> so he hacked an old telephone handset together with his mobile phone
No he didn't. Nowhere in the article does he say that the did this. All is says is that he bought one off eBay. Nothing else. It doesn't say that he got it working or modified the phone in any way. I'd be more impressed if he'd actually done the mod and got it working as the original poster implied.
For now, this is a non-story about a fairly badly done computer case mod (why have a beige CD drive in a wooden case? He could at least have veneered or replaced the front panel of the CD drive as many other modders have).
It can't be uncompressed. There isn't enough bandwidth on even USB2 to fit a proper PAL or NTSC TV signal at full resolution, 24bit colour 24frames/sec. Perhaps it's compressed using a lossless compression system or motion JPEG.
Apart from two messages sent to me by gmail users, all my SPF "PASS" e-mails have been spam. So spammers are happy to simply find an open relay on a domain which has SPF implemented properly. Or they are happy to register a throwaway domain name, set up SPF on it, and then spam. Hell the big spammers they make thousands every week - they're not worried about a few dollars for a domain name.
When the spammers use the above techniques, it applys a -2.5 score to the e-mail on our SpamAssassin system and makes the message look like HAM. So what's been accomplished?
I don't see how it can possibly work. Surely the spammers will just start sending from domain names which don't implement SPF instead of ones that do? It would only be a couple of lines of extra code in their spamming program to ensure it doesn't send mail from SPF protected domains.
From the article: "Americans are being inundated with spam"
They're also causing most other countries to be inundated with spam. Why are they phrasing it like it's an internal issue?
Nearly all my spam is from America. Almost none of it is from my own country (the UK). If I had the time to work out how to do it I'd simply bounce all mail originating from the US. The only problem with that is that I occasionally order from US websites like Amazon (amazon.co.uk does't always have everything).
They benchmark with the MythTV box first with decent hardware, then for the price comparison page they rip out the expensive stuff and replace it with the cheapest shit they can find. How is that a fair review?!
I wasn't trolling. I genuinely can't understand why people keep thinking that they need to reboot all the time.
> Why windows "requires" rebooting whenever things are installed is beyond me
I completely agree with you.
I usually find it's the software vendors fault that the machine needs a reboot rather than the OS's fault. Eg to patch the webserver, they install a script which will replace the webserver binaries that are currently in use on the next reboot. Whereas Linux installers would stop the webserver, replace the relevant files and then start the service again. There is no reason I can think of why Windows software vendors couldn't do the same thing. But for some reason, because uptime is less "sacred" on windows, they are happier just to ask the user to reboot instead. After all it saves them a few lines of installer code. I don't think that Windows actually forces software vendors to write patches and programs which require the users to reboot - I think it's just lazy coding. After all, there are many HUGE applications which you can install without a reboot so some people manage it.
> Your comments about 18yr students running linux are odd to say the least
I was merely recalling what me and all my friends did when we were at uni. It's not made up. If you installed something and then got lots of errors when you started X - you'd spend a couple of hours trying to fix it but eventually you'd just rebuild the box. Linux has a steeper learning curve than windows and people are more likely to rebuild it when it breaks than they are if they have a windows message. To me, it also seems easier to get linux into a state where it's completely unusable than it is with Windows. But that might just be that I'm more experienced playing with Windows boxes than I am with Linux boxes.
I seriously doubt the accuracy of those stats. We're talking about this now in the office and none of us can even remember the last time one our boxes actually had to be rebooted due to a crash (or some other major problem with windows). The only reason I ever need to reboot is to install things which require rebooting (usually OS patches or updates to our source code control system).
12%? No way... Maybe if you hand it out to a bunch of clueless idiots who wrote down on their test form that they had to reboot - when really, they simply didn't know of the proper way to fix the problem. I bet if you ran the same tests for advanced users like software developers, you'd find that they hardly ever had to reboot to fix a problem. I think I only reboot once a month or so. My XP box I'm writing this on has been up for more than 2 weeks. It last went down for reboot when I installed SP2.
