There are already worms that do that sort of stuff, one example being W32.Magistr. Apart from the proper english, it sounded like it does what you want it to. e.g. it overwrites the boot sector of the first IDE hard drive, erases the CMOS, flashes the BIOS, corrupts/deletes text files, and much more. Plus it can send itself to people in the victim's Outlook, Netscape and (in the newer version, which is linked) Eudora address books. Too bad it is old and the virus scanners can detect it.
Re:Mozilla is the BEST browser!
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Its Debateable that IE is more stable, but Mozilla is faster.
But what use is a fast program if it isn't as stable as the program it is meant to replace? Don't get me worng, I use Mozilla too, but saying it's better because it is faster, even though it is less stable, is flawed logic to say the least.
Intergrate ICQ + AOL into mozilla...
Mozilla's codebase is big enough already, adding features like these would simply be increasing the code's complexity while not being as well suited to the task as a dedicated program. This is also the basis of the Unix philosophy: make several programs to do one thing, and do it well, instead of one program to do everything and suck at them all. Add to that that you do not want your instant messaging programs to die when your browser does, and vice versa.
... pre caching of entire websites...
This is a horrible thing to do! In essence, you would end up downloading countless megabytes of data that would never get read and cause needless congestion on the internet. Say you follow a link from an article: you may only end up going to one page in that site. But your browser has downloaded the whole thing, only to end up throwing it away. That would be extremely pointless and possibly perceived as rude by the operators of the server whose bandwidth you have just wasted. Also, broadband users wouldn't need to have pages pre-cached -- their connection is fast enough without the help of a web accelerator.
Not meaning to attack you personally, but I had to voice my opinion on some of your ideas, so don't get offended by what I say.
Even using a log of HTTP GETs would be easily foiled. Your software could be written to actually request the image, and then close the connection once it recieves a 200 OK from the server. You still show up in the access log while not having actually downloaded the image.
What I think would be good if/. supported user customisable CSS sheets, the same way that we have a custom slashbox. That way, everyone could change slashdot to look good to them, and no one would be complaining that it looks like shit.
Although I think disk space might be a limiting factor (if every user had an extra 2kB of preferences, that would add up fast), I think it would be a very cool idea.
I was thinking of something more like having it automatically dial up to the net and you actually have nothing to do with it after you turn it on. Sort of like drop and run. Wedge it in between some seats when no one is around, "forget" it somewhere, and other such acts. Can't throw the cellphone away, 'cos the laptop hasn't even started with it by the time you leave, and you never step foot in the place again.
But the point of no one seeing your face is one that I overlooked, and the laptop would probably be reported as a bomb or something now that I think of it.
I thought of a "cool", yet damn-near impossible idea...
What it involved was this: you get a shitty laptop, and put a cellmodem in it. Make sure you have no way of tracing the laptop to you (no hostname, no password, no nothing). Create an account with one of those free ISPs with the standard fake UID/name/address, and set up your laptop to use it. On the laptop you have automated cracking software which finds vulnerable hosts, cracks them and distributes itself to them, as well as some software to upload to ftp servers, USENET and whatever else you can think of via anonymising servers and stuff. Do this such that the cracking bots run on their new hosts as well, so you have plenty of little bots on the net distributing your code. Now dump it in the street or some other public area (shopping centre, city dump, international airport, etc..) in a city nowhere near you, then get the hell away from it.
By the time it has distributed itself to at least the ftp sites and to USENET, and possibly cracked a couple of boxes, you will be nowhere near that crappy little laptop. Even better, someone will probably steal it and (be forced to) take the blame for your software.
But you'd have to be pretty bored to figure out how to do at least the cracking bot (maybe queso + all the r3wtkits you can find?). And I take no responsibility if someone actually does this...
So I hope that this post sparks some interesting conversation...
LICQ still does display their hidden IP (in a set of brackets). and I'm pretty sure there are piles of ICQ (win32) hacks that let you see other ppl's hidden IPs. And this is all without them even sending you a message...
If the RIAA went all crazy over the first portable MP3 players, with their *amazingly huge*(sarcasm) 64MB, how long before they deem this little thing to just be facilitating piracy?:)
Ok the common comsumer is what has caused the state of the computer industry today. They do not educate them self enough to use the damn machine on their desk and have no wish to do so.
and the inlet manifold pressure on your car engine is?
What's the maximum torque tolerable by the handle on your garden spade?
The diameter to the nearest micron of the ball in your ballpoint pen?
I think you're misinterpreting what he's said.
He's saying that people should take time to learn about some of the basic commands of a computer, not that everyone should learn the kernel source by heart. To continue your car analogy(sp?), he's just saying people should at least know how to use the brakes instead of just pushing one of the little pedals(or whatever) and hoping it does what you want.
