Auction fraud is illegal, I believe there is a way you can file with the FTC and have the fraudelant seller fined thousands of dollars, or even possibly jailed. IIRC, something about interstate commerce, or whatknot. I think you may also get a full refund of the amount of money you were defrauded from, or a portion of the money collected by the FTC in fines; I don't remember which.
Believe it or not, I believe that MSFT has a real point here.
With the "security" community telling the "hackers" exactly how to create malicious code that takes advantage of poor MS programming, it's like throwing fuel on an already relatively hot fire.
Let's take a slightly more concrete example here. I just thought it up off the top of my head so don't flame me if it doesn't add up to 100%.
Say you're a security consultant for a bank, and you also know some unscruplus people. Say that you discover a way that, in a few minutes and with a few simple tools that most people have in their garages, you could open up the bank's valut, without triggering their security systems. If you told your "friends" (in this case, the equivilant of posting the information to the Internet), and they went and used the information to rob the bank, you'd be an accessory to the act. You didn't do it, and you might not even get charged with it (the "experts" again here), but you were a mechanism for allowing it to be done.
Microsoft should aim towards relasing code that *doesn't* have more security holes than swiss cheese has C0(2) produced ones, but the people who find the bugs in the software should tell Microsoft privately, instead of telling everyone exactly how to bypass the security and execute arbitrary code/read files/run programs/whatever.
It's not either party's total fault, but the people who everyone thinks are innocent aren't really.
Someone read the ABOUT box on Microsoft FrontPage Express 98, the version bundled with Windows 98. Surely some of those patents cover what IBM is trying to repatent?
I've always thought IBM to be one of the "less evil" big companies, but maybe that's a wrong perception, in light of the failing hard drives, and now trying to steal another company's I.P.
This is not a troll post, or a flamebait post, or any of that. I'm making a serious point here.
I also state that IANAL here.
IIRC, isn't there some type of implied warrenty given with everything sold, unless explicitly disclaimed (like many open source software packages that I have seen) that the product is going to be fit for the purpose for which it was sold? (e.g. you sell a hard drive with the expectation that it will store data on it for at least a year or so, and that it won't die of a hardware failure until it is obsolete) When things aren't fit for their intended purpose, that's when a class-action lawsuit gets started.
I don't know specifics behind the stories, but if these hard drives are failing at a significantly higher rate than drives of similar sizes and RPM ratings from other companies, there is a problem. It's not a software problem, caused by the OS, where IBM could blame MS/Linus/Apple/whoever for writing a bad driver. A bad driver won't cause a mechanical failure in the disk.
Maybe someone should look into this? I remember one story of a drive failing, being replaced, the replacement faling, repeat, at least twice, before he got Maxtor drives. He should be getting some money back.
If you want to reconsider a professional data recovery choice, try Drivesavers. I've seen them in various computer publications and they seem to be pretty honest, but I have never used their services so I'm not sure.
Searching C|Net Downloads I found Recover98 which seems to be the best package there. It costs $169 to register, which provides access to all features, and support for Windows 2000 dynamic drives(Software RAID arrays), NTFS 5, and it's really small. Again, I haven't tested it, but it looks decent. The trial has save features partly disabled but you can at least see if it looks good, and it is certainly cheaper than a professional data recovery service.
I haven't had the (mis?)fortune of using an IBM hard drive since my 12.5GB one in an older system of mine. Are there any thoughts of a class-action lawsuit based on the drives' failure to perform properly? If new drives are failing this often, there is a definate problem.
IIRC, Microsoft "mentioned" something to Nullsoft about the plugin structure of WinAmp allowing it to do things to WMA files that were forbidden by the license. Shoutcasting WMAs and on the fly conversion to WMA were some of them. I'm not sure if they removed the WMA plugin from Winamp since, if they did, *Nix users who want WMA audio from WinAmp are out of luck. Hopefully that is not the case, but knowing MS, it might well be.
Try a solution based on a form of 802.11, or it's variants. Find a suitably high place in the city to mount a directional antenna on, point it at your school, go about 10 miles, install an 802.11 acces point in some friendly location, add more directional antennas. You'd probably run up to $10k getting the proper communications equipment and such, and you'd need a PC at the first of the hubs to be providing the gateway (*Nix or 2K Server so it won't crash too much) It might work or it might not. There are many communities that are providing 802.11(x) service for their entire city, but I don't think it's ever been taken past a city before.
It's great to hear from someone who actually helped to develop the protocol that is being used now. I have a copy of the AOL source and I pasted your comment in to it, but if you wish, I can remove it if you'd prefer to remain anonymous or uninvolved before I post it to Gnutella.
