I worked on a big project involving Oracle software and after a lot of research, we decided to only use the core database and write our own interfaces to more reliable, more secure open-source systems. When I discovered how convoluted the company's own product line and support process was, I dumped the stock. It doesn't surprise me one bit that they can't meet deadlines of this nature. The internal structure of the organization from my perspective was always a bloody mess.
Re:Still waiting for the true "slacker" MMORPG
on
Forthcoming MMORPGs
·
· Score: 1
Dude, that's the game Everquest and WoW players enter when they lose their Internet connectivity.
SWG will leave an open space
on
Forthcoming MMORPGs
·
· Score: 2, Informative
For the first time in awhile I logged into SWG to see what's been going on. Although at first I couldn't because, apparently there's a conflict with Star Wars Galaxies and people running Logitech camera software that won't let the game run. SWG gives a misleading error message and barfs. After checking the online knowledge base, I couldn't find anything so I tried live chat and then I found out they knew about this issue... I guess you just needed to waste a few hours of your time before Sony would be kind enough to let you know their software suddenly doesn't run on a whole slew of PCs. Nice going Sony.
After finally checking out SWG, it's still the huge mess it was left in from the plethora of redesigns and patches. There seems to be players hanging out at major starports and bars, but interestingly enough, most of them are either AFK or auto-barfing some promotional message. A cursory glance of the entire galaxy-wide marketplace reveals just how barren the game now is. I respect'd to a crafter and could not get a lot of the basic resources I needed to continue. SWG is finally on its deathbed. On the bright side, after almost 3 years of subscribing I'm rewarded with a holographic model of an Ewok. Yippie! Better luck next time Verant/SOE.
Spammers have been personalizing content since day one... After all, if you don't have a flaccid penis, you probably know someone who does at any given moment. Who doesn't know someone who needs more money? Who doesn't want cheap drugs?
c'mon you VCs.... you know you want this domain.. anything tech related will kick ass.... got a new venture? don't use a boneheaded or mispelled name... not when this beauty is available. Help me raise some cash to help my sick children...
Also, it's annoying for media to confuse separate networks with the "Internet". BBSes pre-date the Internet and were never part of the Internet until much later, thus the scene in Wargames where he dials into the computer is not an Internet thing. Likewise, AOL is not the Internet. If something happens on AOL's private network, like a pedophile luring some kid from a chat room on AOL, that has absolutely nothing to do with the "Internet" yet the media is fond of making such claims.
And the address they'd end up with is... your grandmother's address. Apparently she hasn't been visiting windows update often enough and her computer is a zombie spammer now.
Like I said: any decent network administrator would track these people down. You would obviously get bogged down at granny's PC. Others wouldn't. I don't blame you for posting anonymously.
The whole notion of "neutrality" was destroyed when the Fairness Doctrine was shot down by Ronald Reagan in 1987 since then, the media's idea of "equal time" has been to give equal time to various extremists who represent wildly disparate sides of an issue that in no way represent the more moderate positions held by average people. That is not "fair" nor "objective." When you are debating environmental issues and you have an oil company executive at one end, and a patchoulli-wearing hippy kid who lives chained to a tree in Washington state, that is not a "fair" or "equal" airing of all sides of an issue.
And what would you prefer? Some stolid document or book that has no references, no discussion, no sign of any tangible search for truth over an issue?
How much does WAL-MART pay these days btw?
All of this comes from Spam
on
Phishers Get Phoney
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This is all the result of spamming. At what point are the authorities going to take the spam problem seriously? This is what I want to know. The main way worms, counterfeit products, illegal drug sales viruses, adware, trojans, backdoors, phishing, and other things propagate is via UCE. Every system spam passes through has records on where it is coming from and where it is going. Even with the jurisdictional issues, there should be more action and prosecution from various authorities of spammers. Why there isn't is mind boggling. If we can shut down some of these spam gangs, most of this activity will stop.
The $64M question is why the Feds don't seem to be interested in stopping spammers? I refuse to believe they are that incompetent. Any decent network admin could track these spammers to a physical address within a few days.
The site is about the content, not the design I imagine. I didn't do it, so what do I know, but the quotes are good, and they're not the sort of ones that have a different intention when excised out of context.
Anyway, the site is crap. But the daily mailing they do is what I'm really talking about. As I understand it, the site is just a tiny subset of the daily quotes that are mailed.
Well, you'll be blocking a bunch of valid servers, then.
For instance, one of my clients is a largish nonprofit organization whose Verizon business DSL in is 70.22/16. As it happens, I now handle their outbound mail, but we used to send it directly from their address.
With all due respect, this is what your client gets for:
1. Doing business with spammers. Verizon is a spammer. The spam and worm traffic originates from their system. They don't do anything about it. They are responsible.
