A roommate of mine once worked at the Berkeley admissions office. Once, he showed up with a stack of ~15 floppies that he said were placed in the trash bin and were completely clean and usable when he tried them. Noticing a cryptic sticker with some numbers and the letters "ETS" on it, I got him to let me take a look at them. Took a raw disk dump. Hmm. Looks like ascii-ish data, as if from a flat database file, unencrypted. And hey, here're names... addresses... social security numbers... and a few more odd 4-digit numbers. about 30 minutes later, having figured out where the fields are, it dawns upon me that i had come upon the ETS test records (SAT I/SAT II) for the '97-'98 incoming applicant class at berkeley (some of the '96-'97 data too). Scarily enough, this also included DOB, SSN, addr, phone number, etc. Apparently the people in charge of processing the data did a quickformat or something and threw the disks right out thinking they're clean.
The data has since been destroyed for good, but not until after I spent weeks drooling about the hypothetical possibilities that this could've yielded =)
Should Engineer-in-a-Box come out, I hope people would at least be sane enough to give it some time to stabilize. What's the last time you've seen software that's mature before a 3.x major version or so? What's the last time you've seen a major version that is clean and relatively bug-free before.2 or so (hint: look at Redhat 5.0 6.0 7.0 vs 5.1 6.1 7.1 vs the relatively-more-clean 5.2 6.2 7.2)? What's the last time you've seen any release, period, which didn't have at least a dozen patches or so come out before it got cleaned up? So if it ever comes down to Engineer-in-a-Box, I hope people will wait until at least EiaB version 3.2 patchlevel 15 or so to upgrade...
Just came back from Athens, where this is up and running, in full-annoyance mode, showing really cheesy Coca-Cola ads. FWIW, I think this was either on Grammh 2 between Panepistimio and Omonoia or on Grammh 3 between Evaggelismos and Syntagma (or both?).
Vivendi is teaming up with Maverick Records, MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com to offer a remix of a Meshell Ndegeocello track [...]
So, how many different companies does it take to change a lightbu^W^W^Wsell a single MP3 online? (Or, equivalently, how many man-hours were wasted on high-level executive meetings to sell a single MP3?) Yea, there's hope for them, but just how much hope remains an open question.
Quoth the ad:...After two-and-a-half years of Linux, I've finally found joy in a UNIX operating system. And I found it when I purchased a Macintosh -- the first one I've ever owned...
Yea, and with the UNIX-scale number of open public services on the system... And a brand-new re-wrap of the OS... Well, insert favorite link to security hole here. Mac OS X is certainly responsible for the first dozen macs I've ever 0wn3d...
Thought on the "Your Rights Online" lady
on
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
·
· Score: 2
What/. really needs is a second form of the "Your Rights Online" icon. Take the same Lady Justice, bent over, getting raped in the rear by good ole' Uncle Sam. I'll gladly volunteer my gimp skills, as long as _this_ article's icon gets changed to that.
what to reply to a dork who sends you sircam
on
SirCam on Linux via WINE
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
here's my form letter for replying to addresses i get sircam clones from:
+++
Subject: advice
Hi! How are you?
I send you this advice in order to not have your files
See you later. Thanks
+++
Attachment (named advice.txt.bat):
@echo off
echo Your computer is infected with the "sircam" virus, and has been
echo repeatedly emailing addresses on hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu
echo with large attachments. Please clean up the virus ASAP.
echo You can find more information on how to do this at:
echo http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sircam. worm@mm.html
I own the trademark on "ASHD", and have substantive proof that I have written those letters in that order at least once between 1980 and 1990. Therefore, slASHDot.org has been infringing on my prior art. You will be hearing from my lawyer shortly.
Greta Van Susteren, the CNN legal correspondent, and her husband [...] are Scientologists.
So, what's the last time you heard a scientology story on CNN? I certainly don't remember hearing one in recent history. It is quite disturbing that they have control over people so high up in the "visibility" hierarchy...
"The following is a news broadcast. On April 6, the FCC has released a statement on what is too indecent for broadcasting. We present for your listening pleasure and edification some segments of this publicly-available government publication:
"Following are examples of decisions where the explicit/graphic nature of the description of sexual/excretory organs or activities played a central role in the determination that the broadcast was indecent: 'God my testicles are like down to the floor...you could really have a party with these...Use them like Bocci balls.'; 'I mean to go around porking other girls with vibrating rubber products'..."
Hm. Now a government document wouldn't possibly be indecent would it?...
(oh, and if this DOES happen, you heard it here first! =})
Back in the days of yore before I saw The Light of real OSen, my MS Word 95 would spontaneously do the same thing to random documents after some random actions. Microsoft -- half a decade ahead of the game, yet again!