Welcome to my shop, Gamanen! You look like you could use a Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
That will be 1 platnium 2 gold 3 silver 9 copper for the Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
You pay Inkeep Jobober 1 platnium 2 gold 3 silver 9 copper for the Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
You take a drink from a Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
You feel refreshed!
You say, 'Ahh, that hit the spot. Coca-Cola tastes great, try one today! Available at your local beverage outlet.
Welcome to my shop, Gamanen! Have you had your break today?
That will be 4 gold 7 copper for the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese sandwich.
=-=-=-=
Egads! OTOH, in a MODERN setting MMORPG, in context adds would not be out of place. In a fantasy RPG, leave em on the login screens, otherwise there is no decorum.
Palm-OS has an application called "Remote" that is a learning, programmable touch-screen remote using either the built-in IR port, or a $15 attachment that is around 20x more powerful. It is a $25 or so download, and they sell packages. Of course, if you don't have a palm, then this isn't a better solution.
The thing that always sticks out in my mind about Exodus is that their router in Chicago was #$%^ed up for about a month over the summer, making it impossible to play EverQuest. About 80% of packets were dropped going through that node. That's fine for web pages - TCP/IP is designed with packet loss in mind, and it resends packets and all that if it doesn't quite make it. On the other hand, a UDP game doesn't have all that error checking built in, and if you drop more than about a dozen packets in a row, you've lost the connection.
They repaired the problem, but that always sticks out in my mind, that they didn't quite have it together for a long time. And the less enlightened people blamed it on Sony.
The ACLU[aclu.org] has a place where you can send a form-fax to your senator or congressman urging them to make an informed decision about the laws regarding cryptography. I sent such a message to my elected officials in Washington; you should to. I can't for the life of me find the actual link for the page again, but it is there, somewhere. I will post it as a reply here.
Also, elsewhere on Slashdot, again I can't find the link again, there is a very well-written letter that the author said he would allow for use provided it was modified a little bit.
If we don't want something to happen, we need to make sure to tell our government about it. They are there to represent US, and if we don't want something, it shouldn't happen.
I should point our (according to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition) that the "warp factor" does not necessarely mean times the speed of light.
The following is blatantly plagarized from page 373:
Speed KPH x Light Speed
Std Orbit 9600
This is in reply to a comment lower down that talks about it being 4 days to Kronos and back.
According to this, if Kronos is 1 light year away, we'll say exactly 1 light year for "educational" purposes, it would take 1 year at warp 1, 36 days at warp 2, 9 days at warp 3, and 3 days at warp 4. So the calculation was pretty close to correct, I've just added some other data to it.
I wonder how long it will take before we won't even need to go to McDonalds to pick up our food from the drive-through. We'll just teleport our cash there and get our food back, right into our microwaves, or some other instrument.
The Government, as evil as it can be and usually is, with the DCMA and SSSCA and other such laws, actually might have a good point here. Make the records only available to law enforcement, and only for authentication and transportation records, and purchases of weapons and such, and you'd have a good system.
Because the government would be running it, there is a higher chanec that they wouldn't sell your personal information to another company, and because the government is accountable to the people they control (at least in our nation), it would be somewhat "user-controlled."
I think this could be used to actually enhance privacy. U.S. Federal ID card, bar code with vitals, linked to your bank account, and a photo ID. Make card updating mandatory every 12 months so the photo stays current, and you'd be good to go. The worst thing is a photo ID with a picture that is 4 years old when the person has changed their hair style and got contacts now in stead of glasses...It's almost not the same person any more.
Tom's Hardware has an article on their main page about software RAID under Windows 2000. Apparently it supports striping and spanning, and unlimited drives as long as you have enough controllers for them. The boot HDD has to be standalone but the others can be RAID-linked. The best thing is that it supports multiple interfaces. You can have 3 IDE drives and a SCSI drive and they'll all RAID together.
I don't know if an MS product is what you'd want to use, but it's out there.
I think that this was planted in addition to the physical destruction of the NYC towers. My base for this is the autoreply from an infected person:
I am not able to check email with any regularity at this time. Please forgive any delays in responding to you. If you are responding to the request for assistance after the World Trade Center disaster, thank you! The
support that we have received from the national I.T. community has been overwhelming. We received over a thousand offers of assistance and equipment
in less than twenty-four hours! What we thought would be sent to five or six people has made it from sea to shining sea, awesome is the power of the internet. What we really need MOST at the moment is time... time to sort through what has been offered and to reassess our needs. Please forgive us if we can't respond right away and please don't forward our message at this
time. I don't know how else to thank you all for your compassion and generosity but I feel privileged to be part of the I.T. community, a
community in every sense of the word.