I think the right frame of mind to have would be that everyone should learn how to use their computer, not that they should spend months memorising trivial facts about it.
You should add a third category to your list: "Having no knowledge, and rejecting any new knowledge". I say this because our computer teacher is an idiot. He tried to tell us that hexadecimal is base seventeen, and he thinks that VB is the best, fastest "programming language" ever. ~~~
Perhaps a system where everyone can moderate while they have +ve karma, transferring one of their points to someone else? That might be a better system, but I couldn't be sure. ~~~
Yes and no. The images on a proper web site are supposed to be extra information, and not relied on for presentation, but you'd be amazed how many "bad" websites there are.
Slashdot Mirror
There are already worms that do that sort of stuff, one example being W32.Magistr. Apart from the proper english, it sounded like it does what you want it to. e.g. it overwrites the boot sector of the first IDE hard drive, erases the CMOS, flashes the BIOS, corrupts/deletes text files, and much more. Plus it can send itself to people in the victim's Outlook, Netscape and (in the newer version, which is linked) Eudora address books. Too bad it is old and the virus scanners can detect it.
Not meaning to attack you personally, but I had to voice my opinion on some of your ideas, so don't get offended by what I say.
Even using a log of HTTP GETs would be easily foiled. Your software could be written to actually request the image, and then close the connection once it recieves a 200 OK from the server. You still show up in the access log while not having actually downloaded the image.
Although I think disk space might be a limiting factor (if every user had an extra 2kB of preferences, that would add up fast), I think it would be a very cool idea.
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Well, everyone here knows that, but the rest of the public doesn't, and the RIAA will try to keep it that way.
~~~
But the point of no one seeing your face is one that I overlooked, and the laptop would probably be reported as a bomb or something now that I think of it.
~~~
What it involved was this: you get a shitty laptop, and put a cellmodem in it. Make sure you have no way of tracing the laptop to you (no hostname, no password, no nothing). Create an account with one of those free ISPs with the standard fake UID/name/address, and set up your laptop to use it. On the laptop you have automated cracking software which finds vulnerable hosts, cracks them and distributes itself to them, as well as some software to upload to ftp servers, USENET and whatever else you can think of via anonymising servers and stuff. Do this such that the cracking bots run on their new hosts as well, so you have plenty of little bots on the net distributing your code. Now dump it in the street or some other public area (shopping centre, city dump, international airport, etc..) in a city nowhere near you, then get the hell away from it.
By the time it has distributed itself to at least the ftp sites and to USENET, and possibly cracked a couple of boxes, you will be nowhere near that crappy little laptop. Even better, someone will probably steal it and (be forced to) take the blame for your software.
But you'd have to be pretty bored to figure out how to do at least the cracking bot (maybe queso + all the r3wtkits you can find?). And I take no responsibility if someone actually does this...
So I hope that this post sparks some interesting conversation...
~~~
I can see it now:
They have enough money, they might just pull it off~~~
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Recently one of my friends had a LAN party, and we were playing halflife on it, and every time we started the LAN game it'd say something like:
gamedll_linux: dlls/hl_i386.so
Now, I have no idea why it says that, especially if there's no Linux port. Maybe someone else can shed some light onto this?
~~~
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~~~
What's the maximum torque tolerable by the handle on your garden spade?
The diameter to the nearest micron of the ball in your ballpoint pen?
I think you're misinterpreting what he's said.
He's saying that people should take time to learn about some of the basic commands of a computer, not that everyone should learn the kernel source by heart. To continue your car analogy(sp?), he's just saying people should at least know how to use the brakes instead of just pushing one of the little pedals(or whatever) and hoping it does what you want.
I think the right frame of mind to have would be that everyone should learn how to use their computer, not that they should spend months memorising trivial facts about it.
~~~
What, and have 3 000 people say they got in?
~~~
You should add a third category to your list:
"Having no knowledge, and rejecting any new knowledge".
I say this because our computer teacher is an idiot. He tried to tell us that hexadecimal is base seventeen, and he thinks that VB is the best, fastest "programming language" ever.
~~~
Perhaps a system where everyone can moderate while they have +ve karma, transferring one of their points to someone else? That might be a better system, but I couldn't be sure.
~~~
In the potato tree, there's a freeciv client that uses the GTK widgets and looks really good. I never knew there was an athena version...
Uh, that's not second post...
Yes and no. The images on a proper web site are supposed to be extra information, and not relied on for presentation, but you'd be amazed how many "bad" websites there are.
>right now, Windows security pretty much depends on its obscurity
Windows has security?