So exactly how much money does it take to not suck? Because, clearly, Microsoft hasn't reached that fiscal goal yet... ("See, the M, that's sucking this ball here, and the S, that's sucking my other ball, so the M and the S are just sucking both my balls.")
Granted, the guy may have gotten the results he actually wanted if he'd foregone the detailed letter and instead simply have taken one of those sharpies and written "Please do not clean" in English and Spanish on sheets of paper and taped that over the artwork he wanted to protect. But you know what they say about hindsight.
Install Linux - to do anything, they'll have to go get the one guy who knows Linux, if they even have one.
Have an "EULA" style agreement pop up when the computer boots, with the only options being "Agree" or "Shut down" - have the text of the "EULA" be the Bill of Rights, relevant court rulings, etc.
Put a directory on the desktop named "Private - Confidential" - have a bunch of nested directories beneath it, each one conveying a sense of increasing security, and hinting at severe punishments for violators. Have the last "directory" really be a file with the icon changed so it just looks like a directory, the file name could be something like "If you're actually taking the time to read this, you have no business looking in here and are about to commit a (felony/whatever)" - the file could even be a flash file with really obnoxiously loud music (so you can hear it from the next room over;) and a flashing "You're a felon!" message. (Or whatever) - bonus points for coding an application that does all that PLUS takes pictures of the user via the laptop's built in webcam... =D
Get the largest laptop hard drive you can and fill it to the brim with various sized files created from/dev/random or other sources, so they have to waste their time copying and investigating a ton of junk. Leave the files in 'obvious' places with file names that would want to make you check them out but convey a sense that you will need some special process or application to investigate them. ("Hmm, it's named.ISO, but it won't mount on a virtual drive... Guess I'll have to try to burn it." or "What the hell is a.XYZZY file?" =)
Nest compressed password-protected files (containing/dev/random or copies of the various US legal documents), dozens deep, with both common and obscure compression formats. (Mix them up, and be sure to 'accidentally' change the extension on a few.)
- the fun stops here -
Or, tell them "No," they may NOT look at the files on your laptop, though you'll be more than happy to turn it on or open it up to prove it's not a bomb. If they insist, ask them, if there were a diary in your luggage, would they take it and photocopy every page before letting you board the plane? No? Your computer is no different. (I know it is different, but at the same time, it isn't.) If it comes down to not boarding the plane or letting them violate your privacy, and it's within the realm of possibility for you to skip that flight, skip it. (I know most people's lives would be pretty much destroyed by the vengeful facist assholes if they stood up to them, but if you can survive this, and you'll know if you can, do it.)
Take the issue to the airline, to the airport, write letters to the media and politicians, post about it on Slashdot, etc. Complain, loudly, about any and all ill treatment. If you're flying somewhere for business, especially if they've altered their business practices or processes due to this BS, convince them to do telecommuting or alternate modes of transportation. Why should they keep paying people who are shafting them and their employees? If the company they buy widgets from tried to pull this kind of stuff, would they keep buying from that company?
Don't fly. It's expensive, cramped, and every aspect of the 'service' you receive is better described as 'servicing'. Seek alternate routes. (I know it's not really the airlines fault, but they COULD stand up for their customers if they wanted to. But right now they'd rather not. What does that say about how airlines think of their customers?)
I couldn't figure out why people here were so upset about this, then I realized...
You're imagining something happening to YOUR computer that you are unable to fix (despite probably having enough parts to build another complete system=) and that you have to hand your precious rig over to some noob who will proceed to destroy it in every way possible.
Stop imagining that, it's not helping.:>
This is about people who are too stupid to delete the kiddy porn off their computer before handing it to a stranger - let's face it, they'll be the ones who show up on "To Catch a Predator" actually trying to molest little kids. We're just catching them early.
I'm aware of what honeypots are, and that they're not perfect. Someone was basically saying that they couldn't imagine anything even remotely close to what was being described in the article. I was responding to them, with something remotely close.;) (I was under no illusions that it was an original idea, I think whatever I was going for didn't translate well to text, my bad. =)
> why don't people realize that republicans and democrats ARE BOTH AMERICAN!!! YOU ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!!
