I had to give it a manual kick in the behind on more than one pc, where it was so far behind with updates that windows complained.
Not to forget the bullshit move avg pulled a while ago, where they discontinued all updates for the old free version, but instead of automatically updating to the *new* free version it only displayed a dialog box to "buy the full version". Which ends up in a support call to me.
actually I just saw an avast install that flat out refused to update (with an annoying prompt at each start) because the license was expired. This was the free version, mind you.
Apparently the free version keeps bugging you after some time to get a new registration key, with a heavy hint to buy the full version.
Naturally, there are people that have no idea how to deal with that, especially if they have not installed it themselves, so more support calls for me.
Opera stays useable even with 512 mb of ram and a few hundreds of tabs, althought that is pushing its limits (you know you are addicted to tabs when...)
Logitech mouse drivers on the other hands are memory monsters
Still looking for a low-memory antivirus that requieres absolutely no user interaction. Grisoft AVG uses little memory, but keeps requiring occasional user interaction for updates, so I hesitate to install it on someone elses machine. Clamwin is worse in that department however.
What i would like to see is a way to synchronize both Opera and Firefox Bookmarks with each other seamlessly.
All solutions I have seen so far seemed to result in either overwritten or duplicated bookmarks. Synchronizing passwords would be nice too.
This forced me to choose one browser for almost all my surfing, which ended up being opera, but I figure others may choose differently, so this would benefit Opera too.
Wikipedia has blocked anonymous contributions from one IP, which happens to be a proxy from that country. Users can still edit wikipedia throught this proxy by creating an account and logging in.
Creating a wikipedia account only requires a (throw-away) email, and is actually more anonymous, since your IP will not show up in the public logs if you are logged in.
That's just a css thing. In additon of displaying links you have visited in a different color, it is set to display a different image in front of it.
The source code of the page stays the same, your browser (depending on your settings) is taking care of tracing wich links you visited and changing the image accordingly, and the server never has to know about it.
Althought, now that you mention it, it would be possible to track visited links this way. Just use a different image for each link , then the server would see for which links which image gets loaded so the server could check whether you have visited some url before, even if that url was on another server.
So if slashdot were to include a link like <a href="PORNLINK.xxx" style=":visited { background-image: url(empty.gif?habits=PORNFREAK}"> (not sure about the exact css syntax) then slashdot could check which users visit porn sites and so on.
autopatcher is a closed source solution which requires you to trust executables from a dubious source. Even if you accept the autopatcher guys as currently trustworthy, they may still sell out or get hacked with much higher probability than microsoft.
Google Adsense would presumably start with a selection like the one above and then increase ads that are often clicked on and ads for the same keywords as those, while randlomly introducing ads for new keywords, thereby findig the ads that appeal to the seti demographic.
That the left is opposed to democracy. The democratically elected government introduced the death penalty, and now it should not be carried out...
Hint: You don't have to be oposed to democracy to disaprove a decission reached by the mayority. Quite the opposite, in fact. Proclaiming what you think is right and should be done is one of the cornerstones of democracy
You would have to block dns too. Otherwise one could simply embed an iframe/image/whatever on some unique host, like id123132.pattymail.com. Even if your email client is blocked from accessing that host, it will still try to resolve the address, and your ISP's dns server will forward the request to pattymail
Your boss called, he wants to see your printout before next week or you can forget about your raise. Dont know why he asked me to tell you instead of telling you personally, he mumbled something about "plausible deniability", that lazy ass
How about this: If microsoft implemented a module in windows to block incomming packets based on some scripted rules, and block http connections in internet explorer based on similar rules, then everyone could develop instant band-aid patches for newfound exploits just by making and distributing new rulessets.
This could of course only be a workaround until a real patch is developed, but it would be beter than nothing and the chance of some new security hole or fatal bug introduced by a new ruleset are slim, so there would be little risk of deploying them instantly.
A similar module in an application such as word could block exploits for every fileformat that this application handles.
Comments? Would such a solution be workable? Could open source software use it to?
People don't wear seatbelts, either, which is why we have such seemingly inane things like seatbelt laws. This is clearly a test for rationality. Because apparently dying isn't bad enough but being punished is. People are stupid.