Perhaps a malicious person planted the viruses that send emails with subjects such as ware\Microsoft\WindoJb4 "supertrak66bclass11_28hlaconsoleapplication2data consoleapplication1consoleapplication1supertrak66b servicesuntitled - 1ultrabudgetciscostuffconsoleapplication2pitou-0co nsoleapplication2_debug6b-01-000226 while "helping" at the World Trade Center?
This is not intended to be flamebait, but a serious observation from data that I've gathered. If you don't think it's worthy of notice, don't mod it down, just don't mod it.
J.W. Koebel
I've been getting these, as well as SirCam messages, the "Hi! How are you? I send you this file to ask for you advice..." with ATT0000059.TXT, a 59-byte file, and ATT0000059.DAT, 159KB that looks like it contains some type of executable code.
I've also gotten the snippits of the registry:
"ware\Microsoft\Windo,b4 pull123"
Anyone have any ideas about this? I haven't opened anything except the messages, and Windows 2000 is pretty secure, but I'd rather not get infected with something if possible.
I don't agree with the GPL. While it certainly does standardize open-source licensing, for any free software organization to become legalistic about another free software organizaion not following their terms to the letter is like biting the hand that feeds.
The FSF doesn't own any of the things covered by the GPL. They do, however, feel compelled to dictate terms of useage to the people who are making their software publically available. This shows, to me, little more then slightly masked greed.
I've released a few software programs that were very, very specialized, under a license I wrote myself...a 1-liner. "You can do whatever you want to this program, provided that you give me credit for making it in the first place and you don't blame me for anything wrong in it, known or not." No complaints...
The FSF seems to have gotten too big of an ego for its own good. Someone needs to cut them back down to size, in my opinion.
I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D on a 386/SX with like 4MB of RAM. I was like 10 years old at the time (I'm only 16 now...), learning how to make.BAT files, about how hardware was assigned resources, command lines, and also how to frag Nazi's in a 3D setting.
Nothing like bringing back memories.
I only hope the graphics won't be as crappy in retrospect.
Slashdot Mirror
Auction fraud is illegal, I believe there is a way you can file with the FTC and have the fraudelant seller fined thousands of dollars, or even possibly jailed. IIRC, something about interstate commerce, or whatknot. I think you may also get a full refund of the amount of money you were defrauded from, or a portion of the money collected by the FTC in fines; I don't remember which.
Look in to it.
JKoebel
Believe it or not, I believe that MSFT has a real point here.
With the "security" community telling the "hackers" exactly how to create malicious code that takes advantage of poor MS programming, it's like throwing fuel on an already relatively hot fire.
Let's take a slightly more concrete example here. I just thought it up off the top of my head so don't flame me if it doesn't add up to 100%.
Say you're a security consultant for a bank, and you also know some unscruplus people. Say that you discover a way that, in a few minutes and with a few simple tools that most people have in their garages, you could open up the bank's valut, without triggering their security systems. If you told your "friends" (in this case, the equivilant of posting the information to the Internet), and they went and used the information to rob the bank, you'd be an accessory to the act. You didn't do it, and you might not even get charged with it (the "experts" again here), but you were a mechanism for allowing it to be done.
Microsoft should aim towards relasing code that *doesn't* have more security holes than swiss cheese has C0(2) produced ones, but the people who find the bugs in the software should tell Microsoft privately, instead of telling everyone exactly how to bypass the security and execute arbitrary code/read files/run programs/whatever.
It's not either party's total fault, but the people who everyone thinks are innocent aren't really.
IANAL/IMO
JKoebel
Someone read the ABOUT box on Microsoft FrontPage Express 98, the version bundled with Windows 98. Surely some of those patents cover what IBM is trying to repatent?
I've always thought IBM to be one of the "less evil" big companies, but maybe that's a wrong perception, in light of the failing hard drives, and now trying to steal another company's I.P.
IANAL, JKoebel
Thanks for clarifying that for me. Moderators, mod up firewort's post.
JKoebel
No wonder you don't know what happened to the last four units...there were only three!
function twotwofive(x,y:real):integer;
var temp:integer;
begin
temp
twotwofive
end;
Enter X: 2.7
Enter Y: 2.1
5
JKoebel
This is not a troll post, or a flamebait post, or any of that. I'm making a serious point here.
I also state that IANAL here.