For the same reason that people don't realize that Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Iranians, Iraqis, Israelites, Palestinians, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, whatever, etc, WE'RE ALL HUMANS! We're all on the same team anyway!
Noobs.
Uplift the human race to a type 1 civilization. Or, you know, keep flopping around like fish out of water going "whaaa we're noobs", that's going great.
> is there anyone that can tell me excactly how technology that allows for 99.9 percent accuracy with zero false positives actually works?
As a thought exercise I tried to figure out how. This is what I came up with: Set up a secure monitoring server on some random isolated IP address, no DNS name pointing to it or anything. If something connects it's probably malicious, especially if it tries to get all gay with the various known-to-be-vulnerable ports. Propigate that IP to the ISP/company routers' blacklist.
Off the main topic: I've run into that too, I seem to attract the super-clingy noob type. And by noob I mean not merely someone who is new, but rather someone who will never, ever, EVER get it, even if you spell it out for them.
- "Well, sir, the reason you can only see ONE INCH worth of web page on your 50 inch monitor is because you installed a few dozen toolbars."
- "Well, sir, the reason your computer takes half an hour to boot up is because you installed 100 little things that sit in your system tray and blink and beep."
- "Well, sir, the reason your hard drive failed after a year is because you defrag every day, run multiple virus/spyware scans daily (and yet have the most spyware I've ever seen in one place, all INTENTIONALLY installed) and all 4 gigs of ram are full several times over so it's constantly swapping to disk even when you're not using it."
BTW something I learned from working on his computer - Windows just GIVES UP after the first 96 icons in the system tray. (Co-workers and I counted 'em)
If every decision was based on profitability and all everyone ever looked at was the bottom line, these companies would not have a free operating system to run on their devices.
AVG tracks changes to system files in that it will report which system files have changed since the last full scan, though it won't have any specific information as to why.
(as mentioned by others, most AV programs look for virus activity and wouldn't report this, though I think a few others besides AVG can be configured to show various alarms when system files are changed)
So this problem with Windows Update is new? Because my "fix fucking windows update.bat" file on my thumb drive is dated June 2007... I had a few more in mine:
When I worked for a huge non-chain computer store in Massachusetts, technicians would SCOUR every single computer which came in for service looking for porn. I think they had 100 gigs collected from dozens of customer's computers, back in the day when 100 gigs was a lot... Every other computer store / computer service place does the same thing. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE GUYS. THEY HAVE TESTICLES. OF COURSE they're going to hunt for porn.
To be honest, I'm surprised that this is a surprise to anyone. I think the average tech opinion on this is that if you have things you don't want others to see on your computer, you damn well better not mess it up to the point where you have to take it in for repair, or be smart enough to fix it yourself. (And yes, the majority of repairs are only necessary because people click the "OMG PRAWN!" banner ads and then wonder why they have popups and spyware on their system...)
It's interesting to see how many of those 43 Federal capital crimes Bush, Cheney, etc are guilty of...
Civil rights offenses resulting in death. (18 U.S.C. 241, 242, 245, 247) - Gitmo - Imprisoning people without the possibility of a trial is a violation of their civil rights.
Genocide. (18 U.S.C. 1091) - Afghanistan, Iraq - What would YOU call it?
Murder involving torture. (18 U.S.C. 2340) - Gitmo - If you torture someone for 5 years and they kill themselves, they haven't committed suicide, you've murdered them.
And the big one:
Treason. (18 U.S.C. 2381) - Multiple counts.
More could apply under various definitions, but I figured I'd trim it down a bit. After all, how many do you need?
Bush, Cheney, etc should be tried for crimes against humanity and treason.
If you don't hear from me again, it's because I've been sent to some secret government prison. =P
I'm glad to hear they're making progress on it, this is something I've been looking forward to for a while.... Yes, really. =) No, I'm not being sarcastic... =(
Slightly OT: Just read up on metric/imperial systems recently, apparently the only ones still really using Imperial are the US, Burma, and Liberia. Oh yeah that's a great crowd... Maybe, once the new measure passes muster, we can finally extricate ourselves from the "axis of incompetence". Or we could go on trying to figure out how many king's big toes are in a furlong...
