" A couple months ago I received an email notifying me that eBay was updating its records and needed me to re-enter my user and credit card information.
The site was at http://www.cgi5-ebay.cc/eBayISAPIdll/signin.html. Obvious to any experienced computer user as a scam.
But since I was sure unsuspecting users may be duped, I decided to do something about it. I contacted the service provider, A Plus (aka Abacus), informed them of the scam, and requested that they shut it down. Within an hour the site was offline."
I've seen this on a couple of occaions as well, but for paypal as opposed to ebay. The URLs were more obviously fake but I notified the network admins anyway and the person who bought one of the domains is now being charged with fraud!
The obvious tip-off was that someone was just sending mail at random, hoping to catch paypal users. The account I received that message at had nothing to do with paypal. (And now I as will will have nothing to do with paypal.
"What leads you to believe that they're leaning towards linux?
Last time I was in India (~2,3 years ago) there were by far more signs up in Bombay about C# courses than anything else."
"It is always cool to catch a theif, and particularly someone who preys on people who don't have much money to pursue these things. And while I sympathize with those who say he shouldn't have sent it COD to begin with, we all make mistakes sometimes, and at least he did what he could to correct it."
A worse thing is to have the same last name as a crook. Back in the 80s, there was a drug dealer living in the same city as my family and had the same last name as us. We kept getting calls in the middle of the night... "Is Duane there... ? We're having a party and we need the stuff!" Eventually the guy got caught and was hauled off the jail. But not before we got our phone number unlisted permanently and for free by the police:-)
It sounds like Microsoft is running scared now. They realise that India is a powerhose because it has way more people (population) than the United States.
India seems to be tilted toward linux right now and if the linux movement there gets into full swing, the momentum will be very, very hard for Microsoft to stop.
I hope the Indians look to the long terms effects of the windows and linux paths, as opposed to short terms benefits.
"Just a dumb thing about the whole 'stealing' of web usage by disabling pop-up adds -- would it be stealing to simply uninstall flash from a computer? You couldn't see these nice big adds."
If uninstalling flash is stealing, then a lot of us are guilty of 'grand theft';-)
You could ask the same thing about using Lynx. It doesn't even support images, let alone flash.
"I don't know about you guys, but I know that once a site's ads surpass a certain level of annoyance (basically beyond a graphic either at the top, sides, or bottom), I start finding alternative places to visit. It's just not worth my time to "endure" 5 minutes of sparkly flash tidbits and other nit-wittery when visiting a page."
Uninstall flash.
I just keep a separate flash enabled browser (Opera) for those rare moments when I really do need flash. Otherwise, mozilla armed with numerous ad and popup blocking tools/settings spares me from almost all banners and pop-ups.
"You notice the lost time, especially when you're connected through a slow modem and pay by the minute... It is a huge bandwidth wasteage!"
Then get yourself a glorious hosts blocking list and say goodbye to 90% of advertising content and a big speed-up! I am on 28.8 dialup (nothing better is available here, not even 56K) and this is a life-saver.
"Somehow this article seems to only pertain to users of software produced by a certain monopoly. I use the mighty Mozilla and frankly it has been a damn long time since I have even seen a pop up ad."
Same here. I have forgotten what it feels like to see a pop-up on my machine. Rare is the day I see a banner ad as well, due to mighty hosts blocking and even if I haven't blocked a host, bannerblind* usually zaps it anyway. I don't even have to resort to a windows-dependent solution like the Proxomitron anymore!
*That note on the bannerblind site about an error where bannerblind fails to register properly is not a big deal. Look at bug 1745 listed and a work-around us there.
"I wish you could convince my dad about this. I continually show him the more expensive, but better working, longer lasting device, and he always goes for the cheap one."
Heh, I'm in the opposite situation. I got my taste for high cost* / high quality products from my dad. It's kind of annoying, though, because I will probably never own a stereo for many years until I can actually afford an audiophile system.
*I'm not implying that high cost automatically means that a product is of high quality. There's lots of expensive garbage out there.
"I can't say exactly why this is happening, but I can venture some guesses. The quick buck is killing our economy. Everyone wants that easy money. No one takes pride in their products and builds them to last."
I agree, and this applies to customers too. The will buy the $5 cheaper part if its feature list is the same. Who cares if the capacitors and thermal protection are substandard? Most people don't know what those are. The customer's want of saving a quick buck causes the manufacturers of quality parts to either reduce their quality or go out of business.