I'd actually like to take issue with your sig, not your message itself:
We don't need no stinkin' sigs.
Yea, sure, Australia's IP laws are getting loonier every month it seems. But insofar as this law threatens our personal freedom as citizens of the 'net, why not just twiddle your sig a bit as a hack and be done with it:
"The original author hereby disclaims any and all authorship rights to, and releases into the public domain any copy of this message reaching a computer in the Commonwealth of Australia, for the purposes of the Digital Agenda Act and/or any other legislation enacted therein.
Just in case you missed it, and weren't actually being sarcastic there, exhibit A and exhibit B. Arthur Clarke, a Nostradamus For The Twenty-Fifth Century. Be afraid =)
>... Robert Philip Hanssen, an FBI agent
> that spied for Russia for 15 years,...
Uhm. There's a certain principle in western law, commonly known as "innocent until proven guilty." Making implicit assumptions as to the otherwise on front page/. story isn't exactly a nice thing to do (not that/. claims journalistic credibility, but a lot of people tend to assume it).
CueCat's colons were lame. accenture's ">" in the middle of nowhere is LAME. Is ASCII the newest trend du jour with marketroids or what? Maybe in a few years we'll start seeing IPOs with names in pure l33t5p34|
Oh wait. mind[avg_marketroid]==mind[avg_script_kiddie]. Mystery solved.
[...] On December 9, 1999, Linux completed
an initial public offering of 4.4 million of its shares of common
stock at an offering price of $30 per share (the "Linux IPO"). In
connection therewith, Linux filed a registration statement, which
incorporated a prospectus (the "Prospectus"), with the SEC. [...]
can Linus [Torvalds] file a countersuit on grounds of FUD, trademark violation, and general idiocy by means of legalese?
Slashdot Mirror
...the igLoo. extra-robust for operating in colder climates. but the sole network interface will be over RFC1149 (ported from pigeons to reindeer)...
A roommate of mine once worked at the Berkeley admissions office. Once, he showed up with a stack of ~15 floppies that he said were placed in the trash bin and were completely clean and usable when he tried them. Noticing a cryptic sticker with some numbers and the letters "ETS" on it, I got him to let me take a look at them. Took a raw disk dump. Hmm. Looks like ascii-ish data, as if from a flat database file, unencrypted. And hey, here're names... addresses... social security numbers... and a few more odd 4-digit numbers. about 30 minutes later, having figured out where the fields are, it dawns upon me that i had come upon the ETS test records (SAT I/SAT II) for the '97-'98 incoming applicant class at berkeley (some of the '96-'97 data too). Scarily enough, this also included DOB, SSN, addr, phone number, etc. Apparently the people in charge of processing the data did a quickformat or something and threw the disks right out thinking they're clean.
The data has since been destroyed for good, but not until after I spent weeks drooling about the hypothetical possibilities that this could've yielded =)
Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse have discovered their real father, Stanley Mouse...
Should Engineer-in-a-Box come out, I hope people would at least be sane enough to give it some time to stabilize. What's the last time you've seen software that's mature before a 3.x major version or so? What's the last time you've seen a major version that is clean and relatively bug-free before .2 or so (hint: look at Redhat 5.0 6.0 7.0 vs 5.1 6.1 7.1 vs the relatively-more-clean 5.2 6.2 7.2)? What's the last time you've seen any release, period, which didn't have at least a dozen patches or so come out before it got cleaned up? So if it ever comes down to Engineer-in-a-Box, I hope people will wait until at least EiaB version 3.2 patchlevel 15 or so to upgrade...
-zyqqh
Just came back from Athens, where this is up and running, in full-annoyance mode, showing really cheesy Coca-Cola ads. FWIW, I think this was either on Grammh 2 between Panepistimio and Omonoia or on Grammh 3 between Evaggelismos and Syntagma (or both?).
Vivendi is teaming up with Maverick Records, MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com to offer a remix of a Meshell Ndegeocello track [...]
So, how many different companies does it take to change a lightbu^W^W^Wsell a single MP3 online? (Or, equivalently, how many man-hours were wasted on high-level executive meetings to sell a single MP3?) Yea, there's hope for them, but just how much hope remains an open question.
Quoth the ad: ...After two-and-a-half years of Linux, I've finally found joy in a UNIX operating system. And I found it when I purchased a Macintosh -- the first one I've ever owned...
Yea, and with the UNIX-scale number of open public services on the system... And a brand-new re-wrap of the OS... Well, insert favorite link to security hole here. Mac OS X is certainly responsible for the first dozen macs I've ever 0wn3d...