I obviously didn't set SquareSoft policy;) but my best bet is that they set the 30-day limit for retaining characters on expired accounts in order to encourage players to continue their subscriptions (and maybe save some disk space on their servers in the case of those who have quit permanently.)
> That, plus their nonexistent character retention policy (we delete your chars if you ever cancel PLUS YOU GET TO BUY A NEW BOX IF YOU WANT TO RESUB)
Not true, that warning comes up only if you unsubscribe improperly. If you unsubscribe using the proper methods they will retain your account, though any characters will be deleted after 30 days (if I remember correctly.) I've gone through this process, unsubscribing, waiting quite a while and then signing back up, and was able to do so with no problems and without needing to buy a new copy of FFXI.
I don't remember the exact steps for proper unsubscription, but if you read the instructions the process will be described. (Along with what NOT to do, so read carefully because that could cause confusion.)
The FAA's main data system is driven by HP-UX, at least last time I worked for them. Considering the amount of custom software involved, I don't think they've switched away. I'm guessing that these are probably people's "personal" work computers that they're talking about.
It's definitely nice to know they're looking to Linux for a desktop solution.
It's embarrassing to admit, but I've never even gotten a character to level 60. My highest one is level 33, the rest are 4-5 levels below that.
Has the new expansion made things any easier for the "below 60" crowd *who aren't one of the new races*, or was it mainly geared toward the 60s and the new races?
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone know if SP1 fixes the bug in notepad? (The 'Unicode bug' is barely a bug, and that's not the one I'm talking about)
So exactly how much money does it take to not suck? Because, clearly, Microsoft hasn't reached that fiscal goal yet... ("See, the M, that's sucking this ball here, and the S, that's sucking my other ball, so the M and the S are just sucking both my balls.")
Granted, the guy may have gotten the results he actually wanted if he'd foregone the detailed letter and instead simply have taken one of those sharpies and written "Please do not clean" in English and Spanish on sheets of paper and taped that over the artwork he wanted to protect. But you know what they say about hindsight.
Ways to have fun with this:
;) and a flashing "You're a felon!" message. (Or whatever) - bonus points for coding an application that does all that PLUS takes pictures of the user via the laptop's built in webcam... =D
/dev/random or other sources, so they have to waste their time copying and investigating a ton of junk. Leave the files in 'obvious' places with file names that would want to make you check them out but convey a sense that you will need some special process or application to investigate them. ("Hmm, it's named .ISO, but it won't mount on a virtual drive... Guess I'll have to try to burn it." or "What the hell is a .XYZZY file?" =)
/dev/random or copies of the various US legal documents), dozens deep, with both common and obscure compression formats. (Mix them up, and be sure to 'accidentally' change the extension on a few.)
Install Linux - to do anything, they'll have to go get the one guy who knows Linux, if they even have one.
Have an "EULA" style agreement pop up when the computer boots, with the only options being "Agree" or "Shut down" - have the text of the "EULA" be the Bill of Rights, relevant court rulings, etc.
Put a directory on the desktop named "Private - Confidential" - have a bunch of nested directories beneath it, each one conveying a sense of increasing security, and hinting at severe punishments for violators. Have the last "directory" really be a file with the icon changed so it just looks like a directory, the file name could be something like "If you're actually taking the time to read this, you have no business looking in here and are about to commit a (felony/whatever)" - the file could even be a flash file with really obnoxiously loud music (so you can hear it from the next room over
Get the largest laptop hard drive you can and fill it to the brim with various sized files created from
Nest compressed password-protected files (containing
- the fun stops here -
Or, tell them "No," they may NOT look at the files on your laptop, though you'll be more than happy to turn it on or open it up to prove it's not a bomb. If they insist, ask them, if there were a diary in your luggage, would they take it and photocopy every page before letting you board the plane? No? Your computer is no different. (I know it is different, but at the same time, it isn't.) If it comes down to not boarding the plane or letting them violate your privacy, and it's within the realm of possibility for you to skip that flight, skip it. (I know most people's lives would be pretty much destroyed by the vengeful facist assholes if they stood up to them, but if you can survive this, and you'll know if you can, do it.)