"I swear the quality of these has declined over the past 10 years. There used to be a time when I could reliably transfer a file between machines on these. Now I open a new packet and 4/10 won't work."
Absolutely. If you look at old floppies, they are glued all the way around on the edges. The new ones are only glued in the corners so all kinds of crud can get inside.
I haven't bought a floppy in years, and instead use my really old ones from the 80s.
"According to Consumer Reports, Sony actually makes some of the most unreliable garbage out there."
It depends. Their low end, mass produced products aimed at the average person are overpriced junk. I would never buy them. They are typically made in Mexico or Malaysia. On the other hand, their high end products are very good, very reliable, and made in Japan.
I have found that the rule for Sony products is this: Buy high end, or don't buy at all! If it's Sony and it doesn't say "Made in Japan" then don't buy it.
"In America at least, I think the struggling economy is mostly to blame. Manufacturers are just trying to cut costs to bring their profit margins up, and one of the easiest ways of cutting costs is cutting quality."
I disagree. I think that the problem is caused by the popularisation of the consumer electronics market. The average joe can't discern quality in electronics. He will look to see if a DVD has the basic features he wants and then check the price. If there's another with the same features but a lower price, he will get the cheaper one. The more expensive, quality unit will not sell and the company making it may go out of business.
It is in this way that 'natural selection' in the marketplace drives away quality products. It's the same thing for hard drives -- one of the main reasons that prices and quality get lower and lower is because aside from speed and capacity, the average person has no reason to buy the more expensive product.
Quality products are being eliminated from the marketplace because average people can't recognise quality.
"Also, one of the main reasons they switched from germanium to silicon was silicon's greater endurance to physical stress. I'm pretty sure diamond will be still stronger, despite the doping."
Also, the silicon circuit elements were less affected by heat than the germanium counterparts.
You're using bell for long distance? I don't work for them or anything, but chances are you can save some money by looking at Sprint Canada or Telus. If you phone them up and get them talking about rates, they'll try to make you an offer to switch to them. Then you can say something like, "Well that's about the rate I'm getting from Bell, so what can you offer me to make it worth switching?" and they often give you an additional 10% discout.
"2.0, 2.1, 3.0 were all under $89-129 retail sometimes with $89-99 upgrade offers. Then they jacked the price up again."
IBM also had a no-support version of OS/2 Warp available for very low prices. I still have mine here on top of the CD rack and it cost less than $50 canadian.
It also came with a "BonusPak" cd that came with: Compuserve Information Manager, Faxworks, HyperAccess Lite, Internet Connection Software, IBM Works PIM, Video In tools, and a bunch of other tools.
Overall, I think it was a pretty good deal. Too bad no games ran on it.
"not that that prevents the backyard neighbor from feeding the goddamn raccoons who then come over and swim in our swimming pool so they can wash up afterwards"
That's what owning a slingshot is for;-) You can get some fairly high powered models at sporting stores.
"Yes.. the MAC address of the NIC card is included in a.doc or anything you write using MS Office. This is how they caught the person in the Philippenes who wrote some virus that came out last year."
That person in the Philippines didn't think to install the patch released by Microsoft that prevents the GUID from being written to Microsoft Office files.
"Microsoft will never port the key Windows application to Linux. No way."
Well it has already ported Office to UNIX. Remember that there's Office V.x for Mac OS X which is a UNIX based operating system. In terms of coding, they're not that far away from MS Office for Linux as you might think.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen this on a couple of occaions as well, but for paypal as opposed to ebay. The URLs were more obviously fake but I notified the network admins anyway and the person who bought one of the domains is now being charged with fraud!
The obvious tip-off was that someone was just sending mail at random, hoping to catch paypal users. The account I received that message at had nothing to do with paypal. (And now I as will will have nothing to do with paypal.
Haven't you been paying attention to recent articles?
A worse thing is to have the same last name as a crook. Back in the 80s, there was a drug dealer living in the same city as my family and had the same last name as us. We kept getting calls in the middle of the night ... "Is Duane there ... ? We're having a party and we need the stuff!" Eventually the guy got caught and was hauled off the jail. But not before we got our phone number unlisted permanently and for free by the police :-)
Bah! I didn't notice that there were two links in the story, one with the correct link already present. Sorry!