2. Verizon mixing business IP space with broadband/DUL/n00b space.
3. Verizon not policing the illegal activity of their customers.
I don't have any sympathy for them. You shouldn't either. Unfortunately the only way to get ISPs to stop polluting the Internet is to affect them financially, and THE most effective way of doing this is by tainting their IP space so they can't use it for business purposes due to their own irresponsible administration. Tough shit for Verizon. But it's one way for them to be motivated to stop spamming. They will lose business customers because if you use Verizon for broadband, you can't run your own mail relay. Too bad. You need to switch from Verizon to a RESPONSIBLE ISP.
Here is a list of some of the most troublesome Verizon DUL IP space that spam activity is coming from. You can block port 25 traffic on these class B and Cs since they don't control their own users' zombie PC spamming:
Most of the IP space above are DUL/broadband that includes tons of zombie PCs. There should be very little (if any) legitimate SMTP traffic coming from these IP blocks, yet there is, and it's all spam and worm activity.
This is ironic considering Verizon is one of the major SOURCES of spam. We've ended up wholesale RBL'ing most of their DUL space. Here's a good Sendmail-based blacklist to start with.
Generally speaking, I think it's a good idea to implement something like this, but the problem with Verizon is that they need to filter port 25 on their broadband IP space first and foremost, like AOL and Bellsouth and many other providers are starting to do.
Ultimately, what Verizon is doing is not a bad thing. It will force other ISPs to more closely police the illegal traffic on their networks from zombie PCs, but it's ironic that Verizon isn't controlling their own zombie PC traffic before blocking other ISPs SMTP packets.
I've found that inspiring and thought-provoking quotes are very useful. We use them on our systems. One place that's good for information is Words of Wisdom. They also have a daily mailout of high-quality quotes.
The phishing scam works because people are stupid. There is no amount of technology you can employ to save an idiot from himself. This is the sad reality.
The best way to deal with this is to promote a healthy dose of cynacism amongst the populace.
Well, another way is to force ISPs to filter port 25 traffic on broadband and eliminate the value of zombie PCs being part of the scam network.
Rule number one: Never buy the "top-of-the-line" product. Always purchase one or two notches below it. There's usually a major price point between the fastest CPU and those below it and the difference in performance is marginal.
If you're shopping for laptops, check the chain stores like CompUSA and others. Sometimes they have special versions of manufacturer's products that are better-equipped than more widely-available items at greater cost.
EBay is definitely invaluable. Like others have said, if a new generation product comes out, like a RAID array or new server technology, you can often pick up the previous generation's products at a fraction of the cost. When Compaq discontinued one line of high performance servers, the market became flooded with these units for pennies-on-the-dollar.
For other kinds of tech, like cell phones, look into the pre-paid plans as an alternative to the standard monthly contracts. It is true, you may not find the Treo 650 on a discounted prepaid plan like you would if you committed to a two-year contract, but you can often get great phones at the same price people pay who commit to multi-year contracts when you sign up for the pay-as-you-go plans. This is a great deal that is geared normally for kids or people with bad credit, but ends up being a better deal for others who want to avoid getting locked into a particular calling plan that costs them more money later.
If there's an issue over whether Vista will put the big antivirus companies out of business, I don't see it as consequential. IMO, the software companies themselves will be responsible for their own demise, regardless of whether Microsoft enters the market. Programs like Norton Utilities used to be valuable, but now these once-critical utilities have morphed into bloaded virus-like software incarnations that are best not installed in the first place.
Furthermore, both McAffee and Symantec products have been hosts to numerous flaws, security holes and vulnerabilities themselves.
If Microsoft wanted to do it right, they could merely have Vista identify both programs as "malware" right off the bat, remove them from the system, and most users would be better off.
Microsoft has put thousands, perhaps tens-of-thousands of software companies out of business in the last two decades. As much as they do have a track record of destroying competition in various segments, somehow, I just don't see "computer security" being one of them.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that offers an alternative to the mostly-useless Prima "official" game guides is an improvement. I've always thought the whole Prima game guide deal was a big scam to get more money from consumers for basic information that can be easily found elsewhere and doesn't contain any real insight, tricks or valuable tips.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked on a big project involving Oracle software and after a lot of research, we decided to only use the core database and write our own interfaces to more reliable, more secure open-source systems. When I discovered how convoluted the company's own product line and support process was, I dumped the stock. It doesn't surprise me one bit that they can't meet deadlines of this nature. The internal structure of the organization from my perspective was always a bloody mess.
Dude, that's the game Everquest and WoW players enter when they lose their Internet connectivity.