Then tell me why I am not allowed to drive without seatbelt, yet others are still allowed to smoke, to eat fast food or to go skying without proper training, all of which are probably a lot more deadly?
This business does not sound too profitable to me. He likely spend much longer in preparation of the worm, and once the exploit is fixed the worm recognised by scanners and the pool of vulnerable pcs exhausted his income will dwindle until the next big exploit.
So at most he can make a couple hundreds per month. Addidtionally he cannot sue for his payments and is totaly dependant on the good will and honesty of companies that generally don't seem to have any. And he risks being caught and prosecuted.
Why would anyone do this? If he made tens of thausands I could understand, but for 430 bucks?
I am wondering, is there a way to protect me when I am not using a laptop but a pc in an internet cafee?
Assuming I cannot trust the browser on that pc to correctly encrypt my traffic even on https sites, I cannot install any vpn software, and I cannot be sure that there are no keyboard loggers.
So, somthing like a java applet (stored on a secure webserver), that I can load, and that opens a browser-in-a-browser, encrypting all traffic, with an added on-screen-keyboard to defeat keyboard loggers?
It would not be absolutely safe, since a good sniffer could also monitor the screen and the mouse movements, but it would be better than nothing.
I appreciate your input from the "other side", but I think you are mistaken in the logistics behind it.
"That's like asking why would somebody want to reduce their electricity bill after saving money by switching to energy saving lightbulbs? Businesses (and people in general) *want* to save money, and switching to a more efficient/effective system is the best way to do this
There is a logical error in this: If the goal of my business was generating light, and I switched to energy saving light bulbs, of course I would invest the money/energy I suddenly have left over in more light bulbs, to increase my business and reap even more profit.
I would disagree that businesses want to save (as in, want to increase their profit while keeping their investments the same) A business that has more profit than planned (and more than is neccessary to keep it runnning) would be foolish to not use these profits to expand its market, and any business that does not expand would soon be overun by other businesses that do.
"When you're looking for a certain product, however, adverts you recieve from companies selling that product are pieces of information letting you know what choices you have, which I find invaluable, as it saves me time having to find them out myself."
Exept that this information is highly biased. If ads don't lie outright, the vast mayority at least bends the truth, and presents the facts in such a way as to convey a totaly false image. To get any useful truth from that actually takes me more work than just trowing it away and informing me from more trustworthy sources.
Moreover if a marketing firm finds out how to target me in a way that will most likely result ina sale, they are not gonna stop after one sale. If the ad generates a profit, they would want to target me again and again until there is no more profit to be made. After all, assuming they do the modest thing and and stop after they had their sale, another firm could step in and take the rest.
So just as an example, if this ad company finds out that I am more likely to purchase something if it is presented to me by an adorable puppy that looks just like the one that I had as a kid and forgot about, but subconscioulsy still miss, they will plaster me with ads containing such adorable pupies until eiter I have no money left or I am finally so annoyed by addorable puppies that the ads lost all effect. If an advertiser that sounds like my dad is more likely to catch my attention, soon all ads I get will sound like him. After all, to them it is just business, and if they don't do it, someone else would do it.
If your firm is acting different that is laudable (thought hard to believe) but will soon result in other firms moving in to take over and leave you behind.
Targeted advertising won't result in less advertising, why would they reduce their advertising budget right after they made ads more effective? If an ad is more likely to result in a sale, logic would imply that firms should spend MORE on ads, not less.
And why do you think targetted ads would be less anoying or obnoxious? Personally I find for example ads in a foreign language much less annoying than ads in my own language. Often they are even amusing. But I am less likely to buy somehting from a foreign ad.
Slashdot Mirror
Encrypting the drive seems to be saver, easier and less prone to devastating and potentially deadly errors.
Not to mention, if you are doing this to protect yourself from the police, then "wired his pc with a bomb" will not sound good in front of a jury.
I can, but then it does not always update.
I had to give it a manual kick in the behind on more than one pc, where it was so far behind with updates that windows complained.
Not to forget the bullshit move avg pulled a while ago, where they discontinued all updates for the old free version, but instead of automatically updating to the *new* free version it only displayed a dialog box to "buy the full version".