Take the issue to the airline, to the airport, write letters to the media and politicians, post about it on Slashdot, etc. Complain, loudly, about any and all ill treatment. If you're flying somewhere for business, especially if they've altered their business practices or processes due to this BS, convince them to do telecommuting or alternate modes of transportation. Why should they keep paying people who are shafting them and their employees? If the company they buy widgets from tried to pull this kind of stuff, would they keep buying from that company?
Don't fly. It's expensive, cramped, and every aspect of the 'service' you receive is better described as 'servicing'. Seek alternate routes. (I know it's not really the airlines fault, but they COULD stand up for their customers if they wanted to. But right now they'd rather not. What does that say about how airlines think of their customers?)
> solar cells made out of CIGS, or copper indium gallium selenide
So they melt. =)
I couldn't figure out why people here were so upset about this, then I realized...
:>
You're imagining something happening to YOUR computer that you are unable to fix (despite probably having enough parts to build another complete system=) and that you have to hand your precious rig over to some noob who will proceed to destroy it in every way possible.
Stop imagining that, it's not helping.
This is about people who are too stupid to delete the kiddy porn off their computer before handing it to a stranger - let's face it, they'll be the ones who show up on "To Catch a Predator" actually trying to molest little kids. We're just catching them early.
A sequel to a successful franchise? Shocking!
In other news: Who started this whole "Half-Life ends with Ep3" rumor anyway?
I'm aware of what honeypots are, and that they're not perfect. Someone was basically saying that they couldn't imagine anything even remotely close to what was being described in the article. I was responding to them, with something remotely close. ;) (I was under no illusions that it was an original idea, I think whatever I was going for didn't translate well to text, my bad. =)
I know what honeypots are. Didn't I pretty much describe them? =)
> why don't people realize that republicans and democrats ARE BOTH AMERICAN!!! YOU ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!!
For the same reason that people don't realize that Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Iranians, Iraqis, Israelites, Palestinians, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, whatever, etc, WE'RE ALL HUMANS! We're all on the same team anyway!
Noobs.
Uplift the human race to a type 1 civilization. Or, you know, keep flopping around like fish out of water going "whaaa we're noobs", that's going great.
> is there anyone that can tell me excactly how technology that allows for 99.9 percent accuracy with zero false positives actually works?
As a thought exercise I tried to figure out how. This is what I came up with: Set up a secure monitoring server on some random isolated IP address, no DNS name pointing to it or anything. If something connects it's probably malicious, especially if it tries to get all gay with the various known-to-be-vulnerable ports. Propigate that IP to the ISP/company routers' blacklist.
> What happens when you push the button on the electronic screen? Can you tell me?
Yes.
Off the main topic: I've run into that too, I seem to attract the super-clingy noob type. And by noob I mean not merely someone who is new, but rather someone who will never, ever, EVER get it, even if you spell it out for them.
- "Well, sir , the reason you can only see ONE INCH worth of web page on your 50 inch monitor is because you installed a few dozen toolbars."
- "Well, sir , the reason your computer takes half an hour to boot up is because you installed 100 little things that sit in your system tray and blink and beep."
- "Well, sir , the reason your hard drive failed after a year is because you defrag every day, run multiple virus/spyware scans daily (and yet have the most spyware I've ever seen in one place, all INTENTIONALLY installed) and all 4 gigs of ram are full several times over so it's constantly swapping to disk even when you're not using it."
BTW something I learned from working on his computer - Windows just GIVES UP after the first 96 icons in the system tray. (Co-workers and I counted 'em)
If every decision was based on profitability and all everyone ever looked at was the bottom line, these companies would not have a free operating system to run on their devices.
AVG tracks changes to system files in that it will report which system files have changed since the last full scan, though it won't have any specific information as to why.
