camping was endemic. And the bugs... The Shadows of Luclin upgrade managed to crash servers and clients so often that I took the opportunity to snap out of the idea I was enjoying myself and cancelled my sub.
That isn't to say I stopped playing MMORPGs - I played Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes / Villains, A Tale in the Desert, even WoW (but only free trials), Star Wars Galaxies and many others. I rarely put as much time or effort into them as I did with EQ because I recognized they all used exactly the same mechanics under the hood to keep you playing - grind, more grind, slow travel, exp bars, stupid quests, upkeep, crafting - all stuff to slow you down and suck money out of the economy.
Probably the best MMO I've played is Lord of the Rings Online because it does has the lore to go with it. I bought it when it was launched and subscription based. I liked the game but I found the grind punishing and cancelled the sub. Then it went free to play and they lowered the grind to make it easier to progress and suddenly it's a far better game. Clearly they want people to advance to buy the inventory slots and other things that start to fill up by that point but it still works out far, far cheaper than WoW or similar.
Another overlooked MMO is Puzzle Pirates which is basically a bunch of mini games with a pirate theme but it's still pretty cool.
Extension signing should be the way it is in Android - roll a key, register the key and then continue to sign the extension with that key. It means that when a new version of the extension is uploaded the signature can be verified to ensure the extension is a) not tampered with, b) reasonably likely from the same origin.
SOE only had one major hit with Everquest but when World of Warcraft came along they didn't follow up with anything to compete. The likes of Star Wars Galaxies was an unmitigated disaster and Everquest II barely made a dent. They've made quite a few other MMORPGs over the years, some of which had promise but never took off or were mismanaged. The biggest wasted opportunity was Free Realms which Sony (if they had an ounce of sense) would have pushed instead of Home on the PS3.
I'm kind of surprised they survived as long as they did really. Maybe new owners will put a bit of stick about and focus minds better on fewer products.
I've been laid off in a company where headcount was dictated by stock market indices. Just recently I heard them advertising on the radio for as many people as they can get for the same positions they'd erased about 5 years back. At least they paid people to go quietly even though the process was extremely unfair (no account of performance, skills etc.)
Just because someone doesn't have a criminal record, doesn't mean they're squeaky clean - it just means they haven't been caught yet.
That is no excuse for not vetting drivers who are KNOWN to be convicted rapists or guilty of other serious offences. Or operating a half assed program to vet drivers which isn't as stringent as the one that normal taxi drivers are expected to go through. Uber should be no exception. It is a taxi service and it should abid by the laws that govern other taxis. If that cuts into their profits then tough shit.
"Excuse me driver can you refrain from beating raping me for a moment while I reach for my phone, unlock it, navigate to the uber app, find the panic button and activate it?"
Bitcoins can be somewhat laundered via "tumblers" - the idea is you exchange dirty money for good money with the tumbler splitting, dividing, and obscuring where the originated from. Problem of course is that all these tumblers just exchange dirty money for dirty money (and take a percentage) so I wouldn't be surprised if law enforcement take a particular interest in coins which have been tumbled and might even run a few tumbler services themselves for the lulz.
Funny. I read the indictment and I knew straight away that the guy was fucked. It's almost as though the feds had a bit of a problem with somebody running a market for drugs, weapons, money laundering, stolen goods & credit cards, and hitmen and poured all their time and effort into taking it down.
Slashdot Mirror
It is more likely that this guy left their services and applied some of the tricks he learned to a commercial purpose - writing a library that allows various spyware / adware libraries to hijack clicks and traffic and inject their own affiliate ids / ads / search results into the response.
No one says it's a good or honourable thing but the primary motivation appears to be money and nothing else. It's still a security threat. It's still utterly reprehensible. But it seems to be the guy enriching his own pocket.
Besides, if it really was Mossad, they'd have done a much better job.
If it was really Mossad they'd be installing the code onto PCs used by their enemies for intelligence gathering. They wouldn't be installing it onto new PCs so they could popup ads for penis enlargement pills.
The article suggests that the earth's rotation would cause the dropped to hit the wall on the way down. So why can't the tunnel curve to account for this? Presumably it would curve the other way as it exits. It also suggests that going from North to South pole wouldn't work because of their relative altitudes, but is there an antipodal point where the altitudes are close enough feasibly go from one side to another - e.g. build a tunnel / raised platform to bring each side to the same altitude. I realise this is all completely hypothetical, bad movie remakes notwithstanding.
Audiophiles are clearly idiots. A rich seam of idiots with a lot of money that companies specialise in exploiting by selling expensive tat to.
As for this Sony thing, the impression appears to be it would offer absolutely no benefit whatsoever to playback though I guess it's conceivable that recording artists and the like would find a use for it if it reduces radio interference when they're trying to record something.
Whatever tenuous reason they might have for a signature, it's not a very good one. If they cared for the strength of their contract they would do the minimum necessary to verify it was the person with authorisation to use the card.
As for the cashier, that's part of the reason for chip and pin. It takes the authentication and authorisation out of their hands. Either the transaction goes through or it doesn't but at least some security is applied.
Just like bitcoin? And bitcoin is a fraud free libertarian paradise as we all know.
So it's hardly surprising if the US receives the highest amount of fraud. It's trivial to skim the details because it's all stored on the magstripe, stores hold the info in arcane systems, there is no authentication and there is no financial burden on the store if fraud occurs.