Which ends up in a support call to me.
actually I just saw an avast install that flat out refused to update (with an annoying prompt at each start) because the license was expired. This was the free version, mind you.
Apparently the free version keeps bugging you after some time to get a new registration key, with a heavy hint to buy the full version.
Naturally, there are people that have no idea how to deal with that, especially if they have not installed it themselves, so more support calls for me.
Opera stays useable even with 512 mb of ram and a few hundreds of tabs, althought that is pushing its limits
(you know you are addicted to tabs when...)
Logitech mouse drivers on the other hands are memory monsters
Still looking for a low-memory antivirus that requieres absolutely no user interaction. Grisoft AVG uses little memory, but keeps requiring occasional user interaction for updates, so I hesitate to install it on someone elses machine. Clamwin is worse in that department however.
What i would like to see is a way to synchronize both Opera and Firefox Bookmarks with each other seamlessly.
All solutions I have seen so far seemed to result in either overwritten or duplicated bookmarks.
Synchronizing passwords would be nice too.
This forced me to choose one browser for almost all my surfing, which ended up being opera, but I figure others may choose differently, so this would benefit Opera too.
Wikipedia has blocked anonymous contributions from one IP, which happens to be a proxy from that country.
Users can still edit wikipedia throught this proxy by creating an account and logging in.
Creating a wikipedia account only requires a (throw-away) email, and is actually more anonymous, since your IP will not show up in the public logs if you are logged in.
Where does it say that this was a cross-site-scripting attack? Also, at least one of the affected users claims to use IE.
That's just a css thing. In additon of displaying links you have visited in a different color, it is set to display a different image in front of it.
The source code of the page stays the same, your browser (depending on your settings) is taking care of tracing wich links you visited and changing the image accordingly, and the server never has to know about it.
Althought, now that you mention it, it would be possible to track visited links this way. Just use a different image for each link , then the server would see for which links which image gets loaded so the server could check whether you have visited some url before, even if that url was on another server.
So if slashdot were to include a link like
<a href="PORNLINK.xxx" style=":visited { background-image: url(empty.gif?habits=PORNFREAK}">
(not sure about the exact css syntax)
then slashdot could check which users visit porn sites and so on.
Interesting.
Because lots of lawyers consider such support illegal?
Well, then where is the class action suit?
If something is illegal, it is a matter for the courts.
Don't try to enforce your version of local laws with half-backed software measures
autopatcher is a closed source solution which requires you to trust executables from a dubious source. Even if you accept the autopatcher guys as currently trustworthy, they may still sell out or get hacked with much higher probability than microsoft.
actually the worst that you would get is a fine.
Einstein was a big contributor to quantum physics. He just did not believe in some of of the implications, as many other physicists at that time
shine a light at them and check wether they react to it in some way?
Put some food behind a screen?
Google Adsense would presumably start with a selection like the one above and then increase ads that are often clicked on and ads for the same keywords as those, while randlomly introducing ads for new keywords, thereby findig the ads that appeal to the seti demographic.
That the left is opposed to democracy. The democratically elected government introduced the death penalty, and now it should not be carried out ...
Hint: You don't have to be oposed to democracy to disaprove a decission reached by the mayority. Quite the opposite, in fact. Proclaiming what you think is right and should be done is one of the cornerstones of democracy
organic substances that absorb light are a dime a dozen. Generating electricity from this light is a *lot* harder
As I said above, unless you block dns too and use only ip adresses in outlook this will not help.
dns requests are forwarded by a dns server, so if your dns server is in your trusted zone, all bets are of
You would have to block dns too.
Otherwise one could simply embed an iframe/image/whatever on some unique host, like id123132.pattymail.com. Even if your email client is blocked from accessing that host, it will still try to resolve the address, and your ISP's dns server will forward the request to pattymail
Your boss called, he wants to see your printout before next week or you can forget about your raise.
Dont know why he asked me to tell you instead of telling you personally, he mumbled something about "plausible deniability", that lazy ass
How about this: If microsoft implemented a module in windows to block incomming packets based on some scripted rules, and block http connections in internet explorer based on similar rules, then everyone could develop instant band-aid patches for newfound exploits just by making and distributing new rulessets.