If ask a bunch of newbie 18 year old students to use a linux box for a year, you'll probably find that many of them will reinstall the entire operating system a couple of times during the year if something goes slightly wrong with it (not to mention many many reboots). It's not because there's something wrong with linux that requires it to be reinstalled - it's only because when you're learning - it's often the quickest and easiest way to fix a problem if there's no one around to help. This goes for any OS. I don't think those results are statistically significant.
We're talking about the "Browse by name" feature - not "I'm feeling lucky". They are different - contrary to what lots of posts above imply.
"Browse by name" is a few feature which attempts to go directly to certain websites if you type in a proper name and does a google search if Google doesn't recognise an offical site for the name you entered. I'm feeling lucky simply goes to the first match on a google search as you know.
I hope that post doesn't stay +5 for long as it's very misleading.
I was wondering if it would be possible for stores to implement a system whereby at the checkout, when you use your loyalty card (points) or credit card, they could also log the mobile phone IEMI numbers that are around at the same time. Over a few visits, they could then develop a 1:1 correlation which maps your mobile phone ID to the products you buy.
This means that after a couple of visits, they could then show you massive adverts on plasma screens for products relevant to what *YOU* buy before you've actually started doing your shopping - as seen in Minority Report... If your name is stored on the mag stripe then in theory they could also greet you by your name as you enter the store.
Well then enable dithering if you have horizontal gradients - it's not hard. I can't include every single except in my original post - I was making a general point. Obviously if your screenshot contains a huge photograph, then you might be better off with a JPEG. The 256 colour limitation may not be suitable for every single screenshot.
Personally I always disable the gradient before taking any screenshots. It makes the file smaller and the screenshot nicer. If you really need the gradient then save as PNG which isn't limited to 256 colours.
The fact that the title bar looks a bit banded doesn't look anything like as bad as a "medium" compressed JPEG file of the same size, where nearly every single edge in the entire screenshot will be severely messed up.
What I also hate are people who take screenshots with "cleartype" turned on (or the equivalent for your OS) when most people aren't using an LCD screen. Cleartype on a CRT just makes all the text look fuzzy with coloured edges.
> Take a high resolution screenshot with any complexity and save > it as a PNG, and you might be lucky to get it in under 600KB, > where a.jpg could get the same point across in under 100KB.
A screenshot is a very bad example. It's almost NEVER better to save screenshot using a lossy compression algorithm such as JPEG. Screenshots are always better as GIF/PNG.
JPEG is designed for compressing PHOTOGRAPHS and nothing else. It severely messes up screenshots and text unless set to extremely high quality. But if you set it to extremely high quality, the file size is usually much bigger than a PNG would be anyway.
I'm amazed at how many authors of programming articles still don't know basic web fundamentals such as how to save a screenshot.
To summarise: Save screenshots/diagrams/charts (large areas of flat colour/text) as PNG/GIF Save photographs as JPEG
This is not a virus. It doesn't spread itself. It's simply a trojan that you have to manually download and install by bypassing two security warnings after first having found it on an irreputable site or P2P network. Hardly a threat.
I'm also not sure it deserves to to be called destructive either. It doesn't destruct anything or in any way modify any other services on your phone - it simply sends SMS messages. It would be better classed as "expensive":)
Only in the same way that if you have Netscape 4.71 installed, then Netscape 6 is an "update". Even though a Netscape 6 installation includes every single file needed to run Netscape 6 and doesn't reference a single file from the 4.71 installation.
I'm not going to argue about it - I think everyone realises that the original post was wrong in the context in which it was said. The poster didn't realise that his large "update" was actually the whole of IE6. He probably thought it was just a service pack.
Since it includes the ENTIRE browser and doesn't update anything perhaps?
"Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1" is NOT a service pack - it's the ENTIRE of IE 6 PLUS service pack 1 and doesn't require IE 6 to install. It's not an update because it doesn't update anything - it's the whole installation of IE6.
Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is the latest version of Internet Explorer and includes a full installation of the Web browser.
That's hardly an update is it?
"Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1" is the ENTIRE of Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 1 already applied. It has no prerequisites apart from Windows itself. It does not "update" anything - it's the entire browser - hence it's so big. Ie, if you didn't have Internet Explorer 6 and you installed the package you mentionned, you would then have internet explorer 6 with service pack 1 already applied.
Admittedly they should probably have named it "Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 1" or "Service Release 1" or something...
How you managed to get to +4 Informative with that load of propaganda I really don't know...
> Being an IT professional, I get on average 1 request per week > to remove viruses / spyware / browser hijacks etc from people's computers
Well you're not a very good IT professional then are you because I don't get any. Ever.
> Recently I started turning them down, but offer to install Linux > on their computer instead of trying to fix their Window installation.
Most good IT professionals would have installed virus scanners and firewalls so their users couldn't get a virus! You've got to have a pretty stupid admin around if your computers are managing to get one virus a week!
If your users are so thick that they repeatedly click on attachments or disable the virus scanner, then exactly what hope do you think they have of managing to use Linux (the usability of which is still decidedly questionable compared to Windows).
I'm also seen some fairly convincing arguments that if 98% of computers were running linux, 98% of the viruses released would target Linux. Linux is by no means infallable - just take a look at the security fix list for the major services like Apache over the last couple of years. It's had at least as many holes as IIS.// TODO:
Install corporate wide antivirus (eg Norton Corporate Edition 9.0) which can be centrally configured and can't be disabled by the users.
Install a firewall (preferably one which can also filter virues on POP and IMAP and HTTP connections.
Install spyware monitoring.
If you're really paranoid remove IE and switch them to Firefox or Netscape, but don't switch entire operating systems unless every user is Linux savvy.
How on earth that post got to +5 insightful I have no idea.
Actually no. Not a statistically significant amount anyway. According to the stats I've read on *MANY* places, nearly everyone is using Windows or Mac OS. Linux ownership is so incredibly low that it usually just comes under "Other OS" in the results.
You're troll is that you're trying to get people to think that being able to run linux on a PDA means it's usable. But from what people in other posts are saying, it looks like if you have linux on your PDA that you're unlikely to get usable handwriting recognition, bluetooth support, GPRS or any other bare essentials.
Being able to run XCalc and XEyes is *NOT* a usuable solution for 99.9% percent of users - only some hard core linux advocates would be happy with this level of support on their PDA.
This will probably get modded down by yet another person that hasn't actually tried using Linux on a PDA for more than an hour or so.
I do not call physically being able to run Linux on a PDA a "good PDA OS". Obviously I know you *CAN* run Linux on PDA - but it's crap. Have you tried it?
On your advice, I downloaded Opera and tested M2... The searching is very very fast (my mouse button is still on it's way up by the time it's seached though my 10,000 emails!), but it's IMAP support seems rather flaky. It keeps freezing and won't continue downloading messages until you restart it.
I wish Thunderbird had Opera's searching capabilities - then my life would be complete(ish!).:)
Feel free to suggest any alternative OS that could be used on pocket PC? Don't say anything stupid like "Linux", because Linux is *nowhere* where Pocket PC support is concerned.
GPS aerials are quite big and would add a lot of bulk to the PDA. After all, they are designed to receive satellite signals directly whereas WiFi and GSM aerials are receiving relatively stronger signals from a source thousands of times closer. GPS aerials also don't like being behind things (eg aluminium casing or a screen) so it would probably stick out of the top.
Slashdot Mirror
> so he hacked an old telephone handset together with his mobile phone
No he didn't. Nowhere in the article does he say that the did this. All is says is that he bought one off eBay. Nothing else. It doesn't say that he got it working or modified the phone in any way. I'd be more impressed if he'd actually done the mod and got it working as the original poster implied.