(as mentioned by others, most AV programs look for virus activity and wouldn't report this, though I think a few others besides AVG can be configured to show various alarms when system files are changed)
So this problem with Windows Update is new? Because my "fix fucking windows update.bat" file on my thumb drive is dated June 2007... I had a few more in mine:
regsvr32 wuapi.dll
regsvr32 wuaueng.dll
regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32 wucltui.dll
regsvr32 wups.dll
regsvr32 wups2.dll
regsvr32 wuweb.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll
Oh, and if we found kiddie porn? WE CALLED THE FUCKING POLICE.
When I worked for a huge non-chain computer store in Massachusetts, technicians would SCOUR every single computer which came in for service looking for porn. I think they had 100 gigs collected from dozens of customer's computers, back in the day when 100 gigs was a lot... Every other computer store / computer service place does the same thing. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE GUYS. THEY HAVE TESTICLES. OF COURSE they're going to hunt for porn.
To be honest, I'm surprised that this is a surprise to anyone. I think the average tech opinion on this is that if you have things you don't want others to see on your computer, you damn well better not mess it up to the point where you have to take it in for repair, or be smart enough to fix it yourself. (And yes, the majority of repairs are only necessary because people click the "OMG PRAWN!" banner ads and then wonder why they have popups and spyware on their system...)
It's interesting to see how many of those 43 Federal capital crimes Bush, Cheney, etc are guilty of...
Civil rights offenses resulting in death. (18 U.S.C. 241, 242, 245, 247) - Gitmo - Imprisoning people without the possibility of a trial is a violation of their civil rights.
Genocide. (18 U.S.C. 1091) - Afghanistan, Iraq - What would YOU call it?
Murder involving torture. (18 U.S.C. 2340) - Gitmo - If you torture someone for 5 years and they kill themselves, they haven't committed suicide, you've murdered them.
And the big one:
Treason. (18 U.S.C. 2381) - Multiple counts.
More could apply under various definitions, but I figured I'd trim it down a bit. After all, how many do you need?
Bush, Cheney, etc should be tried for crimes against humanity and treason.
If you don't hear from me again, it's because I've been sent to some secret government prison. =P
I mean, it's not like printer ink is $8000 A GALLON or anything... Oh wait, it is.
I'm glad to hear they're making progress on it, this is something I've been looking forward to for a while. ... Yes, really. =) No, I'm not being sarcastic... =(
Slightly OT: Just read up on metric/imperial systems recently, apparently the only ones still really using Imperial are the US, Burma, and Liberia. Oh yeah that's a great crowd... Maybe, once the new measure passes muster, we can finally extricate ourselves from the "axis of incompetence". Or we could go on trying to figure out how many king's big toes are in a furlong...
I obviously didn't set SquareSoft policy ;) but my best bet is that they set the 30-day limit for retaining characters on expired accounts in order to encourage players to continue their subscriptions (and maybe save some disk space on their servers in the case of those who have quit permanently.)
> That, plus their nonexistent character retention policy (we delete your chars if you ever cancel PLUS YOU GET TO BUY A NEW BOX IF YOU WANT TO RESUB)
Not true, that warning comes up only if you unsubscribe improperly. If you unsubscribe using the proper methods they will retain your account, though any characters will be deleted after 30 days (if I remember correctly.) I've gone through this process, unsubscribing, waiting quite a while and then signing back up, and was able to do so with no problems and without needing to buy a new copy of FFXI.
I don't remember the exact steps for proper unsubscription, but if you read the instructions the process will be described. (Along with what NOT to do, so read carefully because that could cause confusion.)
The FAA's main data system is driven by HP-UX, at least last time I worked for them. Considering the amount of custom software involved, I don't think they've switched away. I'm guessing that these are probably people's "personal" work computers that they're talking about.
It's definitely nice to know they're looking to Linux for a desktop solution.
It's embarrassing to admit, but I've never even gotten a character to level 60. My highest one is level 33, the rest are 4-5 levels below that.
Has the new expansion made things any easier for the "below 60" crowd *who aren't one of the new races*, or was it mainly geared toward the 60s and the new races?
> Nobody has ever quit WoW.
One of us, one of us.