This could of course only be a workaround until a real patch is developed, but it would be beter than nothing and the chance of some new security hole or fatal bug introduced by a new ruleset are slim, so there would be little risk of deploying them instantly.
A similar module in an application such as word could block exploits for every fileformat that this application handles.
Comments? Would such a solution be workable? Could open source software use it to?
People don't wear seatbelts, either, which is why we have such seemingly inane things like seatbelt laws. This is clearly a test for rationality. Because apparently dying isn't bad enough but being punished is. People are stupid.
Then tell me why I am not allowed to drive without seatbelt, yet others are still allowed to smoke, to eat fast food or to go skying without proper training, all of which are probably a lot more deadly?
This business does not sound too profitable to me.
He likely spend much longer in preparation of the worm, and once the exploit is fixed the worm recognised by scanners and the pool of vulnerable pcs exhausted his income will dwindle until the next big exploit.
So at most he can make a couple hundreds per month.
Addidtionally he cannot sue for his payments and is totaly dependant on the good will and honesty of companies that generally don't seem to have any. And he risks being caught and prosecuted.
Why would anyone do this? If he made tens of thausands I could understand, but for 430 bucks?
I am wondering, is there a way to protect me when I am not using a laptop but a pc in an internet cafee?
Assuming I cannot trust the browser on that pc to correctly encrypt my traffic even on https sites, I cannot install any vpn software, and I cannot be sure that there are no keyboard loggers.
So, somthing like a java applet (stored on a secure webserver), that I can load, and that opens a browser-in-a-browser, encrypting all traffic, with an added on-screen-keyboard to defeat keyboard loggers?
It would not be absolutely safe, since a good sniffer could also monitor the screen and the mouse movements, but it would be better than nothing.
I appreciate your input from the "other side", but I think you are mistaken in the logistics behind it.
"That's like asking why would somebody want to reduce their electricity bill after saving money by switching to energy saving lightbulbs? Businesses (and people in general) *want* to save money, and switching to a more efficient/effective system is the best way to do this
There is a logical error in this: If the goal of my business was generating light, and I switched to energy saving light bulbs, of course I would invest the money/energy I suddenly have left over in more light bulbs, to increase my business and reap even more profit.
I would disagree that businesses want to save (as in, want to increase their profit while keeping their investments the same)
A business that has more profit than planned (and more than is neccessary to keep it runnning) would be foolish to not use these profits to expand its market, and any business that does not expand would soon be overun by other businesses that do.
"When you're looking for a certain product, however, adverts you recieve from companies selling that product are pieces of information letting you know what choices you have, which I find invaluable, as it saves me time having to find them out myself."
Exept that this information is highly biased. If ads don't lie outright, the vast mayority at least bends the truth, and presents the facts in such a way as to convey a totaly false image. To get any useful truth from that actually takes me more work than just trowing it away and informing me from more trustworthy sources.
Moreover if a marketing firm finds out how to target me in a way that will most likely result ina sale, they are not gonna stop after one sale. If the ad generates a profit, they would want to target me again and again until there is no more profit to be made.
After all, assuming they do the modest thing and and stop after they had their sale, another firm could step in and take the rest.
So just as an example, if this ad company finds out that I am more likely to purchase something if it is presented to me by an adorable puppy that looks just like the one that I had as a kid and forgot about, but subconscioulsy still miss, they will plaster me with ads containing such adorable pupies until eiter I have no money left or I am finally so annoyed by addorable puppies that the ads lost all effect.
If an advertiser that sounds like my dad is more likely to catch my attention, soon all ads I get will sound like him.
After all, to them it is just business, and if they don't do it, someone else would do it.
If your firm is acting different that is laudable (thought hard to believe) but will soon result in other firms moving in to take over and leave you behind.
Targeted advertising won't result in less advertising, why would they reduce their advertising budget right after they made ads more effective?
If an ad is more likely to result in a sale, logic would imply that firms should spend MORE on ads, not less.
And why do you think targetted ads would be less anoying or obnoxious? Personally I find for example ads in a foreign language much less annoying than ads in my own language. Often they are even amusing. But I am less likely to buy somehting from a foreign ad.