For now, this is a non-story about a fairly badly done computer case mod (why have a beige CD drive in a wooden case? He could at least have veneered or replaced the front panel of the CD drive as many other modders have).
Yeah I made a miscalculation.
:)
Mod my post down
It can't be uncompressed. There isn't enough bandwidth on even USB2 to fit a proper PAL or NTSC TV signal at full resolution, 24bit colour 24frames/sec. Perhaps it's compressed using a lossless compression system or motion JPEG.
Except for one major drawback: SPF doesn't work.
Apart from two messages sent to me by gmail users, all my SPF "PASS" e-mails have been spam. So spammers are happy to simply find an open relay on a domain which has SPF implemented properly. Or they are happy to register a throwaway domain name, set up SPF on it, and then spam. Hell the big spammers they make thousands every week - they're not worried about a few dollars for a domain name.
When the spammers use the above techniques, it applys a -2.5 score to the e-mail on our SpamAssassin system and makes the message look like HAM. So what's been accomplished?
I don't see how it can possibly work. Surely the spammers will just start sending from domain names which don't implement SPF instead of ones that do? It would only be a couple of lines of extra code in their spamming program to ensure it doesn't send mail from SPF protected domains.
From the article: "Americans are being inundated with spam"
They're also causing most other countries to be inundated with spam. Why are they phrasing it like it's an internal issue?
Nearly all my spam is from America. Almost none of it is from my own country (the UK). If I had the time to work out how to do it I'd simply bounce all mail originating from the US. The only problem with that is that I occasionally order from US websites like Amazon (amazon.co.uk does't always have everything).
This is an extremely biassed review.
They benchmark with the MythTV box first with decent hardware, then for the price comparison page they rip out the expensive stuff and replace it with the cheapest shit they can find. How is that a fair review?!
Absolutely unbelievable!
I wasn't trolling. I genuinely can't understand why people keep thinking that they need to reboot all the time.
> Why windows "requires" rebooting whenever things are installed is beyond me
I completely agree with you.
I usually find it's the software vendors fault that the machine needs a reboot rather than the OS's fault. Eg to patch the webserver, they install a script which will replace the webserver binaries that are currently in use on the next reboot. Whereas Linux installers would stop the webserver, replace the relevant files and then start the service again. There is no reason I can think of why Windows software vendors couldn't do the same thing. But for some reason, because uptime is less "sacred" on windows, they are happier just to ask the user to reboot instead. After all it saves them a few lines of installer code. I don't think that Windows actually forces software vendors to write patches and programs which require the users to reboot - I think it's just lazy coding. After all, there are many HUGE applications which you can install without a reboot so some people manage it.
> Your comments about 18yr students running linux are odd to say the least
I was merely recalling what me and all my friends did when we were at uni. It's not made up. If you installed something and then got lots of errors when you started X - you'd spend a couple of hours trying to fix it but eventually you'd just rebuild the box. Linux has a steeper learning curve than windows and people are more likely to rebuild it when it breaks than they are if they have a windows message. To me, it also seems easier to get linux into a state where it's completely unusable than it is with Windows. But that might just be that I'm more experienced playing with Windows boxes than I am with Linux boxes.
Nick...
I seriously doubt the accuracy of those stats. We're talking about this now in the office and none of us can even remember the last time one our boxes actually had to be rebooted due to a crash (or some other major problem with windows). The only reason I ever need to reboot is to install things which require rebooting (usually OS patches or updates to our source code control system).
12%? No way... Maybe if you hand it out to a bunch of clueless idiots who wrote down on their test form that they had to reboot - when really, they simply didn't know of the proper way to fix the problem. I bet if you ran the same tests for advanced users like software developers, you'd find that they hardly ever had to reboot to fix a problem. I think I only reboot once a month or so. My XP box I'm writing this on has been up for more than 2 weeks. It last went down for reboot when I installed SP2.