It sounds like Microsoft is running scared now. They realise that India is a powerhose because it has way more people (population) than the United States.
India seems to be tilted toward linux right now and if the linux movement there gets into full swing, the momentum will be very, very hard for Microsoft to stop.
I hope the Indians look to the long terms effects of the windows and linux paths, as opposed to short terms benefits.
OMG...
/me thinks of the goatse guy
No, but he's an apple cover-boy. There's a switch ad featuring him.
If uninstalling flash is stealing, then a lot of us are guilty of 'grand theft' ;-)
You could ask the same thing about using Lynx. It doesn't even support images, let alone flash.
Uninstall flash.
I just keep a separate flash enabled browser (Opera) for those rare moments when I really do need flash. Otherwise, mozilla armed with numerous ad and popup blocking tools/settings spares me from almost all banners and pop-ups.
Then get yourself a glorious hosts blocking list and say goodbye to 90% of advertising content and a big speed-up! I am on 28.8 dialup (nothing better is available here, not even 56K) and this is a life-saver.
Same here. I have forgotten what it feels like to see a pop-up on my machine. Rare is the day I see a banner ad as well, due to mighty hosts blocking and even if I haven't blocked a host, bannerblind* usually zaps it anyway. I don't even have to resort to a windows-dependent solution like the Proxomitron anymore!
*That note on the bannerblind site about an error where bannerblind fails to register properly is not a big deal. Look at bug 1745 listed and a work-around us there.
...or did anyone else think, based on the title of this story, that this was another cancelled North American release of an Anime title?
*I'm not implying that high cost automatically means that a product is of high quality. There's lots of expensive garbage out there.
I agree, and this applies to customers too. The will buy the $5 cheaper part if its feature list is the same. Who cares if the capacitors and thermal protection are substandard? Most people don't know what those are. The customer's want of saving a quick buck causes the manufacturers of quality parts to either reduce their quality or go out of business.
Absolutely. If you look at old floppies, they are glued all the way around on the edges. The new ones are only glued in the corners so all kinds of crud can get inside.
I haven't bought a floppy in years, and instead use my really old ones from the 80s.
It depends. Their low end, mass produced products aimed at the average person are overpriced junk. I would never buy them. They are typically made in Mexico or Malaysia. On the other hand, their high end products are very good, very reliable, and made in Japan.
I have found that the rule for Sony products is this: Buy high end, or don't buy at all! If it's Sony and it doesn't say "Made in Japan" then don't buy it.
I disagree. I think that the problem is caused by the popularisation of the consumer electronics market. The average joe can't discern quality in electronics. He will look to see if a DVD has the basic features he wants and then check the price. If there's another with the same features but a lower price, he will get the cheaper one. The more expensive, quality unit will not sell and the company making it may go out of business.
It is in this way that 'natural selection' in the marketplace drives away quality products. It's the same thing for hard drives -- one of the main reasons that prices and quality get lower and lower is because aside from speed and capacity, the average person has no reason to buy the more expensive product.
Quality products are being eliminated from the marketplace because average people can't recognise quality.
uh, nevermind.
Also, the silicon circuit elements were less affected by heat than the germanium counterparts.
jellyfish pulverize tornadoes!
You're using bell for long distance? I don't work for them or anything, but chances are you can save some money by looking at Sprint Canada or Telus. If you phone them up and get them talking about rates, they'll try to make you an offer to switch to them. Then you can say something like, "Well that's about the rate I'm getting from Bell, so what can you offer me to make it worth switching?" and they often give you an additional 10% discout.
IBM also had a no-support version of OS/2 Warp available for very low prices. I still have mine here on top of the CD rack and it cost less than $50 canadian.
It also came with a "BonusPak" cd that came with: Compuserve Information Manager, Faxworks, HyperAccess Lite, Internet Connection Software, IBM Works PIM, Video In tools, and a bunch of other tools.
Overall, I think it was a pretty good deal. Too bad no games ran on it.
That's what owning a slingshot is for ;-) You can get some fairly high powered models at sporting stores.
That person in the Philippines didn't think to install the patch released by Microsoft that prevents the GUID from being written to Microsoft Office files.
Well it has already ported Office to UNIX. Remember that there's Office V.x for Mac OS X which is a UNIX based operating system. In terms of coding, they're not that far away from MS Office for Linux as you might think.