IIRC, isn't there some type of implied warrenty given with everything sold, unless explicitly disclaimed (like many open source software packages that I have seen) that the product is going to be fit for the purpose for which it was sold? (e.g. you sell a hard drive with the expectation that it will store data on it for at least a year or so, and that it won't die of a hardware failure until it is obsolete) When things aren't fit for their intended purpose, that's when a class-action lawsuit gets started.
I don't know specifics behind the stories, but if these hard drives are failing at a significantly higher rate than drives of similar sizes and RPM ratings from other companies, there is a problem. It's not a software problem, caused by the OS, where IBM could blame MS/Linus/Apple/whoever for writing a bad driver. A bad driver won't cause a mechanical failure in the disk.
Maybe someone should look into this? I remember one story of a drive failing, being replaced, the replacement faling, repeat, at least twice, before he got Maxtor drives. He should be getting some money back.
JKoebel
If you want to reconsider a professional data recovery choice, try Drivesavers. I've seen them in various computer publications and they seem to be pretty honest, but I have never used their services so I'm not sure.
Searching C|Net Downloads I found Recover98 which seems to be the best package there. It costs $169 to register, which provides access to all features, and support for Windows 2000 dynamic drives(Software RAID arrays), NTFS 5, and it's really small. Again, I haven't tested it, but it looks decent. The trial has save features partly disabled but you can at least see if it looks good, and it is certainly cheaper than a professional data recovery service.
I haven't had the (mis?)fortune of using an IBM hard drive since my 12.5GB one in an older system of mine. Are there any thoughts of a class-action lawsuit based on the drives' failure to perform properly? If new drives are failing this often, there is a definate problem.
JKoebel
IIRC, Microsoft "mentioned" something to Nullsoft about the plugin structure of WinAmp allowing it to do things to WMA files that were forbidden by the license. Shoutcasting WMAs and on the fly conversion to WMA were some of them. I'm not sure if they removed the WMA plugin from Winamp since, if they did, *Nix users who want WMA audio from WinAmp are out of luck. Hopefully that is not the case, but knowing MS, it might well be.
Try a solution based on a form of 802.11, or it's variants. Find a suitably high place in the city to mount a directional antenna on, point it at your school, go about 10 miles, install an 802.11 acces point in some friendly location, add more directional antennas. You'd probably run up to $10k getting the proper communications equipment and such, and you'd need a PC at the first of the hubs to be providing the gateway (*Nix or 2K Server so it won't crash too much) It might work or it might not. There are many communities that are providing 802.11(x) service for their entire city, but I don't think it's ever been taken past a city before.
JKoebel
It's great to hear from someone who actually helped to develop the protocol that is being used now. I have a copy of the AOL source and I pasted your comment in to it, but if you wish, I can remove it if you'd prefer to remain anonymous or uninvolved before I post it to Gnutella.
Thank's for posting this.
J.Koebel
Welcome to my shop, Gamanen! You look like you could use a Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
That will be 1 platnium 2 gold 3 silver 9 copper for the Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
You pay Inkeep Jobober 1 platnium 2 gold 3 silver 9 copper for the Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
You take a drink from a Coca-Cola 20oz Bottle.
You feel refreshed!
You say, 'Ahh, that hit the spot. Coca-Cola tastes great, try one today! Available at your local beverage outlet.
Welcome to my shop, Gamanen! Have you had your break today?
That will be 4 gold 7 copper for the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese sandwich.
=-=-=-=
Egads! OTOH, in a MODERN setting MMORPG, in context adds would not be out of place. In a fantasy RPG, leave em on the login screens, otherwise there is no decorum.
J.Koebel
Avid EQ Player
Palm-OS has an application called "Remote" that is a learning, programmable touch-screen remote using either the built-in IR port, or a $15 attachment that is around 20x more powerful. It is a $25 or so download, and they sell packages. Of course, if you don't have a palm, then this isn't a better solution.
The thing that always sticks out in my mind about Exodus is that their router in Chicago was #$%^ed up for about a month over the summer, making it impossible to play EverQuest. About 80% of packets were dropped going through that node. That's fine for web pages - TCP/IP is designed with packet loss in mind, and it resends packets and all that if it doesn't quite make it. On the other hand, a UDP game doesn't have all that error checking built in, and if you drop more than about a dozen packets in a row, you've lost the connection.
They repaired the problem, but that always sticks out in my mind, that they didn't quite have it together for a long time. And the less enlightened people blamed it on Sony.
J.W.
The link to the ACLU form letter (actually a fax) is here: http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
The ACLU [aclu.org] has a place where you can send a form-fax to your senator or congressman urging them to make an informed decision about the laws regarding cryptography. I sent such a message to my elected officials in Washington; you should to. I can't for the life of me find the actual link for the page again, but it is there, somewhere. I will post it as a reply here.