Emacs, meta-x tetris. Doesn't get any better than this...
And they even left OVER 700 SEKRET MESSAGES IN THE SOURCE CODE!
/usr/src/linux | wc -l
Observe:
% grep -ir 'a.*l.*q.*a.*e.*d.*a'
704
Time to outlaw leenuks, I say.
What /. really needs is a second form of the "Your Rights Online" icon. Take the same Lady Justice, bent over, getting raped in the rear by good ole' Uncle Sam. I'll gladly volunteer my gimp skills, as long as _this_ article's icon gets changed to that.
here's my form letter for replying to addresses i get sircam clones from:
. worm@mm.html
+++
Subject: advice
Hi! How are you?
I send you this advice in order to not have your files
See you later. Thanks
+++
Attachment (named advice.txt.bat):
@echo off
echo Your computer is infected with the "sircam" virus, and has been
echo repeatedly emailing addresses on hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu
echo with large attachments. Please clean up the virus ASAP.
echo You can find more information on how to do this at:
echo http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sircam
:Loop
goto Loop
I've met the guy. The name is not a random coincidence =)
I own the trademark on "ASHD", and have substantive proof that I have written those letters in that order at least once between 1980 and 1990. Therefore, slASHDot.org has been infringing on my prior art. You will be hearing from my lawyer shortly.
Take a look at this article. Specifically:
Greta Van Susteren, the CNN legal correspondent, and her husband [...] are Scientologists.
So, what's the last time you heard a scientology story on CNN? I certainly don't remember hearing one in recent history. It is quite disturbing that they have control over people so high up in the "visibility" hierarchy...
"The following is a news broadcast. On April 6, the FCC has released a statement on what is too indecent for broadcasting. We present for your listening pleasure and edification some segments of this publicly-available government publication:
"Following are examples of decisions where the explicit/graphic nature of the description of sexual/excretory organs or activities played a central role in the determination that the broadcast was indecent: 'God my testicles are like down to the floor...you could really have a party with these...Use them like Bocci balls.'; 'I mean to go around porking other girls with vibrating rubber products'..."
Hm. Now a government document wouldn't possibly be indecent would it?...
(oh, and if this DOES happen, you heard it here first! =})
Back in the days of yore before I saw The Light of real OSen, my MS Word 95 would spontaneously do the same thing to random documents after some random actions. Microsoft -- half a decade ahead of the game, yet again!
I'd actually like to take issue with your sig, not your message itself:
We don't need no stinkin' sigs.
Yea, sure, Australia's IP laws are getting loonier every month it seems. But insofar as this law threatens our personal freedom as citizens of the 'net, why not just twiddle your sig a bit as a hack and be done with it:
"The original author hereby disclaims any and all authorship rights to, and releases into the public domain any copy of this message reaching a computer in the Commonwealth of Australia, for the purposes of the Digital Agenda Act and/or any other legislation enacted therein.
What's next, monoliths?
Just in case you missed it, and weren't actually being sarcastic there, exhibit A and exhibit B. Arthur Clarke, a Nostradamus For The Twenty-Fifth Century. Be afraid =)
> ... Robert Philip Hanssen, an FBI agent
/. story isn't exactly a nice thing to do (not that /. claims journalistic credibility, but a lot of people tend to assume it).
> that spied for Russia for 15 years,...
Uhm. There's a certain principle in western law, commonly known as "innocent until proven guilty." Making implicit assumptions as to the otherwise on front page
CueCat's colons were lame. accenture's ">" in the middle of nowhere is LAME. Is ASCII the newest trend du jour with marketroids or what? Maybe in a few years we'll start seeing IPOs with names in pure l33t5p34|
Oh wait. mind[avg_marketroid]==mind[avg_script_kiddie]. Mystery solved.
Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher.
Same can be said for random irrelevant slashdot taglines...
You forgot to include such gems as:
[...] On December 9, 1999, Linux completed an initial public offering of 4.4 million of its shares of common stock at an offering price of $30 per share (the "Linux IPO"). In connection therewith, Linux filed a registration statement, which incorporated a prospectus (the "Prospectus"), with the SEC. [...]
can Linus [Torvalds] file a countersuit on grounds of FUD, trademark violation, and general idiocy by means of legalese?
...the apparent allusion to the fact that they both need damn big heatsinks =) Puns, Hemos? Tsk.
Intel is INTC, not INTL. Here's the corrected link: INTC
See the article in Berkeley's Daily Cal rag. Sounds like they're just following the precedent set by the original announcements from MIT, etc.