Chip and pin isn't perfect but it's FAR better than the US system. In Europe every business has a chip and pin device. Restaurants have a portable chip and pin device. Supermarkets and stores have one at the cashier. You pay by sticking the card in the device and authenticating with it. There is less scope for the card to be skimmed because the card never leaves the customer's hands. There is less scope for a malicious store because authenticating and authorisation is via a secure payment system.
Ideally cards wouldn't even have a mag stripe any more. Give businesses 5 years to replace their decrepit equipment and banks to upgrade their ATMs and then get rid of them. Chip and pin and NFC cover the same use cases and provide better security into the bargain.
I expect most people if asked, if they wanted their computer to book to desktop in 15 seconds instead of 30 seconds (for example) with would pick the former. So yes they desire what systemd gives them even if they have no idea what systemd is.
The problem with the Linux community is that never seems to sink in. I watched this same thing play over and over through the years. Criticize Linux or a part thereof and the wagons circle. Suggest that an app or desktop isn't usable and the RTFM brigade leaps out to justify the brokenness. Propose or implement change and watch the reactions become outright hostile. This is most obvious with recent changes to SysV to systemd and X11 to Wayland but it's nothing new.
The Linux community can be its own worst enemy sometimes. It's like some like Linux being a niche and have the siege mentality to go with it.
Redhat has a lot of control over the marketplace and the direction of software packages.
They have a lot of control over their own dist. What other dists do is entirely up to them. Which is why Red Hat uses yum / rpm and other dists do their own thing.
The fact that other dists have moved to systemd may be due to the fact that SysVInit has recognized issues, particularly when supporting modern desktop / server environments and by comparison to other operating systems (Windows, Solaris etc.) and so they've chosen to switch.
The Amiga only really got a proper graphics card when 3rd parties like Picasso stepped in to provide one and even then "proper" only means analogous to Cirrus Logic style cards that appeared for Windows 3.1. Hardly GPU in the modern sense.
The Amiga's Agnes GPU was a glorified blitter and the Paula audio "acceleration" was just a sound chip that had DMA so it could be kicked off to play sound stored in a memory buffer. Neither would help decompress an MP3 - the CPU would still have to decode the next chunk of audio in memory and trigger the audio chip to begin playing it. I'm not sure why anybody would want to play MP3s on an Amiga though and I very much doubt it left much CPU to do anything else, even on a 68030 or 68040 CPU.
Quite obviously 3) although most people are and will continue to be perfectly content with systemd.
Preposterous. What Fedora does in its own dist doesn't mean other dists must do the same. Dists have chosen to go with systemd because it offers a solution to the well known issues with SysVInit when supporting a modern client or server.
That isn't to say I stopped playing MMORPGs - I played Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes / Villains, A Tale in the Desert, even WoW (but only free trials), Star Wars Galaxies and many others. I rarely put as much time or effort into them as I did with EQ because I recognized they all used exactly the same mechanics under the hood to keep you playing - grind, more grind, slow travel, exp bars, stupid quests, upkeep, crafting - all stuff to slow you down and suck money out of the economy.
Probably the best MMO I've played is Lord of the Rings Online because it does has the lore to go with it. I bought it when it was launched and subscription based. I liked the game but I found the grind punishing and cancelled the sub. Then it went free to play and they lowered the grind to make it easier to progress and suddenly it's a far better game. Clearly they want people to advance to buy the inventory slots and other things that start to fill up by that point but it still works out far, far cheaper than WoW or similar.
Another overlooked MMO is Puzzle Pirates which is basically a bunch of mini games with a pirate theme but it's still pretty cool.
For obvious reasons - because they don't want crims making unmonitored communications with their buddies / accomplices on the outside.
Extension signing should be the way it is in Android - roll a key, register the key and then continue to sign the extension with that key. It means that when a new version of the extension is uploaded the signature can be verified to ensure the extension is a) not tampered with, b) reasonably likely from the same origin.
I'm kind of surprised they survived as long as they did really. Maybe new owners will put a bit of stick about and focus minds better on fewer products.
I've been laid off in a company where headcount was dictated by stock market indices. Just recently I heard them advertising on the radio for as many people as they can get for the same positions they'd erased about 5 years back. At least they paid people to go quietly even though the process was extremely unfair (no account of performance, skills etc.)
Just because someone doesn't have a criminal record, doesn't mean they're squeaky clean - it just means they haven't been caught yet.
That is no excuse for not vetting drivers who are KNOWN to be convicted rapists or guilty of other serious offences. Or operating a half assed program to vet drivers which isn't as stringent as the one that normal taxi drivers are expected to go through. Uber should be no exception. It is a taxi service and it should abid by the laws that govern other taxis. If that cuts into their profits then tough shit.
The funny bit is if he'd shut up about his fringe economic theories and libertarianism they would have had a harder job finding him.
"Excuse me driver can you refrain from beating raping me for a moment while I reach for my phone, unlock it, navigate to the uber app, find the panic button and activate it?"
Bitcoins can be somewhat laundered via "tumblers" - the idea is you exchange dirty money for good money with the tumbler splitting, dividing, and obscuring where the originated from. Problem of course is that all these tumblers just exchange dirty money for dirty money (and take a percentage) so I wouldn't be surprised if law enforcement take a particular interest in coins which have been tumbled and might even run a few tumbler services themselves for the lulz.
Funny. I read the indictment and I knew straight away that the guy was fucked. It's almost as though the feds had a bit of a problem with somebody running a market for drugs, weapons, money laundering, stolen goods & credit cards, and hitmen and poured all their time and effort into taking it down.
Because a vaccine may not be 100% effective or the kid might be too young to receive it or have other reasons they cannot have it. Obviously.