Also, elsewhere on Slashdot, again I can't find the link again, there is a very well-written letter that the author said he would allow for use provided it was modified a little bit.
If we don't want something to happen, we need to make sure to tell our government about it. They are there to represent US, and if we don't want something, it shouldn't happen.
Warp Factor xLightSpeed
Warp 1 becomes 1
Warp 2 becomes 10
Warp 3 becomes 39
Warp 4 becomes 102
Warp 5 becomes 214
Warp 6 becomes 392
Warp 7 becomes 656
Warp 8 becomes 1024
Warp 9 becomes 1516
I should point our (according to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition) that the "warp factor" does not necessarely mean times the speed of light.
The following is blatantly plagarized from page 373:
Speed KPH x Light Speed
Std Orbit 9600
This is in reply to a comment lower down that talks about it being 4 days to Kronos and back.
According to this, if Kronos is 1 light year away, we'll say exactly 1 light year for "educational" purposes, it would take 1 year at warp 1, 36 days at warp 2, 9 days at warp 3, and 3 days at warp 4. So the calculation was pretty close to correct, I've just added some other data to it.
I wonder how long it will take before we won't even need to go to McDonalds to pick up our food from the drive-through. We'll just teleport our cash there and get our food back, right into our microwaves, or some other instrument.
Yummy.
The Government, as evil as it can be and usually is, with the DCMA and SSSCA and other such laws, actually might have a good point here. Make the records only available to law enforcement, and only for authentication and transportation records, and purchases of weapons and such, and you'd have a good system.
Because the government would be running it, there is a higher chanec that they wouldn't sell your personal information to another company, and because the government is accountable to the people they control (at least in our nation), it would be somewhat "user-controlled."
I think this could be used to actually enhance privacy. U.S. Federal ID card, bar code with vitals, linked to your bank account, and a photo ID. Make card updating mandatory every 12 months so the photo stays current, and you'd be good to go. The worst thing is a photo ID with a picture that is 4 years old when the person has changed their hair style and got contacts now in stead of glasses...It's almost not the same person any more.
Tom's Hardware has an article on their main page about software RAID under Windows 2000. Apparently it supports striping and spanning, and unlimited drives as long as you have enough controllers for them. The boot HDD has to be standalone but the others can be RAID-linked. The best thing is that it supports multiple interfaces. You can have 3 IDE drives and a SCSI drive and they'll all RAID together.
I don't know if an MS product is what you'd want to use, but it's out there.
J.W. Koebel
apache_1adminconfig
fontsmrtns2
apacheroutedelete
hpfontsmod_perl-1
gettime
big-sister-0
apachejmeter_1
pdfwritr
apache-contrib1lo66293
routedelete
autoexec
apachejmeter_1mod_phantomimap
No ideas...got me what it's doing.
I've been getting these, as well as SirCam messages, the "Hi! How are you? I send you this file to ask for you advice..." with ATT0000059.TXT, a 59-byte file, and ATT0000059.DAT, 159KB that looks like it contains some type of executable code.
I've also gotten the snippits of the registry:
"ware\Microsoft\Windo,b4 pull123"
Anyone have any ideas about this? I haven't opened anything except the messages, and Windows 2000 is pretty secure, but I'd rather not get infected with something if possible.
I don't agree with the GPL. While it certainly does standardize open-source licensing, for any free software organization to become legalistic about another free software organizaion not following their terms to the letter is like biting the hand that feeds.
The FSF doesn't own any of the things covered by the GPL. They do, however, feel compelled to dictate terms of useage to the people who are making their software publically available. This shows, to me, little more then slightly masked greed.
I've released a few software programs that were very, very specialized, under a license I wrote myself...a 1-liner. "You can do whatever you want to this program, provided that you give me credit for making it in the first place and you don't blame me for anything wrong in it, known or not." No complaints...
The FSF seems to have gotten too big of an ego for its own good. Someone needs to cut them back down to size, in my opinion.
J.W. Koebel
Gnutella seems to have gotten a hold of it, I d/led the latest version from LimeWire at 65.43KB/sec, insanely fast. Just search for the file name.
I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D on a 386/SX with like 4MB of RAM. I was like 10 years old at the time (I'm only 16 now...), learning how to make .BAT files, about how hardware was assigned resources, command lines, and also how to frag Nazi's in a 3D setting.
Nothing like bringing back memories.
I only hope the graphics won't be as crappy in retrospect.