If ask a bunch of newbie 18 year old students to use a linux box for a year, you'll probably find that many of them will reinstall the entire operating system a couple of times during the year if something goes slightly wrong with it (not to mention many many reboots). It's not because there's something wrong with linux that requires it to be reinstalled - it's only because when you're learning - it's often the quickest and easiest way to fix a problem if there's no one around to help. This goes for any OS. I don't think those results are statistically significant.
NO! Not like that at all. Read the article!
We're talking about the "Browse by name" feature - not "I'm feeling lucky". They are different - contrary to what lots of posts above imply.
"Browse by name" is a few feature which attempts to go directly to certain websites if you type in a proper name and does a google search if Google doesn't recognise an offical site for the name you entered. I'm feeling lucky simply goes to the first match on a google search as you know.
I hope that post doesn't stay +5 for long as it's very misleading.
Nick...
I was wondering if it would be possible for stores to implement a system whereby at the checkout, when you use your loyalty card (points) or credit card, they could also log the mobile phone IEMI numbers that are around at the same time. Over a few visits, they could then develop a 1:1 correlation which maps your mobile phone ID to the products you buy.
This means that after a couple of visits, they could then show you massive adverts on plasma screens for products relevant to what *YOU* buy before you've actually started doing your shopping - as seen in Minority Report... If your name is stored on the mag stripe then in theory they could also greet you by your name as you enter the store.
Well then enable dithering if you have horizontal gradients - it's not hard. I can't include every single except in my original post - I was making a general point. Obviously if your screenshot contains a huge photograph, then you might be better off with a JPEG. The 256 colour limitation may not be suitable for every single screenshot.
Personally I always disable the gradient before taking any screenshots. It makes the file smaller and the screenshot nicer. If you really need the gradient then save as PNG which isn't limited to 256 colours.
The fact that the title bar looks a bit banded doesn't look anything like as bad as a "medium" compressed JPEG file of the same size, where nearly every single edge in the entire screenshot will be severely messed up.
What I also hate are people who take screenshots with "cleartype" turned on (or the equivalent for your OS) when most people aren't using an LCD screen. Cleartype on a CRT just makes all the text look fuzzy with coloured edges.
> Take a high resolution screenshot with any complexity and save .jpg could get the same point across in under 100KB.
> it as a PNG, and you might be lucky to get it in under 600KB,
> where a
A screenshot is a very bad example. It's almost NEVER better to save screenshot using a lossy compression algorithm such as JPEG. Screenshots are always better as GIF/PNG.
JPEG is designed for compressing PHOTOGRAPHS and nothing else. It severely messes up screenshots and text unless set to extremely high quality. But if you set it to extremely high quality, the file size is usually much bigger than a PNG would be anyway.
I'm amazed at how many authors of programming articles still don't know basic web fundamentals such as how to save a screenshot.
To summarise:
Save screenshots/diagrams/charts (large areas of flat colour/text) as PNG/GIF
Save photographs as JPEG
> And rather than post a redundant message, I will add here that this
> [...] should be reffered to as a Trojan
But I've already said that it should be referred to as a trojan, so you HAVE posted a redundant message.
This is not a virus. It doesn't spread itself. It's simply a trojan that you have to manually download and install by bypassing two security warnings after first having found it on an irreputable site or P2P network. Hardly a threat.
:)
I'm also not sure it deserves to to be called destructive either. It doesn't destruct anything or in any way modify any other services on your phone - it simply sends SMS messages. It would be better classed as "expensive"
In anyone is wondering... you have to use £ to get the £ symbol. If you're not a UK web developer - that may not be obvious :)
Yes they did - they specified the exact size in mm. They also never said that it was a 2TB memory card.
Only in the same way that if you have Netscape 4.71 installed, then Netscape 6 is an "update". Even though a Netscape 6 installation includes every single file needed to run Netscape 6 and doesn't reference a single file from the 4.71 installation.
I'm not going to argue about it - I think everyone realises that the original post was wrong in the context in which it was said. The poster didn't realise that his large "update" was actually the whole of IE6. He probably thought it was just a service pack.