For the first time in awhile I logged into SWG to see what's been going on. Although at first I couldn't because, apparently there's a conflict with Star Wars Galaxies and people running Logitech camera software that won't let the game run. SWG gives a misleading error message and barfs. After checking the online knowledge base, I couldn't find anything so I tried live chat and then I found out they knew about this issue... I guess you just needed to waste a few hours of your time before Sony would be kind enough to let you know their software suddenly doesn't run on a whole slew of PCs. Nice going Sony.
After finally checking out SWG, it's still the huge mess it was left in from the plethora of redesigns and patches. There seems to be players hanging out at major starports and bars, but interestingly enough, most of them are either AFK or auto-barfing some promotional message. A cursory glance of the entire galaxy-wide marketplace reveals just how barren the game now is. I respect'd to a crafter and could not get a lot of the basic resources I needed to continue. SWG is finally on its deathbed. On the bright side, after almost 3 years of subscribing I'm rewarded with a holographic model of an Ewok. Yippie! Better luck next time Verant/SOE.
Spammers have been personalizing content since day one... After all, if you don't have a flaccid penis, you probably know someone who does at any given moment. Who doesn't know someone who needs more money? Who doesn't want cheap drugs?
I think the jury is still out on the success of the 360. This guy could be batting 1000.
Will the DARPA challengers have to use turning signals?
If so this will be impressive, as at least half the driving population of the United States is unable to utilize that technology consistently.
I'm still waiting for six-figure offers.... willing to negotiate.... let's talk people.
c'mon you VCs.... you know you want this domain.. anything tech related will kick ass.... got a new venture? don't use a boneheaded or mispelled name... not when this beauty is available. Help me raise some cash to help my sick children...
Also, it's annoying for media to confuse separate networks with the "Internet". BBSes pre-date the Internet and were never part of the Internet until much later, thus the scene in Wargames where he dials into the computer is not an Internet thing. Likewise, AOL is not the Internet. If something happens on AOL's private network, like a pedophile luring some kid from a chat room on AOL, that has absolutely nothing to do with the "Internet" yet the media is fond of making such claims.
And the address they'd end up with is... your grandmother's address. Apparently she hasn't been visiting windows update often enough and her computer is a zombie spammer now.
Like I said: any decent network administrator would track these people down. You would obviously get bogged down at granny's PC. Others wouldn't. I don't blame you for posting anonymously.
No discussion on Wal-Mart would be complete without a link to PBS's Frontline Documentary, "Is Wal-Mart Good For America?" - it's a brilliant show that covers many of the bases and it's available free online.
If some would have their way, there wouldn't be this level of high quality documentaries on corporate America. Watch it while it's still available.
The whole notion of "neutrality" was destroyed when the Fairness Doctrine was shot down by Ronald Reagan in 1987 since then, the media's idea of "equal time" has been to give equal time to various extremists who represent wildly disparate sides of an issue that in no way represent the more moderate positions held by average people. That is not "fair" nor "objective." When you are debating environmental issues and you have an oil company executive at one end, and a patchoulli-wearing hippy kid who lives chained to a tree in Washington state, that is not a "fair" or "equal" airing of all sides of an issue.
And what would you prefer? Some stolid document or book that has no references, no discussion, no sign of any tangible search for truth over an issue?
How much does WAL-MART pay these days btw?
This is all the result of spamming. At what point are the authorities going to take the spam problem seriously? This is what I want to know. The main way worms, counterfeit products, illegal drug sales viruses, adware, trojans, backdoors, phishing, and other things propagate is via UCE. Every system spam passes through has records on where it is coming from and where it is going. Even with the jurisdictional issues, there should be more action and prosecution from various authorities of spammers. Why there isn't is mind boggling. If we can shut down some of these spam gangs, most of this activity will stop.
The $64M question is why the Feds don't seem to be interested in stopping spammers? I refuse to believe they are that incompetent. Any decent network admin could track these spammers to a physical address within a few days.
The site is about the content, not the design I imagine. I didn't do it, so what do I know, but the quotes are good, and they're not the sort of ones that have a different intention when excised out of context.
Anyway, the site is crap. But the daily mailing they do is what I'm really talking about. As I understand it, the site is just a tiny subset of the daily quotes that are mailed.
Well, you'll be blocking a bunch of valid servers, then.
For instance, one of my clients is a largish nonprofit organization whose Verizon business DSL in is 70.22/16. As it happens, I now handle their outbound mail, but we used to send it directly from their address.
With all due respect, this is what your client gets for:
1. Doing business with spammers. Verizon is a spammer. The spam and worm traffic originates from their system. They don't do anything about it. They are responsible.
2. Verizon mixing business IP space with broadband/DUL/n00b space.
3. Verizon not policing the illegal activity of their customers.
I don't have any sympathy for them. You shouldn't either. Unfortunately the only way to get ISPs to stop polluting the Internet is to affect them financially, and THE most effective way of doing this is by tainting their IP space so they can't use it for business purposes due to their own irresponsible administration. Tough shit for Verizon. But it's one way for them to be motivated to stop spamming. They will lose business customers because if you use Verizon for broadband, you can't run your own mail relay. Too bad. You need to switch from Verizon to a RESPONSIBLE ISP.
Here is a list of some of the most troublesome Verizon DUL IP space that spam activity is coming from. You can block port 25 traffic on these class B and Cs since they don't control their own users' zombie PC spamming:
64.222.104 68.160 68.161.156
68.162 68.163 70.16
70.17 70.18 70.18.155
70.18.11 70.19 70.20
70.21 70.22 70.23
70.104 70.105 70.106
Please excuse the weird format here but the junk filter on SC is annoying.
70.107 70.108 71.100
71.101 71.103 71.104
71.105 71.114 71.116
71.117 71.118 71.119
71.123 71.124 71.125
71.127 71.162 71.241
It would be nice to line these all up cleanly but it's not possible with the way things are filtered on message submissions.
71.242 71.243 71.244
71.247 71.251 71.252
71.253 71.254 72.65
129.44.9 138.88 141.149
141.150 141.151 141.152
141.153 141.156 141.157
141.158 151.199 151.200
162.83 162.84
Most of the IP space above are DUL/broadband that includes tons of zombie PCs. There should be very little (if any) legitimate SMTP traffic coming from these IP blocks, yet there is, and it's all spam and worm activity.
This is ironic considering Verizon is one of the major SOURCES of spam. We've ended up wholesale RBL'ing most of their DUL space. Here's a good Sendmail-based blacklist to start with.
Generally speaking, I think it's a good idea to implement something like this, but the problem with Verizon is that they need to filter port 25 on their broadband IP space first and foremost, like AOL and Bellsouth and many other providers are starting to do.
Ultimately, what Verizon is doing is not a bad thing. It will force other ISPs to more closely police the illegal traffic on their networks from zombie PCs, but it's ironic that Verizon isn't controlling their own zombie PC traffic before blocking other ISPs SMTP packets.
I've found that inspiring and thought-provoking quotes are very useful. We use them on our systems. One place that's good for information is Words of Wisdom. They also have a daily mailout of high-quality quotes.
I don't know what carrier your friends are using but it's obviously the wrong company.
The phishing scam works because people are stupid. There is no amount of technology you can employ to save an idiot from himself. This is the sad reality.
The best way to deal with this is to promote a healthy dose of cynacism amongst the populace.
Well, another way is to force ISPs to filter port 25 traffic on broadband and eliminate the value of zombie PCs being part of the scam network.
Rule number one: Never buy the "top-of-the-line" product. Always purchase one or two notches below it. There's usually a major price point between the fastest CPU and those below it and the difference in performance is marginal.
If you're shopping for laptops, check the chain stores like CompUSA and others. Sometimes they have special versions of manufacturer's products that are better-equipped than more widely-available items at greater cost.
EBay is definitely invaluable. Like others have said, if a new generation product comes out, like a RAID array or new server technology, you can often pick up the previous generation's products at a fraction of the cost. When Compaq discontinued one line of high performance servers, the market became flooded with these units for pennies-on-the-dollar.
For other kinds of tech, like cell phones, look into the pre-paid plans as an alternative to the standard monthly contracts. It is true, you may not find the Treo 650 on a discounted prepaid plan like you would if you committed to a two-year contract, but you can often get great phones at the same price people pay who commit to multi-year contracts when you sign up for the pay-as-you-go plans. This is a great deal that is geared normally for kids or people with bad credit, but ends up being a better deal for others who want to avoid getting locked into a particular calling plan that costs them more money later.
My guess is a "journalist"
If there's an issue over whether Vista will put the big antivirus companies out of business, I don't see it as consequential. IMO, the software companies themselves will be responsible for their own demise, regardless of whether Microsoft enters the market. Programs like Norton Utilities used to be valuable, but now these once-critical utilities have morphed into bloaded virus-like software incarnations that are best not installed in the first place.
Furthermore, both McAffee and Symantec products have been hosts to numerous flaws, security holes and vulnerabilities themselves.
If Microsoft wanted to do it right, they could merely have Vista identify both programs as "malware" right off the bat, remove them from the system, and most users would be better off.
Microsoft has put thousands, perhaps tens-of-thousands of software companies out of business in the last two decades. As much as they do have a track record of destroying competition in various segments, somehow, I just don't see "computer security" being one of them.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that offers an alternative to the mostly-useless Prima "official" game guides is an improvement. I've always thought the whole Prima game guide deal was a big scam to get more money from consumers for basic information that can be easily found elsewhere and doesn't contain any real insight, tricks or valuable tips.