> Since when is a service pack not an update?
Since it includes the ENTIRE browser and doesn't update anything perhaps?
"Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1" is NOT a service pack - it's the ENTIRE of IE 6 PLUS service pack 1 and doesn't require IE 6 to install. It's not an update because it doesn't update anything - it's the whole installation of IE6.
Perhaps you should have read the VERY FIRST line of the linked page before posting.
Because that's NOT an update!!!
Read the very first line of that page:
Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is the latest version of Internet Explorer and includes a full installation of the Web browser.
That's hardly an update is it?
"Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1" is the ENTIRE of Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 1 already applied. It has no prerequisites apart from Windows itself. It does not "update" anything - it's the entire browser - hence it's so big. Ie, if you didn't have Internet Explorer 6 and you installed the package you mentionned, you would then have internet explorer 6 with service pack 1 already applied.
Admittedly they should probably have named it "Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 1" or "Service Release 1" or something...
How you managed to get to +4 Informative with that load of propaganda I really don't know...
> to remove viruses / spyware / browser hijacks etc from people's computers
Well you're not a very good IT professional then are you because I don't get any. Ever.
> Recently I started turning them down, but offer to install Linux
> on their computer instead of trying to fix their Window installation.
Most good IT professionals would have installed virus scanners and firewalls so their users couldn't get a virus! You've got to have a pretty stupid admin around if your computers are managing to get one virus a week!
If your users are so thick that they repeatedly click on attachments or disable the virus scanner, then exactly what hope do you think they have of managing to use Linux (the usability of which is still decidedly questionable compared to Windows).
I'm also seen some fairly convincing arguments that if 98% of computers were running linux, 98% of the viruses released would target Linux. Linux is by no means infallable - just take a look at the security fix list for the major services like Apache over the last couple of years. It's had at least as many holes as IIS.
- Install corporate wide antivirus (eg Norton Corporate Edition 9.0) which can be centrally configured and can't be disabled by the users.
- Install a firewall (preferably one which can also filter virues on POP and IMAP and HTTP connections.
- Install spyware monitoring.
- If you're really paranoid remove IE and switch them to Firefox or Netscape, but don't switch entire operating systems unless every user is Linux savvy.
How on earth that post got to +5 insightful I have no idea.Actually no. Not a statistically significant amount anyway. According to the stats I've read on *MANY* places, nearly everyone is using Windows or Mac OS. Linux ownership is so incredibly low that it usually just comes under "Other OS" in the results.
You're troll is that you're trying to get people to think that being able to run linux on a PDA means it's usable. But from what people in other posts are saying, it looks like if you have linux on your PDA that you're unlikely to get usable handwriting recognition, bluetooth support, GPRS or any other bare essentials.
Being able to run XCalc and XEyes is *NOT* a usuable solution for 99.9% percent of users - only some hard core linux advocates would be happy with this level of support on their PDA.
This will probably get modded down by yet another person that hasn't actually tried using Linux on a PDA for more than an hour or so.
I do not call physically being able to run Linux on a PDA a "good PDA OS". Obviously I know you *CAN* run Linux on PDA - but it's crap. Have you tried it?
On your advice, I downloaded Opera and tested M2... The searching is very very fast (my mouse button is still on it's way up by the time it's seached though my 10,000 emails!), but it's IMAP support seems rather flaky. It keeps freezing and won't continue downloading messages until you restart it.
:)
I wish Thunderbird had Opera's searching capabilities - then my life would be complete(ish!).
Nick..
Feel free to suggest any alternative OS that could be used on pocket PC? Don't say anything stupid like "Linux", because Linux is *nowhere* where Pocket PC support is concerned.
GPS aerials are quite big and would add a lot of bulk to the PDA. After all, they are designed to receive satellite signals directly whereas WiFi and GSM aerials are receiving relatively stronger signals from a source thousands of times closer.
GPS aerials also don't like being behind things (eg aluminium casing or a screen) so it would probably stick out of the top.